Three-CCD designs may also deliver a hard-to-define improvement in image depth and realism. Three-CCD systems, though larger and more costly, generally deliver color that is more accurate at a higher resolution. Single-CCD imaging systems are smaller, lighter, less complex and cheaper. The camcorder combines the output of these three chips to create a full-color video signal. Light from each of the colors (red, green and blue) goes to its own sensor. By using a complex prism block or arrangement of mirrors and filters, a 3-CCD camcorder splits the light coming through the lens into three color components. Three-chip camcorders use a trio of CCDs, each specializing in a certain color. The other, and far superior, method of extracting color is the three-chip design. With the aid of these lenses and some clever electronic processing, the camcorder can derive both a brightness (luminance) and color (chrominance) signal from the single CCD chip. This means if you could look very closely at the face of the CCD, youd see that it is covered in red, green and blue lenses. Such a camcorder derives color information from the sensor by covering it with an array of colored lenses called a mosaic color filter. Single-CCD camcorders use a single CCD sensor to handle all of the image-making duties. Thus, light energy and air pressure become fluctuations in electrical current, which your video equipment interprets and re-creates into pictures and sound. Theyre called transducers because they transduce, or change, energy from one form into another. The two devices that convert events in the natural world into an electrical signal – the CCD and the microphone – belong to a class of objects known as transducers. The microphone, like a human ear, picks up variations in air pressure and converts them to an electrical signal. Instead of ears, the camcorder has a microphone, which also works something like its human equivalent. In practice, the lens works in much the same way your eye does: it gathers the light that bounces off the subject and focuses it into a sharp image on the camcorders CCD (Charge Coupled Device), much like the light that enters your eye is focussed on your retina.

Instead of eyes, the camcorder has a lens. Well just try to get you to the point where you have a better understanding of the video signal and the electronic pathways, both inside and outside your camcorder, that make the magic of video happen.īefore your camcorder can create a signal to represent moving images and sound, it must first gather the light and sound that wed ordinarily see and hear with our eyes and ears. Well cover some technical ground, but dont worry – we wont go too deep into the specifics. Well follow that signal through the camcorder, out onto the cable and into whatever kind of gear you choose to wring it through. In this article, well take a look at how a camcorder turns the light that enters the lens into a signal that your television can interpret. For example, you may be curious about why your pictures sometimes look clear and pristine, and why they sometimes look murky and grainy. Though many of us may have a vague idea of how a picture gets from lens to tape, most of us just take for granted that a picture appears on the screen when we fire up our camcorders and hit the record button.Īs a Videomaker reader, however, you likely have more than a passing interest in the way a camcorder works. For most of us, the operations of everyday electronic devices like televisions, VCRs and camcorders are mysterious.

Signal path tour