There used to be a debate among many people when deciding what kind of video recorder to purchase or whether to digitize their videos. But now, the trend is clear: most people select to digitize their videos and save them on video CDs or DVDs.
Analog videos are in the form of magnetic tape used in High-8, 8 mm, VHS, and S-VHS. A digital video signal is actually a pattern of 1's and 0's that represent the video image. With a digital video signal, there is no variation in the original signal once it is captured on to computer disc. Therefore, the quality of digital video doesn't diminish over time. It always remains its original sharpness and clarity.
There are many reasons to digitize video. Digital video can be processed in many ways that analog video cannot. Digital video can also be played over and over without any degradation, whereas analog videos loose their quality over time and in poor storage conditions.
An analog video can be very similar to the original video copied, but it is not identical. The magnetic tape of a VHS video wears away with repeated play. Eventually, the magnetic tape becomes thinner and thinner until the video cannot be played at all. Digitization also extends a video's life span and allows you to enhance its original sound and picture quality.
The purpose of digitizing video is to convert analog video to digital video.
Digital technology allows for easy editing and enhancing of videos. Storage of the analog video tapes is much more cumbersome than digital video CDs.
For this reason, many videos of important memories are digitized. Videos of weddings and anniversaries are commonly digitized in order to ensure the quality of the video and because of digital video's editing capabilities. Many people have videos of their children digitized as gifts for relatives.
