CDs and DVDs
Back in the days of VHS the film track and sound track were locked together on tape; CDs and DVDs changed all that, now they are separate tracks. In the early days of disks, which isn’t so long ago it was hard to get mouths and voices to sync, even today you often find the sound and vision out of sync. It can happen on your own DVD recordings especially if they are done on computers.
Probably
the most horrendous thing about CDs and DVDs is their reliability. Pre-recorded
ones are not too bad but the ones you write yourself are horrific. All my
original CDs packed up, now I use DVDs but these are equally awful. We are told
they have a thirty-year lifespan and re-writable disks can be re-used a
thousand times. They lie. I have used all types of disk and have had all types
of disk pack up; some because of gentle care haven’t a mark on them. If you
have home movies and you wish to transfer the content from tape to disk keep
your originals, tape does pretty much last forever. My early recordings from
the early 80s are still viable, in fact damaged tapes can be repaired; DVDs
give a good presentation but are a dead loss when they go wrong.
I
should perhaps also note a loss in quality between camcorders and DVDs. My
digital camcorder downloaded around 4Megabytes per second while best quality
DVD is around 1.3MB. While you may use extended play on DVDs for TV programs
this is of no use for home movies. You get 1hr on DVDs and that’s your lot.