The difference between 'Film' and 'Video'

The Difference Between 'Film' and 'Video'

To get the film look from video, there are a few things that are altered in order to accomplish this; Latitude, Colour, Interlaced Image.


The biggest difference between film and video is the contrast latitude of the mediums. That is how many steps in the value scale between black and white. Film compared to video has a smooth gradation between values. Related to this is the actual difference between the brightest and darkest detail the mediums can capture before reading totally black or totally white.

The second biggest difference is colour depth. Film has more colours than video, Especially NTSC video cameras (NTSC is the video standard used in the US) Often pro videographers use PAL system (PAL is a European standard) because it has better colour sampling. 

Third, Progressive scan. Most video cameras and all consumer TVs use interlaced scanning. That is each framed image is actually two images. Image a photo, cut into 480 horizontal strips. Now imagine the every other strip scanned by the camera. This creates half the image, now imagine the remaining alternate strips being scanned by the camera this creates the other half of the image, then the two images are knitted or "interlaced" together to create the whole image. This process of capturing and playing back an image gives video a very different look than film which is one whole picture played after another.