ABSTRACT
Media production requires both analog and digital technologies. The advent of digital technologies stimulated a number of important changes in media production, including the convergence of technologies as well as corporate integration. This chapter explores significant developments encouraged by digital media at the same time that it confirms the continuing value of analog technologies and provides an overview of the media production process. The digital revolution describes a process that started several decades ago. Technicians developed uses for the technology based on “1” and “0” instead of an analog system of recording and processing audio and video signals. Rather than a revolution, it has been an evolution, as digital equipment and techniques have replaced analog equipment and processes where practical and efficient. Digital equipment may be manufactured smaller, requiring less power, and producing higherquality signals for recording and processing. As a result, reasonably priced equipment, within the reach of consumers, now produces video and audio productions
that exceed the quality of those created by professional equipment of two decades ago. But every electronic signal begins as an analog signal and ends as an analog signal, since the human eye and ear cannot directly translate a digital signal (Figure 1.1).
