All CCD's (Charge Coupled Devices) begin as monochrome light sensitive components. Making a color CCD video camera requires the use of three CCD's each having a filter in the front of it. One filter is red, the other is green and the last is blue. Optics direct the image scene to each CCD. This is a three chip color camera. Single chip cameras place the color filters in front of each individual pixel on the CCD chip (see below). A simple explanation would be - Let's say we have a CCD chip with 600 pixels per line, times three, for the three chip camera. The ideal resolution of the camera would be 600 pixels/line. On a single chip color camera, a pattern of filters is placed over the single chip. Different manufactures use different patterns. In its basic sense, (using the example below) we use three monochrome pixels to make up one color pixel.