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HD sizes – what’s the difference?
Hi Gang-
Hope this doesn’t sound like a real stupid question.
I’ve been reading Adobe’s Primer on HD. They say HD comes in 2 sizes 1920×1080 and 1280×720.
Other than the obvious (size) what is the difference? I ask because I’m starting a project in 1920×1080 and it’s really chewing-up RAM, CPU and drive space. If I could go with the smaller size it would sure help me out – but I don’t want to make a huge compromise.
Thanks,
Cathy -
10 Replies
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720p or 1080i (or p) are two different HD resolutions … the advantage of 1080i (or p) is just that it got more information which concludes in better quality …
if you have the possibility to shoot your stuff in 1080 (or p) i would go for that!!!
best
flow -
The primary difference (and the most relevant) is that most consumer HDTV sets and broadcasts are still only 1280×720. There is NO QUALITY difference between 1080i and 720, one is just larger which most people assume means “better.”
The specs and final viewing platform of your project should determine which you use, and I would avoid 1080i unless it is a requirement. You will ultimately just end up having to scale it down anyway if it isn’t needed, and you will have wasted a lot of time and space for nothing.
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Thanks so much for your comment. Actually – I’m not shooting anything – I’m creating an animation based on fine art pen and ink drawings and similar art created in the computer. I chose HD thinking it would give me the best quality representation of the work. But at the time I had no idea how huge these files would get or how much RAM AE would need to run them.
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beenyweenies! That’s too funny – I had BeaneeWeenees for lunch today!
Thanks so much for the info! That’s just what I’ve been trying to find out – was there a quality difference. I’m working on an animation that will go onto a DVD for circulation to festivals. So I see no reason why I shouldn’t work in the smaller HD size of 1280 x 720 – because as you say, it will have to be scaled-down anyways.
Thanks Again!
-Cathy -
1080P is a different story…
Thanks,
Alexander Gao“When the revolution happens, I’ll be leading it.”
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It’s a good idea to get away from the concept of “best quality”.
If you want to think like a pro, think of “best quality for the specified delivery platform”.
If the video is for someone else, you probably know what their platform is. If it’s for yourself, then make something that looks great that will play back on your hard drive. Make tests at various sizes and codecs. Apple’s H.264 codec seems to look good in big sizes on a hard drive.
If it’s for yourself, why not work in 720×540 (assuming NTSC) then if you want to put it on DVD, you can drag it into a 720×480 DV preset comp and render for eventual MPEG-2 compression in another app … but that’s another topic.
And if you want to scale up the 720×540 QT in QT Player to fit your monitor, you can. -
Thanks Steve – I wanted to have an HD copy of the final short film for possible release to HD later. But my main form of distribution will be DVD. I was assuming (maybe I shouldn’t have) that I could scale down from 1280 x 720 to a letter box size that will work on a standard definition DVD. Is that possible? I won’t get my AE or Premiere Pro2 upgrades until next week, so I’m not clear yet of what my options are for output.
-Cathy
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Thanks Dave- That’s a very good tip. One I had not thought of. I’ll hopefully have the Premiere and AE upgrades by next week and will use my first scene as a test case. Since these are pen and ink drawings there are a ton of fine lines in them – so I shall experiment and see what happens! Perhaps my findings will render (pardon the pun) the HD point moot after all and I can just work in SD 720 x 480.
-Cathy -
Yep — you’ll probably be disappointed with the fine lines if the effect on the viewer depends on them. As Dave suggested, do some tests to see if the fine lines look good once reduced to pixels. You should definitely do a test on SD DVD — go all the way to making a DVD for TV, then you’ll see how MPEG-2 compression affects your “look”.
It’s always good to design with the delivery platform in mind, since it tends to make some things look good and some things look bad. Like fine lines and smooth gradients. 🙂 But it does like motion. You may want to consider the strengths of motion in your plan, as opposed to the strengths of a static design for print, for instance. I mean, it’s good to consider how something turns into something else, rather than focus on how good something looks in a static frame.
Just sayin’. 🙂
Hey, put it up on the web when you’re done — I like arty stuff!
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Thanks Steve – there’s a couple small samples of what I’m doing on my studio blog at digitalbacklot.net
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