- [Instructor] Here's an image
of a lot of the most common video ports.
Again, the two most common are DVI and HDMI.
So here we have DVI, these blue ports up here,
and DVI stands for digital visual interface.
These are high quality connections used with LCD displays,
and they carry uncompressed digital video.
So you get a really good video connection,
but it's video only.
And I use DVI outputs on several of my computers.
They're very common on desktop PCs,
but you don't see them as much anymore on laptops.
And when you're dealing with other multimedia devices,
you don't see them at all.
So that's one of the big important ports
to know for the exam.
The other one is HDMI,
and HDMI stands for high definition multimedia interface.
This is used for high definition television,
and you see these a lot on video cards on computers.
And you also usually see these
as a secondary interface on laptops.
And there are different types.
Type A supports HD modes, such as 1080p and 720p.
And Type A, and this is a Type A connector,
is the full size HDMI.
You can also connect this out to DVI.
You can use adapters to connect the two together.
Of course, that's only gonna work with video.
It's not really gonna do anything for audio.
But the Type A connectors are compatible
with the DVI connector
that does digital transmission of data.
Then there's Type B, which is double video bandwidth,
so you can support even higher resolutions, like quad HD.
Then there's Type C, which is mini-HDMI,
and that's used in portable devices,
but you'll also see that on some video cards,
and we'll show that in just a little bit.
And then Type D micro-HDMI, the smallest connector,
only used on portable devices.
Chances are what you really need to know for the exam
are the main Type A and B connectors
and Type C, the mini-HDMI.
So that's a HDMI connector.
Those are the two big ones, DVI and HDMI,
but we have others here.
First of all, we have VGA.
This is the old school port, the video graphics array.
And really this is a 15-pin port.
It's known as a DE15F.
It's also sold as a DB15 or an HD15.
You'll see different things.
But the reason is because it has 15 pins.
And this uses a VGA cable, connects to old VGA monitors,
SVGA monitors, or super VGA.
You know, those are those old school CRT monitors.
VGA, the resolution, 640 by 480, 800 by 600,
and super VGA, 1024 by 768.
All of those old school 4:3 aspect ratios.
And one of the things you should know is that,
just about any computer, if the video fails,
it'll always default back to the fail safe,
which is VGA,
one of the VGA modes.
And you never know, you might see one of these connectors.
I'll show one today,
but you might see one of these on a system,
and it's good for backward compatibility for older monitors,
that kind of thing.
And you should also understand that you can have adapters
that can connect DVI to VGA and so on.
Next, over here, we have S-Video,
and S-Video stands for separate video,
used for just standard definition, or SD, video.
And there's no audio signal.
This is an older connector
that you might have seen on a camcorder or a VCR
or something like that back in the day.
And they use a mini-DIN connector.
This one is seven-pin,
but there's also four, six, or nine pins.
Then, down here, we have component video,
which is also known as just RGB,
meaning red, green, and blue,
and not necessarily in that order.
This uses analog or digital signals
to send the data over three wires,
the red, green, and blue,
each wire ending in an RCA plug,
just like you would use with a stereo system.
These can send high definition signals,
which is pretty cool.
Sometimes you'll have these ports,
say if you have a TiVo or another type of video device.
And if you run out of HDMI ports to send your high def,
you can actually send high def on this.
So that's another one, component video.
And then, finally, over here, we have display port,
and display port...
And that's usually shown without a space, by the way.
Display port is a royalty-free interface.
It's similar to HDMI
and was designed to be the replacement for HDMI.
And you'll see these on some systems,
some higher end systems,
or you might see a mini display port,
which is about this big,
and we'll show more of that later on in the lesson
when we get into Thunderbolt.
And this uses a packet transmission technique
instead of the regular flow of video signal.
This packet transmission is similar to ethernet networks.
And as you can see here, the...
It's a little bit difficult to sometimes tell the difference
between a display port, an HDMI port, and even a USB port.
But you can see here,
you have this little notch in the one corner,
and that's one way to tell the difference.
These are not as common as DVI or HDMI right now,
depending on the computer you use.
If you use a laptop that runs Windows or a desktop PC,
you know, you'll probably be involved in HDMI or DVI.
So those are some of the video ports.
Let's show the video ports on our AV editor now.
Okay, so this is the back panel of our AV editor computer,
and here's the video card.
We have two DVI ports.
These are white this time.
And this is common for people who want to run two monitors
and spread the desktop across the screens,
across both screens,
or if you want to mimic the desktop on two screens.
And you'll...
This is usually gonna be the first DVI port,
which is important.
And if you look here,
here's the edge of the motherboard on this side.
And so the one closest is gonna be the first DVI port.
If you were to boot the system and see the bios,
then the bios would actually send the video signal
out through this port.
And generally, Windows will as well,
unless you've reconfigured it.
So if you have to plug into one port,
choose the one that's closest to the motherboard.
And also here, we have a mini-HDMI port,
and you can use this, or you can use these,
but you can't use both together.
You can't use all three.
So that's a mini-HDMI.
And over here, I have another video card.
