Hi-Def: Yes or No

[dlodoski]

.... It's easy to convert HD to SD, but impossible to go the other way.

Ya think?

I think it's a no brainer to shoot in the best affordable format. I had just about $10k tied up in HDV gear (2 Sony FX-1's and 4 Sony HC-1's) but decided to partially switch to AVCHD this season. And that's because, as with just about any technology, the cost had dropped and started to level out. Plus, there is instant savings in both material and labor with the 'no tape' issue.

I think that a bigger dilemma for the producer is whether or not to use the new HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding - formally known as H.265) technology when it becomes available. It is certain to lower data rates (and thus file sizes), but at a cost of at least doubling the playback processing complexity. My personal feeling is that I'm getting really good image quality at reasonable data rates (3 to 6Mb/sec). I'm thinking that I'd rather not push people into better gear any faster than gaming already does!

[quicksanimator]

I think that a bigger dilemma for the producer is whether or not to use the new HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding - formally known as H.265) technology when it becomes available. It is certain to lower data rates (and thus file sizes), but at a cost of at least doubling the playback processing complexity. My personal feeling is that I'm getting really good image quality at reasonable data rates (3 to 6Mb/sec). I'm thinking that I'd rather not push people into better gear any faster than gaming already does!

There's already a successor to MPEG-4 AVC in the works?

Sheesh, I've never even been completely sold that AVC is that much better than MPEG-4 ASP (popularized by DivX/Xvid).

[Nessie]

Just to clarify, at the present time everything I SHOOT is in hi-def, or at least better than TV-def. I do know that you can always take quality out but you can't add it in if it never was there.

It's more of a question of whether I should create lower-quality duplicates.

My personal opinion is that if I can see everything okay, I don't much care. But I use a portable DVD player with a four-inch screen and I put it up to my nose...and I hardly ever really watch my big television (which isn't hi-def)...and my high-def monitor is on a Mac computer that I grabbed before a company could throw it out...and I just don't download much stuff really...I'm cheap, I'm apathetic.

Over on UMD, the site itself has now been rigged to rez-down all the clips. He thinks they don't really notice and I was wondering if that was truly so.

Nessie

[tempman]

Always film in the best quality, highest resolution you can and never use effects. Source material should be the best it can - you can lower the res and change things later (but always create duplicates! or use multiple sequences if you're using something like Final Cut).

The limits on Youtube and other sites are pretty high. So file size shouldn't be a problem.

Then again I've got loads of storage (online and off) and with very fast upload+download speeds so I just want everything in 1080p :p

[awdc]

.... It's easy to convert HD to SD, but impossible to go the other way.

Ya think?

I think it's a no brainer to shoot in the best affordable format. I had just about $10k tied up in HDV gear (2 Sony FX-1's and 4 Sony HC-1's) but decided to partially switch to AVCHD this season. And that's because, as with just about any technology, the cost had dropped and started to level out. Plus, there is instant savings in both material and labor with the 'no tape' issue.

I think that a bigger dilemma for the producer is whether or not to use the new HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding - formally known as H.265) technology when it becomes available. It is certain to lower data rates (and thus file sizes), but at a cost of at least doubling the playback processing complexity. My personal feeling is that I'm getting really good image quality at reasonable data rates (3 to 6Mb/sec). I'm thinking that I'd rather not push people into better gear any faster than gaming already does!

I voted for the HD option, but it also begs the question, what is everyone considering to be HD when giving it to us the consumer? I personally say anything that meets or exceeds the resolution of 1920x1080 @ 24 FPS, though not all camera equipment is made equal even if that resolution is met.

What would be great in the situation described above is if you decide on the HEVC codec but don't want to push your customers into a higher requirement, if there was a small utility that was also offered (like Handbrake for example) that people could run on your HEVC video download and reconvert this on their own desktop to a smaller resolution with a less-demanding codec. This could be your own custom tool, that you offer with the video download. That way you don't need to offer multiple formats (and pay to host and bandwidth them), and yet let those of us who can benefit from the better quality, can still obtain it.

[tempman]

.... It's easy to convert HD to SD, but impossible to go the other way.

Ya think?

I think it's a no brainer to shoot in the best affordable format. I had just about $10k tied up in HDV gear (2 Sony FX-1's and 4 Sony HC-1's) but decided to partially switch to AVCHD this season. And that's because, as with just about any technology, the cost had dropped and started to level out. Plus, there is instant savings in both material and labor with the 'no tape' issue.

I think that a bigger dilemma for the producer is whether or not to use the new HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding - formally known as H.265) technology when it becomes available. It is certain to lower data rates (and thus file sizes), but at a cost of at least doubling the playback processing complexity. My personal feeling is that I'm getting really good image quality at reasonable data rates (3 to 6Mb/sec). I'm thinking that I'd rather not push people into better gear any faster than gaming already does!

I voted for the HD option, but it also begs the question, what is everyone considering to be HD when giving it to us the consumer? I personally say anything that meets or exceeds the resolution of 1920x1080 @ 24 FPS, though not all camera equipment is made equal even if that resolution is met.

What would be great in the situation described above is if you decide on the HEVC codec but don't want to push your customers into a higher requirement, if there was a small utility that was also offered (like Handbrake for example) that people could run on your HEVC video download and reconvert this on their own desktop to a smaller resolution with a less-demanding codec. This could be your own custom tool, that you offer with the video download. That way you don't need to offer multiple formats (and pay to host and bandwidth them), and yet let those of us who can benefit from the better quality, can still obtain it.

Anything above 1280x720 is considered HD. That's the technical bar for it. What consumers call the different resolutions is up to them. But HD is 720i and above.
It's not anything above 480i because Europe's SD has been 576i since TV began.
Funny fact= Loads of AAA PS3+Xbox games aren't even HD!

[dlodoski]

.... It's easy to convert HD to SD, but impossible to go the other way.

Ya think?

I think it's a no brainer to shoot in the best affordable format. I had just about $10k tied up in HDV gear (2 Sony FX-1's and 4 Sony HC-1's) but decided to partially switch to AVCHD this season. And that's because, as with just about any technology, the cost had dropped and started to level out. Plus, there is instant savings in both material and labor with the 'no tape' issue.

I think that a bigger dilemma for the producer is whether or not to use the new HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding - formally known as H.265) technology when it becomes available. It is certain to lower data rates (and thus file sizes), but at a cost of at least doubling the playback processing complexity. My personal feeling is that I'm getting really good image quality at reasonable data rates (3 to 6Mb/sec). I'm thinking that I'd rather not push people into better gear any faster than gaming already does!

I voted for the HD option, but it also begs the question, what is everyone considering to be HD when giving it to us the consumer? I personally say anything that meets or exceeds the resolution of 1920x1080 @ 24 FPS, though not all camera equipment is made equal even if that resolution is met.

What would be great in the situation described above is if you decide on the HEVC codec but don't want to push your customers into a higher requirement, if there was a small utility that was also offered (like Handbrake for example) that people could run on your HEVC video download and reconvert this on their own desktop to a smaller resolution with a less-demanding codec. This could be your own custom tool, that you offer with the video download. That way you don't need to offer multiple formats (and pay to host and bandwidth them), and yet let those of us who can benefit from the better quality, can still obtain it.

Right now, and for the foreseeable future (although that's only a couple years at best), I'm going to stand pat.

I'm getting excellent looking video, and can deliver it to my customers. There's always a SD version available of the HD scenes, so the folks with older hardware aren't left out.

Any changes I make will be to either improve picture quality (which would be marginal at best) or reduce file size (which could be significant) or both. But right now, it all seems to work.