THE picture quality of home movies transferred from a camcorder tape to DVD is often dreadful. But a new type of recorder means armchair directors will soon be able to make DVD home movies that have the same pristine picture quality as pre-recorded DVDs.
The expensive professional recording systems used to make pre-recorded DVDs rely on a system called variable bit-rate recording to get the clearest pictures using the smallest possible number of digital bits. This gets the most playing time out of a disc. More bits are allocated to each frame when the pictures are highly detailed and fast-moving…
