On a Digital Video camera is MPEG4 640x480 digital quality video a good one or bad?

Question

I have 2 small children I want video tape them for fun stuff, holidays and birthdays. It doesnt need to be profesional.

Answer 1

That's an impossible question to answer for certain, but hopefully this will help.

It is certainly possible to have 640x480 video in MPEG-4 that's top quality. This will be slightly lower quality than DVD video, but at least potentially much better than VHS.

However, assuming you're discussing MPEG-4 cameras, it depends entirely on the camera is the potential will actually be met. Some cameras use very high (web-style) MPEG-4 compression, which doesn't look great. Some MPEG-4 cameras have awful lenses and cheap video sensors, and as such, do not produce an video at the level that would make most people happy.

Most of the cheap Chinese MPEG-4 cameras you find at places like Wal-Mart for about $100 are not something I could recommend. They do work, but the quality is usually poor. Brands in this class are Aiptek, DXG, iSonic, Cobra, Mustek, etc. These typically have digital-only zoom, and suffer from noticably poor build quality as well as poor image quality.

The more established companies do make some reasonable MPEG-4 camcorders. Sony had the DSC-M1 out a few years ago... it's actually a still camera with MPEG-4 video function, but it looks more like a tiny camcorder. This does nice photos and fair video, it has a good lens with a real zoom, etc. The Sanyo Xacti series, such as the VPC-CG9, delivers similar features... they also have a waterproof model. Panasonic has the SDR-S7... maybe that's MPEG-2, but it does the same sort of thing... recording decent quality video on flash memory cards.

Answer 2

640x480 is the NTSC standard that has existed in the US since 1952 for B&W and 1956 for color TV. All pre HD US TVs have 525 vertical lines of which 480 lines are viewable and from 260 to 700 horizontal lines depending on many factors. Anything higher than 640X480 would be PAL, SECAM or HDTV

Answer 3

This is a very broad question, and it depends on what you're doing with the video.

More information will help get you a better answer :)

YT :)

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