What the big deal with HD video?

Ceroc Addict

Ceroc Addict

Registered
In particular,



  • Is this new Sony HD camera significantly better than the current 3CCD cameras?
  • What other editing programs can lay claim to being able to edit HD video?
  • What's the minimum amount of computer power required to work with HD video?
I'm interested in hearing anything people have to say on the topic of HD video.

Kap
 
On one hand I applaud Apple for once again being among the first to embrace an emerging standard - HD will in theory replace NTSC.

On the other hand, it's just not here yet for home video. The HD camcorders that are available now are many times more expensive than a standard def camcorder.

A HD version of iMovie at this point seems a little absurd; who exactly is going to invest in a HD camcorder, then use virtually-freeware software to edit the footage???
 
HD is much better than regular ole NTSC or PAL. Its a simple question of resolution - six times more I think. I don't know if the new camera you're talking avbout has 3 CCDs or not - that a separate issue that deals with the quality of image capture. (3 CDD devices provide much richer colours - although don't work so well in low light.) If you have plenty of money and something to watch the HD video on go for it - by all means. As for hardware to edit I guess you'd need a G5 or some sort - the faster the better - faster hard drives would be good too. Anyway - I'm blabbering.

Gabs
 
NTSC is 648 x 486 (preferred), or about 315,000 pixels of resolution.

Pal is 720 x 486 (preferred), or about 350,000 pixels of resolution.

HD is either 1280 x 720 (aka 720p, about 922,000 pixels of resolution) or 1920 x 1080 (1080i, about 1,383,000 pixels of resolution).


According to Apple, you need a 1GHz G4 or faster processor to use HD features of iMovie HD. http://www.apple.com/ilife/ (Bottom of Page). In reality, a fast (2+GHz) G5 and lots of RAM would be your best bet.


Within the next year we'll see a huge explosion of HD devices hitting the market. Within 2 years, that's probably all that'll be available from most suppliers. By then, the costs will probably drop to a third of what they are now.
 
You couldn't display an HD signal on an HDTV without some sort of HD-connection, and older TVs that don't support HD don't have those connectors. You could still process the footage in iMovie for standard resolutions (NTSC/PAL) and display it just fine on standard TVs, but you'd be connecting to the TV via s-video or RCA cables, not an HD connection, so it'd be a different output and connection altogether.
 
As for "who will use HD and imovie"

I am interested in HD video. simply because it offers much better picture quality. but. having bought FCE 2.0 in a bundle with my G5, im definitely more comfortable working in iMovie. sure, it is a consumer app. but that's what i am. i don't want to have to read the manual every time i want to do something. imovie is very intuitive. FCE isn't on the same level of ease-of-use to me..
 
Another hurdle I see working with HD video - apparently needs a lot of storage space (2 hours = tens of GBs), which could quickly get fairly expensive.

How accurate is this statement?

Kap
 
By my calculations of HD video at 5 Mbps, times 3600 seconds in an hour, that yields 18000Mbs, or about 18Gb per hour...

Can someone check this math for me? ;)
 
um. 5Mbps (megabits per second) is only actually 625KiloBYTES per second.

i think 5Megabits is a little low for HDV. DV and MiniDV are 25Mbps
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MiniDV
They record digital video compressed by a DCT method at 25 Megabit per second.
Click to expand...

A search on wikipedia shows that HDV has a similar bitrate 19 or 25Mbps (through better compression technologies maybe? it is seven years newer than DV)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top