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When HD really isn’t HD
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[Todd Terry] “How many times have you been to a public place (doctor’s office, restaurant, bar) where there is a 16:9 set displaying a 4:3 picture all stretched out? I see that all the time and it drives me nuts.”
And what about the TNT, TBS, USA, etc… HD channels where the network takes the old SD shows and stetchs them. I actually have to turn from my HD channel back to my SD channel to get it to look right. I’m with you. This is a big pet peeve.
On the other hand is my father-in-law “why would I want to waste the space on my tv”. He’ll even change the settings on my TV when he’s in town!
OK, I digress. But I could rant about this for hours and probably have been known to do so.
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The keychain secret TV remote was made for folks like us, to kill the offending TV 🙂
I still have a 3:4 SD tv set at home. My local Comcast plays widescreen network shows like NBC’s “The Office” in letterbox, then as a commercial comes up, (and it is 99 percent the same commercials as are running on their network feed) Comcast suddenly drops back to SD 4:3 full screen of that commercial, then jumps back to feeding the letterbox. The switching takes several frames so is very disturbing visually. What’s going on, I guess, is that not all their internal infrastructure is HD and the commercial servers are a mix of HD and SD, and the automation or live board op in master control that’s supposed to make the change-ups seamless… well, isn’t. Like I said, they don’t fix it until it is a pile of molten components on the floor; as long as it is paid for and works, they will keep using the old gear.
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[Mark Suszko] “The keychain secret TV remote was made for folks like us, to kill the offending TV :-)”
I don’t travel much anymore, but I sure wish they’d had this at the time: TV-B-Gone.
There was a scandal of sorts when it was introduced at last year’s CES, when those scamps at Gizmodo ran around turning off displays in the middle of vendor demos. As a civilian, I think this is pretty hilarious, but I can absolutely relate to how thoroughly people flipped their lids when it happened…leading the offender to banned for life from the show. Let that be a warning to some of you ruffians.
Tim Wilson
Creative Cow Magazine!My Blog: “Is this thing on? Oh it’s on!”
Don’t forget to rate your favorite posts!
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Ok, back to the original post. Chris said clients are asking for HD for commercial projects. Do you mean acquisition? If so, shooting in HD offers a lot of advantages. Mostly better cameras, assuming you aren’t shooting HDV.
We shoot almost exclusively in HD but deliver mostly to DVD web and SD broadcast. Our local CBS affiliate can accept HD spots. ESPN and Big Ten Network both require center cut HD. My guess is that since they have both HD and SD channels they simply take the one spot and downcovert with crop for the SD feed.
Although FCP is pretty terrible scaling down HD in an SD timeline, HD does offer us some flexibility in framing when put into an SD comp.
And although we have gone digital, there are a ton of SD 4:3 sets out there with digital converter boxes. And will be for some time.
We are a DG Fastchannel dealer and think file delivery of spots is surely better than Beta cam tapes to each station. Used to be 5 Beta dubs, now it’s a single encode uploaded to their FTP and delivered anywhere in the country with no shipping necessary. But HD is not very affordable right now, but they are working on the necessary workflow.
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media Inc. -
[Rich Rubasch] “FCP is pretty terrible scaling down HD in an SD timeline”
Premiere, on the other hand (CS3 and CS4) does an easy and absolute flawless job of scaling down HD to SD. Just throw an HD clip on an SD timeline and use motion effects to reduce its size down to either a letterboxed or centerpunched version… or even somewhere in between, if you want. The results are really perfect.
The only trick is if you are going from 24fps 1080p to NTSC (60i), which is what we are usually doing. There’s a certain order that you have to do things in to get the 3:2 pulldown exactly right (do it wrong and you get a funky 4:1, or full progressive, or inverted field order… depending on where the misstep is). It took me quite a bit of experimentation, but once I figured out the right combo it’s a breeze. Basically you just take your 23.976 fps HD clip and throw it on a 23.976 SD timeline (not on a 60i timeline or a full 24fps timeline). Scale it down with motion, then export as a 29.976 fps avi or mov or whatever (just change the framerate export settings at the step where you render the file)… and voilà, you have a perfect-looking scaled down SD 60i NTSC file with correct 3:2 pulldown and frame/field order.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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We deliver digitally to probably 75% of the stations we send spots. Most stations in our area will accept digital delivery directly on their own FTP. But, many of them then transcode the spot onto their playout servers, and often they get it wrong, flipping fields and screwing up colorspace.
There are a couple stations that accept digital files but they’ve screwed up our spots so many times we resorted back to delivering beta dubs.
On the HD issue, I certainly realize shooting in HD has advantages in quality, but if a client asks you to shoot in HD and that quality advantage is completely negated by the fact that no one will see it in HD, then I think it’s my responsibility to advise the client they really don’t need to spend the extra money to use higher-end cameras and edit in HD since nobody will actually see that quality as an end result. Of course there are probably those that don’t charge more for shooting in HD these days, but I believe you should, considering the post-production issues you face with HD to SD conversion, the increase in storage space needed if you’re editing at high HD data rates etc.
Of course this brings up a related issue. If everything else is equal, lighting, DP skill, etc., will an SD project shot with a high-end SD camera look better when it’s shot in HD using a comparable level camera (meaning broadcast camera to broacast camera)?? Uh oh, I’ve probably opened another can or worms.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
[Chris Blair] “…shooting in HD has advantages in quality, but if a client asks you to shoot in HD and that quality advantage is completely negated by the fact that no one will see it in HD…”
But I think they will notice.
You don’t shoot consumer-grade MPEG just because your work is going to SD DVD. Your web video might play at 512 KB, but you shoot a much higher data rate. I delivered on 3/4, and before the turn of the century, a lot of VHS for client review copies. But I didn’t shoot in those formats. And even the most chowderheaded of my clients immediately noticed when I upgraded my equipment.
The web video thing is interesting all by itself. It used to be synonymous with tiny, low-quality movies. We’ve found that the web is increasingly the HD platform of choice. We stream up to 900 px wide now, for both tutorials and hosted video (reels, shorts, etc.) and it looks pretty darn good. So even if you can’t deliver HD to air, you can absolutely deliver it on the web!
If you have SD equipment and it’s making you money, carry on. But your clients will definitely notice when you switch to HD.
The additional interesting thing is that, especially with ProRes and DNxHD, you have free, built-in solutions to deliver pristine HD in SD bandwidth and storage.
And if you’ve used your camera long enough to pay for it, you may well find that your new HD camera costs a lot less than your SD camera did. I could get a really nice Varicam or XDCAM HD for what I paid to shoot DigiBeta, and have enough left over for a nice little vacation.
So HD can cost less, and give your spouse something to smile about. Look! I bought a new camera and got a romantic getaway free!
Tim Wilson
Creative Cow Magazine!My Blog: “Is this thing on? Oh it’s on!”
Don’t forget to rate your favorite posts!
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I deliver in SD but I shoot in HD because to get the same picture quality that I get with my 6K SONY EX-1 I would need a much more expensive SD camera.
Another reason is the archiving. As Arnie said sooner than later everybody will be HD and the SD archive will have less use.
Cheers,
rafael
PS: Is funny what Todd points about how so many people watch the 4×3 programs distorted in the 16×9 screens. That’s true but people don’t do it in an unconscious way, is just that most people find really unpleasant pillar-boxed picture.
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