Digital Video

The next evolution toward fully integrating motion video computers eliminates the analog television form of video from the multimedia delivery platform. If a video clip can first be converted from analog to digital, then stored as data on a hard disk, CD-ROM, or other mass-storage device, that clip can be played back on the computer's monitor without overlay boards, videodisc players, or second monitors. This playback is accomplished using software architectures such as QuickTime or Video for "Windows (replaced by Microsoft's newer Active Movie for Windows).
As a multimedia producer or developer, you will need to convert your video source material from its common analog form (videotape) to a digital form manageable by the end user's computer system. So an understanding of analog video and some special hardware must remain in your multimedia toolbox.
Analog to digital conversion of video can often be accomplished using the video overlay hardware described above, but to repetitively digitize a full-screen color video image every 1/30 second and store it to disk or RAM severely taxes both Macintosh and PC processing capabilities—special hardware, compression software, and massive amounts of digital storage space are required. And repetitively reading from disk and displaying to the monitor the full-screen color images of motion video, at a rate of one frame every 1/30 second, taxes the computational and display power of both the Macintosh sad the PC.
The final evolutionary step to fully digital video will not occur until the acquisition and recording of video becomes entirely a digital procedure and analog videotape is removed from the process.