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Filming in HD downconverted to SD or just film in SD????
I am trying to settle a debate we have in the office concerning some footage. This is a broadcast station with video airing at 4×3 SD NTSC.
We do, however, have HD cameras that can shoot in both HD and SD.
I am curious if it makes a difference to shoot the footage in HD to be down converted in the final stage for broadcast or if we should just film in SD since that is what the station can do?
We can edit the files natively in the AVC codec, but it still will end up being SD at the end then converted to a tape and ingested into an on air playback system through a composite video connection.
Thank you
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8 Replies
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Shoot HD if you will ever need the footage later for any other reason – you can always down-convert and center-cut. If it is one time use only for specific purpose just go SD and save some space and a little time.
Ricky
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This footage really isn’t for archive. So is there any quality difference if the final result ends up being SD?
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There is a concept called “supersampling” that the same image shot in SD and HD then HD downsampled to SD will look better. That is because more information was captured originally. A somewhat related example of this would be ripping a DVD to H.264 with the same settings from an SD version and the Blu Ray version. The Blu Ray encoded version looks better (for testing purposes only of course…;)).
Not to mention you have some flexibility in recomposing or shot if needed without losing quality.
Michael
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The issues we are having is that not all of the editors can handle HD right now so I end up down converting, then exporting the project to a DV tape (via composite cable) then it is ingested to an on air system through a composite cable as well.
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In theory the HD captured image should still look better than the same image captured via DV, but you certainly add an extra layer of 5:1 compression by going to DV as part of the process. In this scenario, you really have to weigh the image quality to the amount of time spent for the noticeable difference. Depending on program type, turnaround time etc. I am going to venture it’s not worth it… 😉
Michael
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Is there an article or something I could read on this topic? Like to send it out to the office.
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So lets summarize. From what I see you can oversample you anti-aliasing causing the edges to be too sharp for an SD image that is unable to handle all the information of HD. Am I correct in this assumption?
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