How Can Video Be Digitized?

A video consists of a sequence of so many frames. If the frames are displayed on screen fast enough, we get an impression of motion. The reason is that our eyes can not distinguish the rapidly flashing frames as individual ones. There is no standard number of frames per second; in North America 25 frames per second is common. However, to avoid a condition known as flickering, a frame needs to be refreshed. The TV industry repaints each frame twice. This means 50 frames need to be sent, or if there is memory at the sender site, 25 frames with each frame repainted from the memory.

Each frame is divided into small grids, called picture elements or pixels. For black and white TV, each 8 bit pixel represents one of 256 different gray levels. For a color TV, each pixel is 24 bits, with 8 bits for each primary color (red, green and blue). We can calculate the number of nits in a second for a specific resolution. In the lowest resolution a color frame is made of 1024 * 768 pixels. This means that we need 2 * 25 * 1024 *768 * 24 = 944 Mbps. This data rate needs a very high data rate technology just like SONET. To send video using lower rate technologies, we need to compress the video.

Try using v-stream DVD Maker it is a very simple device that uses a video source and pipes it directly to you're computer via USB port.