MEGAPIXEL TO RESOLUTION

 There is often a lot of confusion between pixels and the terms which go along with them. Everyone knows the phrase “1080p”, but in actual context what does it mean? Often when you hear the phrase “1080p”, or even “720p”, it is referring to the vertical lines of Pixels.  A pixel (short for picture element) is a single point in a picture. On the monitor of a computer, a pixel is usually a square. Every pixel has a color and all the pixels together are the picture.

When you hear the phrase “1080p”, it actually means 1920 x 1080. The first set of numbers is always the width, or the horizontal lines of resolution. The second number is always the height, or the vertical lines of resolution. The higher the resolution (AxB) the crisper the picture looks. Remember how boxy those arcade style video games looked? The resolution of Pac man was a staggering 224 x 288.

Although you are recording at 1080p, it doesn’t necessarily mean you are viewing it at 1080p. Most PC monitors do not have a 1920×1080 resolution. You might be recording at 1080p, and viewing playback at 1080p, but your viewing monitor will convert the resolution to your current settings.

For example my screen display is 1280×1024, so my “1080p” picture will actually convert to a 1.3MP image.  This can cause distortion on the actual image.

A table which lists the terms to the actual Resolution:

Name/ Pixel Count	Horizontal x Vertical
VGA/.3MP	640×480
720p/1MP	1280×720
1080p/2MP	1920×1080
3MP	2048×1536
5MP	2592×1944
4K/8MP	3840×2160
10MP	3648×2752