Gonna hold that up there.
And this guy has a full size HDMI.
It's not really that much bigger,
but you can see it's slightly bigger
than this mini-HDMI on the system.
And this particular video card has a DVI port,
and it's got that HDMI and a VGA port.
And this, you can actually still buy this card.
This is a decent PCI express card
that has just a passive heat sink.
So it's silent; works pretty good.
So there's some examples of some of the video ports
that we're using.
Keep in mind that another one you'll see
on some PCs and on a bunch of laptops,
especially MacBooks, is the display port,
especially the mini display port.
So let's talk about these DVI ports.
Take a look at these now
and notice that there's a cross here and four pins,
and then we have a selection of a group of pins here.
Let's show the different DVI ports now,
show a little graphic of that.
And what you need to know for the exam,
a couple main things.
First, DVI-I versus DVI-D.
DVI-I means that you can send analog or digital signal,
whereas DVI-D means that you can only send digital signal.
And sometimes this is important
if you're dealing with video switching
or with video replication,
or you need to send the information
to a monitor that's digital only,
or that kind of thing.
So watch out for that.
And you'll notice the difference here.
If it's analog and digital,
you have the four pins plus the line here, or a cross.
And if it's digital only, you just have this.
Now, the other thing is the difference
between single link and dual link,
and what this means is...
Well, first of all, if you look at the single link,
you see there's a piece missing here,
as far as the pins go.
Dual link, that's filled in.
And the same thing with DVI-D.
Single link, section is missing.
Dual link, the pins are filled in.
You have all the pins.
And what this means is, if you want to split the signal,
you have to have a dual link.
So if you wanna split the signal and mimic it
to two monitors or to a monitor and a TV or what have you,
then you have to have a dual link option.
But again, you gotta be real careful with that.
You wanna make sure that you're using
the exact type of video card that you need.
For example, DVI-I dual link video cards
might not work for your video switching scenario
or your video replication or splitting scenario,
so you might need a DVI-D dual link,
one that does digital only
and does not allow analog connections.
You really gotta check that with the device that you use.
So know the difference between DVI-I and DVI-D
single link and dual link.
And then also you can have analog only,
and you can also have USB in addition to dual link,
which has more pins.
That's a special DVI port that you won't see as often.
So those are some of the DVI connections.
I highly suggest that you know all these ports.
I recommend that you memorize these ports,
what they look like.
So if I was to say,
"Okay, I need you to drag and drop DVI to the right port,"
you would be able to do that easily.
Same thing with HDMI and display port and so on.
The kind of video card you use
will probably dictate the cable and connector
that you're gonna have to use.
Most of today's video cards
come with either DVI or HDMI or display ports outputs,
and some monitors also have VGA connections
for legacy connections and legacy compatibility.
So let's take a look at a couple cables here.
Here we have DVI, and this is known as DVI single link.
And you can tell it's a single link
'cause we have a gap here in the middle of the pins.
If you want more powerful connections,
if you wanna do more with your video,
you'll need a dual link DVI.
Here's an example of a dual link,
where all the pins are filled in.
There is no gap in the center there.
Generally, that's what you're looking for,
is dual link DVI connections.
And DVI can be DVI-D, which is digital only,
or it could be DVI-A, which is analog signal only,
which is rare,
or DVI-I, which accepts digital and analog connections.
Okay, so typical DVI cable here.
Next one on the list is HDMI.
Here's an example of HDMI.
I'll take the caps off of this.
All right, and you can see
it's kind of a trapezoidal connection.
Flip it over here.
Kind of trapezoidal.
And HDMI is broken down into a couple different types.
Type A supports just about all HD modes
and is compatible with DVI-D connectors.
Type B is double video bandwidth,
supports higher resolutions that you'll see today.
Then, you have Type C HDMI, which is mini.
It's a mini connector, a little bit smaller
if we compare that there to a Type A.
Type D is micro-HDMI; it's even smaller.
And there's also Type E for the automotive industry.
Next on a list is display port.
Here's an example of a display port connector.
And you can see this looks a little bit similar.
Focus in on this.
Looks a little similar to HDMI,
but it's more rectangular,
and it has one notch on the top left corner there.
One notch over there, kind of a diagonal on that corner.
Designed to be a replacement for HDMI and DVI.
I use these for monitors that run at, say, 144 hertz
instead of just running at 60 hertz.
So you might need a DVI cable for that type of thing.
And then over here, we have the old school VGA 15-pin.
It's the DE15, also known as a DB15.
Three rows of five pins.
Just in case you need backward compatibility
to something with a VGA connection,
which could be a variety of different devices or monitors.
And there's all kinds of different adapters.
I showed a small HDMI cable here.
It's just a one foot.
And of course, they come in different length,
but then there's also adapters as well.
For example, here we have an HDMI female
to mini-HDMI male.
And then you have other things,
like HDMI female to USB-C.
So it all depends on what you need with this HDMI connector.
So different adapters for cables for that.
And those are some of the cables that you use
to hook up monitors and other devices
to send that video signal.