Today's Top Stories:
 Marantz PMD351• Software Update - Spark 2.8.1
• FREE Robert Cray Strat!
Marantz PMD351
The PMD351 is the standard when it comes to CD player/cassette deck combos. Unmatched sound quality and fully independent operation of both the CD drive and cassette deck are just the beginnings of what the PMD351 has to offer. Throw in RS232 control, mic inputs and MP3 decoding and you have an all-pro combo deck that will look and sound great in your live or studio rig!Software Update - Spark 2.8.1
TC Electronics continues to wow desktop musicians with an update of Spark - TC's stereo mastering editing suite. New features include support for burning multiple CDs from a single playlist, Audio Units (Mac OS X) plug-in support for the batch converter and automatic plug-in delay compensation for the playback cursor. Additionally, new user settings in the Preferences dialog has been added, as well as preloading-support for Waves' plug-in shell. On top of that, the FXMachine has been optimized to speed up the handling of Spark XL even more. The update is a FREE download for registered users of Spark 2.7 & 2.8, and a paid upgrade for others.
FREE Robert Cray Strat!
Five time Grammy Award-winning recording artist Robert Cray is out on tour in support of the release of his Sanctuary Records debut album, Time Will Tell, and Fender has decided that there would be no better time than the present to meet up with the man himself and get him to autograph his signature Stratocaster guitar! Naturally, Fender is then turning around and giving one away - FOR FREE! Sign up today!
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| MPEG-2 |
| Refers to a group of perceptual coding standards agreed upon by MPEG (Motion Picture Coding Experts Group) and used to encode or compress, audio and video sources in a fashion that reduces the amount of data required to represent them with (hopefully) minimal degradation in perceived quality. MPEG-2, which first came out around 1994, built upon the achievements of MPEG-1 and included such improvements as the ability to encode interlaced video and multi-channel audio such as AC-3 and AAC, as well as providing better methods for keeping video in tact when data integrity is not entirely reliable. MPEG-2 is the current standard for broadcasting digital video signals and DVD production. And with a few enhancements it is also used for broadcasting High Definition television signals. |
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| DVD capacities explained. |
Q: "What is the video capacity of DVD?"
A: The amount of video a DVD can handle is a moving target that is nearly impossible to define simply due to factors such as how much audio accompanies the video and how heavily the video and audio are compressed, just to name a few. For reference, a single-layer, single-sided disc can hold just over two hours of good quality (MPEG-2) video, or about an hour of very high quality MPEG-2 video. It is possible to put nearly eight hours of "VHS-quality" video or 160 hours of audio on a DVD-5 disc. It really depends a lot on how much it is compressed. Uncompressed video takes up much more space so you wouldn't get nearly this much on a DVD. But since DVD doesn't really have the throughput to be able to play uncompressed video back it doesn't much matter. All commercially released DVD's have compressed video.
The following list gives you some idea how much video (roughly) you can put on various DVDs with moderate amounts of compression. Be sure to refer to the reference chart below for information regarding DVD types (i.e. SS/SL, etc.).
- DVD-5 (SS/SL): 4.38 GB (4.7G); over 2 hours of video
- DVD-9 (SS/DL): 7.95 GB (8.5G); about 4 hours of video
- DVD-10 (DS/SL): 8.75 GB (9.4G), about 4.5 hours of video
- DVD-14 (DS/ML): 12.33 GB (13.24G); about 6.5 hours of video
- DVD-18 (DS/DL): 15.90 GB (17G); over 8 hours of video
SS = Single Sided
DS = Double Sided
SL = Single Layer
DL = Dual Layer
ML = Mixed Later (single on one side, double one the other)
GB = gigabyte
G = billions of bytes
Now, this brings up another question, which is, what is the difference between "Gigabyte" and "Billions of bytes?" Information on a DVD is measured differently than the computer norm. For example, a DVD-5 has 4.7 billion bytes (G bytes), NOT 4.7 gigabytes (GB). Confused? We understand. Many people have been mislead by this and don't understand why they can't seem to get anywhere near 4.7 GB on a disc. It's because information on DVD is measured on multiples of 1000 while the computer world measures bytes in multiples of 1024. Therefore, a DVD-5 (4.7 G) actually has a computer file capacity of 4.38 gigabytes (GB). |
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