Resolution details

Visible example

Below shows some images at resolutions commonly used in movie files. You can see how when using low resolutions the image becomes blocky and computerized. The effects of low resolution are particularly noticeable on areas of sharp contrast and text.

Resolution: 320 x 240

Resolution: 160 x 120

Resolution: 80 x 60

Implications Of Changing Resolution

From the examples above, it is tempting to think that high resolution is best. However, there a penalty for using high resolution images and that is the amount of disk space they require. Each time the resolution is doubled (i.e. going from 80 x 60 to 160 x 120 or from 160 x 120 to 320 x 240), the amount to memory required for each frame quadruples and this has two important implications for digital video:

• the movie file size will also approximately quadruple, and
• the amount of image data the computer has to process each second quadruples.

The second point is perhaps the most important when it comes to capturing digital video. Since the power of your computer is limited, so is the maximum resolution that you can capture at.