The Digital in Digital Camcorders

It looks like the world has been transformed from analog to digital overnight. From cameras to DVD players, to portable music players, it seems that many electronics devices that were once exclusively analog have been switched into digital products today. Digital camcorders are no exceptional.

How the Camcorder Got Its Name

Though most of us have seen or used a camcorder, fewer are familiar with how they ought to be defined. By combing the syllables CAM(era) and (re)CORDER, the result is the term, "camcorder". Simply put, a camcorder combines a video camera and a videocassette recorder, into a single machine. Betamovie, which Sony began selling in 1983, was the first camcorder on the market. This machine recorded onto a half-inch Sony Betamax video cassette. However, unlike today's digital camcorders, the Betamovie was incapable of playing back tapes. However, today's camcorders, such as digital camcorders, use DVDs to play back recorded material.

Analog's Etching

Besides being capable of being able to play back, digital camcorders are by definition, digital. However, what does that actually mean? In 1877, Thomas Edison created the first tool that had the capacity to save sounds and then play them back. In Edison's first phonograph, a needle was utilized to imprint an analog signal into the metal tube. This analog symbol can also be referred to as an analog wave. When your voice produces vibrations, the analog wave depicts those waves. The process of etching an analog wave onto metal serves as an efficient method. However, the recorded sound is not imprecise, as the analog wave contains much distortion and can be altered over time.

Digital Technology's Precision and Stability

However, the objective of digital camcorders and other machines that utilize digital recording technology is to produce a recording that contains extremely high fidelity. In other words, little variance should exist between the original and duplicated signals. Another goal of digital technology is for perfect reproduction to be created. In other words, the media can be repeatedly played, without the sound being altered. Thus, digital recording transforms an analog wave into a series of digits, and then records the digits as opposed to the wave. For the duration that the digits remain in their original form, the analog wave produced will remain constant. Another advantage of digital recording and digital camcorders is the amount of data that can be stored. One DVD with a single layer contains over 4,700,000,000 bytes! A byte is a unit for storage that is equal to roughly one printed character. The digital technology that digital camcorders use may seem baffling at first. However, appreciating the picture and sound quality that they produce, is as easy as "one-two-shoot".