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a few hd questions
life’s too short and i’m too old to post individual questions, and too demented to remember what i’ve posted anyway. sorry…
i’ve been offered a ‘series’ of mini artist profiles – approx 10min each, simple talking head (prob studio shot) with lots of artwork (generally jpg/png/psd). in the past i’ve usually converted all to png, used excal. pbs move and then fine tuned each picture. obviously worked since they’re back for more. however, they want HD. frankly i’m very happy with my 170, don’t feel like springing for a v1, or fx, or whatever – just for this project, hence the following questions….
1. do i really need to work in 1080, after a few test i actually thought the artwork (png’s) showed up better in 720 (less artifacting, sharper, etc)??
2. what’s to stop me shooting 4:3 on my 170 and dropping this into a 720 project maintaining the full res, and placing it frame right / left, and filling in rest of the frame with a bit of arty-farty nonsense? (i tried a test, and it looked / played fine)
3. anyone played with the v1 yet – and how much have you see it priced at (i really don’t want to buy one unless it’s really unavoidable and i can find other paying work for it?)
4. they, the client, haven’t informed me of distribution format (i doubt they are even aware there’s something other than ‘dvd’), but i’m presuming that it’ll probably go out to standard dvd players. what do i need to know / do with 720 / 1080 timeline to produce for dvd?
hey, i know these questions have probably been answered individually elsewhere, but i couldn’t find em…
many thanks for your patience,
leslie
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5 Replies
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Leslie ~
If the final product is going out to std def DVD I would originate in std def myself. I have done a couple of jobs in HDV using the Connect HD capture and then editing in Vegas but to be quite honest I can’t see any benefit unless you want to ‘future proof’ the job for later HD WMV renders or such like. As the HDV format is widescreen you normally end up rendering out a widescreen std def DVD which ends up letter boxed on a 4:3 set anyway. Sure it fits the 16:9 sets out there but they are still in the minority here, though the market is changing quite rapidly, last Aussie industry figures saying 22% penetration into the household market for widescreen sets to date.
So I think if your end market is primarily 4:3 shoot 4:3 and get the best out of the 4:3 screen real estate. The other thing I find is unless clients supply you with 1.5K or upwards in still images anything smaller gets stretched to fit the 1440×1080 HDV timeline and usually suffers far worse that if the graphics were used in a std def job. All our TV jobs now are widescreen, network demands, yet still we have to run with 14:9 shoot and protect with a 4:3 safe graphics area. For most commercial clients where the product is going to end up on projectors, DVD’s and PC’s we find it best to go 4:3 std def. Less comments like, “Why is my picture squashed?” just because they don’t know how to set up their projectors etc.
I to am curious as to any comments on the V1, anyone? As for prices haven’t seen any yet.
Chris Young
Sydney -
hi chris, nice to hear from you…
(re the missing plugins – i downloaded a trial version of acid, installed, and lo and behold, they’re back!? goodness knows what’s going on but….)
really appreciated your comments, very pertinent to my project, and to the oz market. it seems we have a great many ‘knowledgible’ mba’s running various departments who spend their days reading pc news, icon, and are filled to tips of their their gelled hair with buzz words and little else. ‘oh, but we have to have it in hd!!!’, ‘oh, you’re projecting hd?’, ‘but of course!’. ‘which projector?’ at which point i’m shown a brand spanking new $1k vga projector.
anyway, enough whinging, and it’s not whinging since i don’t need the wankers anymore 😉
fortunately, we’re talking fine art (where ‘fine’ comes into it is debateable sometimes), but most artists are very pedantic about documenting their work – it’s more a case of getting 65mb tiff files than 1.5 jpgs. that said, i appreciate your view of using 4:3 to it’s full extent – especially since i hate talking heads in 16:9 – unless there’s a really interesting background. but i do feel there’s perhaps some pressure building on the 16:9 front – most of the collectors are rich enough to have moved to lcd/plasma, and while those that i know and talked with are pretty much ignorant about hd, they don’t like ‘squashed’ pictures either. from what i gather, most hd is sold to overpaid miners, ethnic’s whose status is derived from their goods and chattles, and sports fanatics who need to see sweat on the golfers brow…..
i played around a bit and found that 720p gave me nice, clean ken burns like moves over stills, and better resolution than sd, obviously. unfortunately, it seems only jvc (ugh!) make a 720p camera. which brings up another few points:
a. can i downconvert 1080 to 720p in camera (sony that is), if not, where do i convert?
b. can i play / edit 720p direct on the timeline, or do i have to use an intermediary?
b. can i play out hdv tape from my dsr11 (i don’t mean view, just firewire transfer)
c. have you played with vv7?
all the best,
leslie
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Leslie
a. can i downconvert 1080 to 720p in camera (sony that is), if not, where do i convert?
b. can i play / edit 720p direct on the timeline, or do i have to use an intermediary?
b. can i play out hdv tape from my dsr11 (i don’t mean view, just firewire transfer)
c. have you played with vv7?
all the best,
leslie
A. You won’t be able to downconvert in camera with a Sony to 720p. You’ll still get interlaced footage. What you can do is use something like COnnect HD from Cineform to do the conversion for you as you capture.
B. 720p should be no problem on the timeline. With Vegas 7 – you are assured of no problems (obviously system dependant)
B? Again. Haven’t tried this but I don’t think the dsr11 will read hdv tapes. Its a sd recorder!
C. VV 7 will give you a lot of latitude when dealing with HDV. Personally, it was one of the single reasons I upgraded. I can run multiple trasnport streams on the timeline without any frame rate degradation.
Jeremy
MJ Productions
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thanks jeremy,
points taken.
what i cant get my old head around is why i can’t play hdv 010100111’s out of a digital deck? i’m not looking to view them, record them – i mean, i can record any signal i like to a dv tape – why can the deck simply behave like a dat tape in a computer backup situation.
yeah, i know the answer is staring me in the face, but i’m half blind….
all the best,
leslie
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“why i can’t play hdv 010100111’s out of a digital deck?”
Because the ones and zeros represent a different set of information. The DSR-11 is a DV deck, and expects DV-type digital video…25 mb/sec, 5:1 interframe compression, 16 bit audio in a certain part of the digital signal.
HDV is the same 25 mb/sec, but it’s an MPEG-2 encoded set of data…variable compression rate, intraframe compression (most of the frames can’t even be viewed until the codec refers back to the last i frame and regenerates them). Different audio, too.
If I can use an analogy, it’d be like trying to play an MP3 audio file with a device that only plays .wav files, or trying to view a .jpg image with a viewer that only handles .bmp files…they’re both digital data, but not compatible formats.
Regards,
Doug Graham
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