A photo presentation or wedding highlights may be recorded in various medium. The most common ones are VCD and VHS (video tape). It is commonly thought that VCD has better quality than VHS tape because it is digital. The fact is, however, the reverse. A picture is made up of many tiny colour dots called pixels. An image in a VCD picture is formed by 352 by 288 pixels whereas that in VHS is formed by 720 by 576 pixels. This essentially gives VCD only about 1/4 times the sharpness and details compared to VHS. Watching VCD through the TV thus enlarges the original picture size thereby causing lack of sharpness. Below summarizes the features of VCD and VHS for comparison:

• Advantages of VCD
- it is digital and allow duplication without data loss.
- it is lasting as fungus (if any) growing on the CD surface could be wiped off.

• Disadvantages of VCD
- picture quality is affected by the way the VCD is being encoded.
- less detail / sharpness compared to VHS

• Advantages of VHS
- higher detail / sharpness compared to VCD

• Disadvantages of VHS
- it is analogue and its duplication will produce a poorer quality picture
- picture quality is affected by the camera or video cassette recorder (VCR) used for the recording.
- picture quality is affected by the VCR used for playback.Old VCRs with contaminated heads are often the cause of poor pictures during playback.
- VCR has 2, 4 or 6-head type. A 6-head VCR optimises both audio and video outputs thereby giving the best results. Most households have either a 2 or 4-head VCR and their video qualities are not as sharp as that of a 6-head VCR.

For use in wedding presentation, a VHS would be recommended compared to VCD but remember to use a video player with a clean head.

DVD, DVC, Betacam, DVCPro

These are some other media that are less common among the public but could give very sharp and high quality images. Some people may own a DVD player, but getting your video or presentation authored and recorded into DVD is very costly.

DVC (digital video cassette) or miniDV is the matchbox size tape used by digital handycam. With rapid falling prices, digital handycam is gaining popularity as it allows you to make your own video in good quality. If you have the necessary accessories and software, the presentation you create could also be recorded into this media. But remember that a good capture also has a lot to do with proper lighting conditions of the scene.

Betacam and DVCPro is a high-end media used by more professional videographers as pictures recorded in these medium are very good for editing purposes due to their sharpness. Compared to VHS, it is sharper and clearer but among themselves, telling the differences between DVCPro and Betacam will take keen eyes.

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