How Does Video Compression Work?

Video compression is a fairly new technology that allows users to shrink video files down to a smaller size. Many good DVD copy programs available in the market today offer video compression capabilities to further enhance your DVD copying experience. This technology is what will allow you to burn all of the video files that you wish onto a single disc, instead of having to use two or more discs for the larger files.

Programs such as DVD neXt COPY and DVD Cloner VI are available with built-in video compression systems. When burning typical DVD movies, most programs are able to fit them onto a single DVD, irrespective of whether they have video compression capabilities or not. This is because most movies are small, with runtimes of about 90 minutes or so. For longer movies, however, that have runtimes of 200 minutes or more, then you will find that you need video compression in order to fit everything onto a single DVD.

Here is a definition of the exact premise behind video compression.

When a movie or video file is copied onto a DVD, a certain amount of digital information is used to represent the file. Your computer is then able to read this information, and reproduce the video on your screen. Video compression works on the basis of reducing the amount of information that is used to represent a video file. In some cases, this is fine, as the original amount of information used to represent the video file was more than necessary anyway. In these cases, compressing the video does not result in any significant loss in quality.

For video files that do not have excess information representing them, however, removing any of that information will inevitably lead to a loss in quality. Unfortunately, this is often the case, as modern DVDs and video files are usually compact, without any excess information.

When it comes to compressing a movie copied from a DVD, the loss in quality is dependent on a few factors. The first is the length of the original movie. If the movie is very long, in order to fit the entire movie onto a single DVD, a large amount of information must be cut away, resulting in a fairly large loss in quality. This loss in quality comes in the form of skips in the video, artifacts within the image, or a general loss in clarity of the picture.

The other factor would be how effective the compression algorithm used by the program is. The better the compression coding, the smaller the loss in quality. This is one of the reasons why 1Click DVD Copy 5 is so highly recommended, as it possesses an excellent video compression algorithm that will allow you to burn a long movie to a single DVD without too great a loss in quality. In fact, most of the time you won't even realize that there has been any loss in quality.