Recording > Composite & Component

Imagine that your Mom asks you to take three things to your grandma: a bowl of nuts, a bowl of raisins, and a bowl of flour. But you want to carry one bowl, not three. So you mix the three ingredients, bake 3-ingredient cookies, and take the cookies to Grandma. But Grandma didn't want cookies, she needed the ingredients. So she painstakingly picks the nuts and raisins out of the cookies—and smashes what’s left to make flour.

ABOVE: Component video reproduces the best images, because it keeps the red, green and blue signals separate.
BELOW: Composite video equipment is much more common because it's cheaper and more convenient.

If you’ve followed my strange story so far, then understanding composite video versus component video will be a breeze. Here we go (we’ll come back to Granny in a minute): All television cameras capture three separate images of each scene: a red image, a green image and a blue image. Later in the process, your TV set combines these three images to create all the colors of the rainbow.

The longer we can keep these three images separate, the better the picture will look. If a VCR can record all three images separately, the result will be a superior picture. VCRs that can do this are called "component" VCRs.

If it's the best way to go, then why aren’t all VCRs component? The problem is that component VCRs are more expensive to build. Plus, to keep the red, green, and blue images separate, you need three wires every time you plug one device into another. So plugging one VCR into another VCR would require a red wire, green wire, and blue wire. What a hassle!

So the solution to this problem is to mix all three colors together, record the mixture, and then separate it out at the very end (your TV). A VCR that records this combined color mixture is called a "composite" VCR. Composite video looks fine, but it’s not as good as component.

Now, imagine Grandma again after she has picked out the nuts and raisins and pulverized the remaining cookie parts to make flour. Her three piles (nuts, raisins, flour) won’t be in quite the same condition as when they left your house. Still edible, but not as good. Had you carried the three ingredients to her separately—rather than mixed together—they would have arrived in better condition. So it goes with video. Keeping red, green and blue separate (component) is the best way to go, but mixing it up (composite) is more convenient.