Part One

There seems to be lots of debate about HD, MPEG4, AVCHD, 1080i, 1080p, 720p and the differing proprietary versions used by camera manufacturers.

I'm not a techie but I have taken an interest because it seems lots of folk are getting exercised by what to shoot, edit, produce and show.

Maybe folks could take a look and comment from their own experiences. I thought it best to cover this in 3 posts not one huge one.

Taking a wholly logical approach, it seems that the starting point is how we intend to view/show our video, then how do we edit and produce for that purpose, and therefore what resource material we need to shoot for editing and production?

Mixed in to that is the camera capabilities, brand and specifications that each of us favour. We often choose the camera first then the rest follow - actually if the camera produces rubbish, our editing and viewing capabilities need only to be rubbish, and if the camera produces raw video but we watch on an 2.5"screen it's a bit of a waste.

Key stats
1080p or i = 1920x1080 = 2,073,600 pixels
720p = 1280x720 = 921,600 pixels
DVD = 720x480 = 345,600 pixels

important for bandwidth, file size, compression and processing power.

So, starting at the viewing end (and not dealing with projectors) :-

Consumer HDTV
1080p units are generally held to be the best
720p units are OK but all inputs (1080i, 1080p and 720p) have to be processed (in the unit) to 'fit' the (usually) non-standard panel pixel matrices.

1080p PC monitor
Apparently actually 1920x1200 (15:9), so again true input has to be processed to 'fit'

To get the best view, a 1080p HDTV coupled to a PC with a desktop correctly set to 1920x1080 gives 1:1 pixel mapping. Anything else is a compromise.

So can we get 1080p video?
The best is 1080p 60fps. Blu-ray (BD) can produce this but it is often converted from 1080p 24 or 30 fps input. Some 1080p 60fps material is produced by PC and game stations and will depend on hardware specs.

However 720p 60fps gives the best motion response with good detail in its 921,600 pixels.

Most broadcast DTV is either 720p or 1080i 24 or 30 fps with some satellite coming in with 1080p 30 and 24 fps.

Few consumer cameras shoot in 1080p 60fps, although some are coming in. Some produce 1080p 30fps.
Many shoot 720p 60 and 30 fps, and many shoot 1080i 60 fields/sec (NOT frames /sec).

1080i is an old analogue CRT compression technique and relies on interlacing fields together - to edit and convert to 1080p is problematical and often leads to blurring, combing etc etc and there are many convertors and filters used in differing situations to do the job. The final quality is dependent on the conversion.

So, for the vast majority of us, unless we use 1080p 60fps video on a 1080p display unit, our input video is a compromise and/or it is converted/upscaled by the display unit/DVD player etc and therefore the quality of our viewing is a compromise, irrespective of our editing performance or of our raw input material.

Further details :-
http://www.hdtvmagazine.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11191
http://www.hdtvmagazine.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11190
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/video-primer.shtml Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. (see below)
Confucius
AMD Phenom IIX6 1055T, win10, 5 internal drives, 7 usb drives, struggling power supply.