Screen Video Standards
When you hear the Terms; SD, HD, DVD, Bluray and Handheld. You may be asking yourself, “what does all this mean?“, and if you are looking at video production for your business (perhaps to sell your products or help brand your company) you might be thinking “How much is this going to cost me, and what will promote and sell my product the best?“.
Lets try to break down some of the information, and shed light on what this all means. We are an in-house video and photography company based on the Gold Coast, so when it comes to video formats, we like to keep all options in mind based on what clients budgets are and what the market and distribution is gearing towards.
To begin with, if you plan on not reading all this information, long story short, HD1080 (or true high definition) is currently the best format to broadcast on (excluding cinema).
So here’s why:
Formats
Each format represents a scale in size (based on a ratio of pixels).
SD (standard definition) = 720 x 576
HD (high definition) = 1280 x 720
HD (true hd) = 1920 x 1080
An important thing to remember is that the term pixel refers to a single (square for this example) dot on your screen. Whether it’s a TV, HDTV, Computer Monitor or a Projector, they all follow the principle or pixels.
So imagine a single pixel can produce one colour each frame. A SD video will have a 720 pixel by 576 pixel box made up of 720 separate individual coloured dot across and and 576 down.
Using this understanding, when you play an SD video on a screen (lets say HDTV which is 1920 x 1080) that is a larger scale then the video itself, ‘up-scaling‘ will occur.
This is because the video natively stretches to fill the entire screen. When a video up-scales you will often notice something referred to as Pixelation. Pixelation shows when our single dots we discussed now stretch over a larger area, resulting in more boxy look. So now the once single colour dots, fill an area of say 10 x 10 instead of 1 x 1.
Mediums
The 3 key mediums in which your video can reach your market on are;
TV (Broadcast) = SD, HD720, HD1080
DVD = SD
Bluray = HD1080
Web = various (see below)
Handheld (iPhone) = various (see below)
Web
Web is the tricky one, see the Web category can be potentially be any size, small or large you want, though you are often limited by a users internet speed and must keep this in mind when distributing via web.
Though with sites like Youtube, Vimeo, Google Video and Facebook, most run by these standards;
HD = 1280 x 720
HQ = 480 x 360
SD Web = 320 x 240
for more info about these resolutions …
Youtube Handbook
Optimize HD Youtube Video
Hand held
Hand helds refer to many varieties of devices such as phones, palm pockets, even things like the Nintendo DS or Playstation PSP.
The most common hand held format we work with is the popular Apple iPhone.
Even trickier than the web resolutions are the hand helds, often the videos need to be cropped at the top and bottom for the video to even go fullscreen.
iphone = 640 x 480
many, many more…
In Summary
Now considering all these options, we can see that the (True) HD resolution 1920px x 1080px is currently the highest standard and this is what we will often recommend for our clients. True HD is becoming the standard as Blu-ray discs are becoming more common and DVD’s resolution just can’t compete with watching a high-quality production on a 42″ LCD screen.
If you want more info on Foto Media’s services in HD video productions or interested in a quote on your next video production, contact us over at our website www.fotomedia.com.au.
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