For NTR July/August 2007 Newsletter Beginners Guide to High Definition (HD) for Amateurs ---------------------------------------------------- Are you considering upgrading to High Definition? You have probably noticed a few members of your local club waving their new High Definition Video (HDV) Camcorders around and saying how good they are. It's an area that is all rather new and changing rapidly, to be approached with caution. You are probably reluctant to upheave from your existing Standard Definition (SD) equipment with framesize 720x576 pixels, just to get a bit better picture. It all seems a bit expensive. And the camcorder, however sexy it looks, is just the tip of the iceberg as far the costs of a complete movie making system goes. High Definition has to be intrinsic to every part of the system, the recording, editing, distributing and display at home and at the club. It is not obvious where to start. At this point it is probably wise to point out that HD is widescreen and comes in variants known as 720p, 1035i, 1080i, 1080p and 1152i. Capturing HD pictures requires faster processing than SD and there are two main ways of getting a good picture in time, progressive image and interlaced image. Faster CMOS chips are also used. In the HD variants above, "p" stands for progressive where a picture is captured in outline and detail is progressively added. The "i" stands for interlaced where the picture is captured in two passes that provide alternating lines in the overall picture. The numbers 720, 1035, 1080 and 1152 refer to the number of lines (or vertical pixels) in the image. 720 and 1080 are the most commonly used, with most consumer/amateur equipment being 1080i. 1080p equipment costs much more and is currently for professional use. The Camcorder is the most tempting item to start your buying, particularly if your existing camcorder is getting near the end of its days and needs replacing. If you chose one of the HDV1080i ones, e.g. Sony HDR-HC3, HDR-SR1, Canon HV10, HV20, etc. (all about £700-£850) that record onto MiniDV tape in HDV1080i format with framesize 1920x1080 pixels and can down-scale to SD, you are in business from day one. You can use the camcorder to record in high definition but process the movie as if it was an ordinary SD one, but widescreen. You can edit using your existing (computer/Avio/..) system and distribute and display using the same means as you do now. At this point you are not getting the full advantage of HD, but if you are shooting events that are for longer-term use, such as local archives, you know that eventually the footage will be seen in its full glory. So, the next item to buy could be a display. This could take the form of a HD ready widescreen television with an HDMI input port. [You may already have one of these in your living room, that could be used when its not being used for watching TV. That will save a few bob!] Assuming you don't already have a widescreen HD TV, I suggest you get one that can double as a computer monitor via a VGA input port. A quick look in Argos (or the like) reveals 15.4" (1280x720 or 1366x768) widescreen HD LCD TVs from £170 and 19" (1366x768 or 1440x900) ones from £200. These are 16:9 widescreen and have both HDMI and VGA ports, as well as the traditional analogue RF, composite and SVHS ports. To go with the TV, you will need an HDMI cable. This is a cable with HDMI connectors on each end to connect your camcorder directly to the TV. Shop prices are currently about £20 to £25 each, which is excessive. I got mine from a friend at the club for about £6.99. Try e-Bay. Once the camcorder is connected to the TV, you will now be able to view your footage in all its glorious detail. Also, you will be able to view the film fullscreen while you are editing it in SD, by connecting the HD TV with a VGA cable in place of, or additionally to, your monitor. We now come to the critical element, the editing software. I was surprised to find that the latest version of my favourite editing software actually supported High Definition, so I bought a copy and tried it on my existing computer (a modest four year old AMD 2000+ XP, which runs at about 1.6Ghz with 512MB RAM and ordinary speed Hard Disks) and hey presto it worked. Capture and editing were just like SD, but rendering was much slower - taking about twice as long over transitions, effects, etc. - and fullscreen playback was jerky, but it all worked. The software provided for output to HD DVD, but as I didn't have an HD DVD writer (who has?), I couldn't test that. The software can write the movie back to MiniDV tape using HDV-in on the camcorder, in the same way as DV-in is used for SD. I discovered a feature in the software called "proxy editing" that allows speedy editing on a low resolution version of the movie such that, after the final cut, an HD render can be done. I think that other software packages also have this feature. The following popular software packages support HD video editing:- Pinnacle 10, Video Studio 10 Plus, Magix 11, and latest versions of Premiere, final cut pro, etc. The final stage, distribution, is the area of most uncertainty because the conflicting use of HD DVD and Blu-ray has not been resolved and currently "writers" for these are hard to find and excessively expensive when compared to ordinary DVD writers. In the meantime there is nothing to stop amateurs exchanging HDV movies on MiniDV tapes, which are falling in price and at present are a small fraction of the price of HD DVD or Blu-ray disks and perform equally well - with playback being through any other HDV camcorder. For club viewing, HD Projectors are now on the market and don't cost appreciably more than "ordinary" ones. For example the Panasonic PTAE900e High Definition projector with native resolution 1280x720, costs less than £1200. The next time your club projector plays up, might be a suitable time to upgrade. It will play all your existing films as before. Finally, it should not be overlooked that buying all this equipment will not turn bad films into good, only good film making will do that. In photographic terms it is like moving from 0.8 mega-pixels to 3.2 mega-pixels, just a higher definition. Paul Clarke