Jason Clabaugh <[log in to unmask]> asks about video capture software. I've used such software to enable students to quote directly from videocassettes of films, and while the technology is (barely) suitable for instructional purposes, it's a very long way from what one would want for archival storage. The problem is that visual information requires lots of digits of storage and lots of computer power to transform from analog to digital form and back to something viewable in real time. The method for economizing is called compression, in which some data are sacrified and other data encoded in economical ways, to be unpacked when required. There are several generally accepted compression alogrithms, and virtually all of them look terrible from an aesthetic perspective. The best of the more--or-less accepted alogrithms, which meet High Definition TV standards (still much lower than 35mm film) is known as MPEG-2. The problem is that MPEG-2 requires sophisticated computers with lots of power, and significant amounts of storage...many gigabytes for a feature film. This is probably more about penguins that anyone wants to know, but the moral is that for ordinary mortals, academic, and the rest of us PC-Compatible and Macintosh users, digitized moving images will be very useful for instruction, but not ready for archival prime-time for quite a while. -Henry Breitrose Stanford This message is being sent from Oxford, England where we will be until mid-December. Please use the normal email address, <[log in to unmask]>.