The Best Format for Playing Your Marketing Video

It is official - VHS tape is dead! It is bulky to handle, costly to deliver, has poor picture quality and deteriorates over time.

So what is the best format for showcasing your video masterpiece? Let’s review each format to see which is right for you.

There are three clear consumer formats for playing video content: DVD, CD-ROM and VHS.

DVD

Video quality is determined by the amount of pixels that are activated on each horizontal line of your television or computer screen.

DVD is full resolution video and contains 720 horizontal lines. This is the best quality currently available for playing video content (blue ray technology is probably going to surpass DVD in the future, but we will ignore that for now).

Each DVD has the capacity to hold approximately 4.7 gigabytes which allows for long duration videos to be played.

To create a DVD, the video content needs to be compressed. Compression involves grabbing detail from a picture of say, a red car, and turning that picture into data.

The compression format used for DVD’s is called mpeg 2. This is a highly efficient format that minimises picture loss during the compression process. Around 95% percent of data is lost during DVD compression, which results in a substantial loss of image quality. The only way to diminish picture quality loss is to use a high quality camera in the first place.

Low quality cameras (ie: Betacam SP, DVCAM or Mini DV format) have average picture quality. Their picture quality reduces even further after compression, as most of the data is removed leaving an even lesser quality picture. This is because these cameras have a lot of “noise” in their pictures, resulting in the shot of the red car looking grainy. Original images that have a lot of “noise” compress inefficiently.

Broadcast quality cameras such as Sony Digital Betacam and MPEG IMX provide the best quality pictures for transferring onto CD-ROM. These formats provide very sharp CD-ROM pictures that have accurate colours and excellent image definition. This is because pictures are clean and without “noise”, resulting in a clear and true to life looking red car.

Therefore, even though DVD is the best consumer format delivery available, pictures will only look spectacular if the vision was created with a broadcast quality camera.

The only issue with DVD is that stand-alone DVD players are sensitive to television standards. There are three major worldwide colour television standards – NTSC, PAL and SECAM.

In Australia, we use the PAL standard. In Japan, the NTSC standard is used. This means that a standard DVD created in Australia will not play in a Japanese DVD player. However, a desktop PC with a DVD drive will play the disk.

This makes it difficult to send a DVD internationally.

CD-ROM’s

CD-ROM pictures contain about 352 horizontal lines, which is around half the quality of DVD. This is the second best consumer format available for playing video content.

A full size CD-ROM can handle a maximum of 700 megabytes, a mini CD-ROM (8 cm disk) can hold 150 megabytes, while a business card CD-ROM holds around 30-50 megabytes. Long videos usually fit onto a regular size CD-ROM, but may not fit onto a mini or business card CD-ROM.

Video must also be compressed to fit onto a CD-ROM. The compression format used for CD-ROM’s is called mpeg1. This is an old compression standard that is playable on a larger range of computers than mpeg2.

CD-ROM compression removes 99.5% of data, which results in greater image quality loss than DVD compression. Again, quality loss can be minimised if a broadcast quality camera is used during filming. In fact, using a good quality camera is extremely important when creating professional CD-ROM’s (more so than DVD production).

In the past, CD-ROM’s went out of favour because they did not run on many computers. New technology has allowed them to be played on around 97% of computers. Inexperienced programmers can be blamed for a lower success rate.

One benefit of CD-ROM’s is that they are playable worldwide. A video created in Australia and put onto CD-ROM format can be played in Japan. Television standards do not apply. Accordingly, computers are abundantly found in offices worldwide which means that more people can access your vision.

CDROMs are also particularly flexible as they can include a menu option (like a website) which contains video, brochures, documents and website links. This is perfect for travellers who wish to reduce the amount of marketing materials they need to carry.

CD-ROM’s are ideal for anyone needing to promote internationally.

VHS (video tape)

VHS pictures have 230 horizontal lines which makes it around one-quarter of the quality of DVD and almost half the quality of CD-ROM.

It is actually a real struggle to come up with any advantages for VHS. The VHS format is more costly to duplicate and to mail out than CD-ROM.

In Conclusion

The type of format that you choose for your video content will always be determined by the technology used by your target audience. The most beautifully crafted DVD in the world will not get your message across if your audience only has access to VHS machines.

These days we find that most of our clients need a combination of some of these formats. DVD is usually the format shown in the boardroom and on travelling laptops, CD-ROM’s are distributed to international prospects and VHS might be distributed to enthusiastic consumers.

The good news is that due to the range of consumer delivery formats available, projecting your company image in the best way possible has never been easier.

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