High-definition production is definitely taking root. From EPL football games to television mini-series and feature films, the format is changing the way the industry approaches production.

Whether you’re looking to take your wedding business to a new level of quality, angling for competitive advantage with corporate clients, hoping to produce your own indie film, or just trying to stay on top of the industry, familiarity with the HD format is a must.

Let’s start with capture. When manufacturers list the specs on their cameras, an important thing to look for is the resolution numbers and frame rates. For example, if 720p is listed, the 720 indicates the vertical resolution, which is actually 1280 horizontal lines by 720 vertical lines, while the p specifies progressive.

Progressive is basically the opposite of interlaced. Instead of the video frame being divided into two offset fields, it is now a complete picture, containing all the visual data. Instead of the p, an i (as in 1080i) might be listed, specifying interlaced frames.

Other HD resolutions include 1080i and 1080p, which at full spec is 1920 x 1080, as well as 4k, or 4046 x 2048, the highestavailable HD resolution.

Once you’ve acquired your HD footage, it’s time to look at editing solutions. Unless you’ve already invested big bucks in a powerful system, you’re probably going to have to make some upgrades.

HD post-production is now mature and established with HD workflows routine for many projects. While there’s no need to reinvent the HD post wheel with every HD finishing path, some degree of customization is often required to meet the demands of a particular project or to make post more efficient.

Some of the basics that apply across the board include minimum CPU speeds of 3GHz for PCs and dual 1GHz CPUs for Macs; hard drives capable of handling the format data rate plus 20 per cent; capture cards with appropriate I/O jacks; and editing software that has support for your chosen format’s codec.

HDV: In just the last few years, things have been changing quickly and dramatically. HDV has come onto the market offering HD acquisition at prosumer camera prices. And the HD footage can be edited using popular, low-cost, nonlinear editing systems, like Apple Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere Pro, running on desktops.

HDV uses the MPEG-2 compression format that brings the bit rate for HD video down to 25Mbps (same as DV) for 1080i HDV2, and 19Mbps (more than 20 per cent less than DV) for 720p HDV1. All the extra compression and the way the data is compressed should be of great concern to the producer/ editor who is considering editing in native HDV format.

It means you can use an external FireWire or USB drive, as well as your video drive that’s already in place. In short, if your drive and CPUs can handle DV, then they can probably handle HDV. Avid Xpress Pro and Liquid, Final Cut Pro 6, Premiere Pro 2, and Vegas are just some of the latest programs that support native HDV editing.

HDV uses LongGOP MPEG-2 transport streams, which means that each frame of encoded and compressed video that you see is actually part of a group of pictures, which are not immediately editable.

This MPEG-2 scheme allows for a much larger amount of data to stream from one device to another for storage at faster speeds than the methods used by SD cameras. The MPEG-2 HDV structure does not store all the data for every frame of footage. That would be a lot of data to have to transport from device to device and to encode and decode on the fly.

To conserve bits, and acquire the HD image at bit rates less than half the size of other HD formats, HDV uses interframe compression, which means that two frames per second contain every single pixel in the image, and the others are compressed to include mostly reference information to redundancies with the complete frames.

HDV uses three types of frames called I, P, and B-Frames. It combines these in order to be able to rebuild the full image of every frame of footage quickly.

An I-Frame encodes all the data for that frame. P-Frames are encoded by predicting data from previous frames. B-Frames encode the image by making predictions from both previous and subsequent frames. Thus, I-Frames are the only frames that can stand independent of any other frames in the footage.

Native editing means the software can directly edit the MPEG-2 stream using an algorithm that makes all the frames available for editing. Often some encoding takes place before output at the points where edits and effects have been done, which can make this approach processor-intensive.

DVCPRO HD: The data rate for DVCPRO HD is 40Mbps when recording 720/24p from P2 cards, but when capturing from tape, it jumps up to 120Mbps. Most SATA hard drives and external FireWire and USB drives can probably handle the data flow, but if you’re planning on doing complex editing, consider a SATA RAID array. There are inexpensive options for putting one of these together, and the extra storage and increased data-read/write speed is worth the money.

With the Xpress Pro HD update, Avid supports the 720p and 1080i codec flavors natively, but requires rendering to the DNxHD codec before working with 1080p/24 or 720p/23.976 footage. Adobe Premiere can work with DVCPRO HD, but only with additional hardware such as Cineform’s Aspect HD or the Matrox Axio system. Final Cut Pro promises native editing for all flavors of the DVCPRO HD, while Sony’s Vegas allows you to capture HD of all stripes only if using an SDI input.

HDCAM: If you’re using XDCAM HD, then you’ll need the ability to use i.LINK (FireWire), an Ethernet connection, a deck that reads Professional Disc media, or the ability to capture HD-SDI. HDCAM has higher data rates than the other HD formats mentioned, so you’ll probably need a RAID array to edit effectively.

Most available software - Avid DS Nitris, DS HD, Adrenalines and Apple Final Cut Pro - is capable of doing HD, so the primary financial investment may consist of getting a deck.

The pipeline starts with film scanning and recording or digital dailies, Digital intermediate (DI)) color grading, conforming, online and offline editing, VFX, cinema audio mixing, mastering and deliverables.

DI color grading technology is now affordable for indie films and documentaries. Beyond the complexities of conquering color space, color grading people today are taking responsibility for “the whole look of the film”. That can include integrating visual effects into finished picture or simply re-framing to crop out an errant boom mike.

The relationship between image capture and post is becoming closer. Images are basically in post as soon as they pass through the facility door. Screening DVDs can be pulled from a ‘circled takes’ timeline and at the same time the entire footage can be opened up in the editor’s Avid for cutting. Layerbased compositing allows for tighter integration between color grading and VFX.

The ability to integrate VFX and grading in a more efficient manner brings about gains such as preserving VFX located in dark shadows. Affordable DI is available with either Avid Nitris or Apple FCP HD for grading, conforming, online and delivering with the former considered the more powerful box for primary and secondary color correction.

Once you’ve shot, captured, and edited your HD masterpiece, what next? If you want to retain full quality, you can finish on an HD mastering format such as HDCAM, DVCPRO HD, or D-5. Using an HD format for mastering is really only feasible if your client has the ability to play back your chosen media.

The current DVD format isn’t able to hold enough HD footage to make it a viable option. That’s why Panasonic, Sony, Toshiba, Microsoft, and others are pushing forward competing high-definition optical storage/ playback media standards HD DVD and Blu-ray.

The HD DVD format shares the same diameter and thickness of DVDs yet has a much higher storage capacity of 30GB. When it was first introduced, HD DVD seemed to have an edge on the market, probably because it is an expansion of, not a radical change to current technology. HD DVD systems are reportedlyable to play current DVDs. For replication houses, DVD and HD DVD production is easily switched back and forth.

With storage capacities roughly five times more than DVD and two-thirds more than HD DVD, Blu-ray discs has more storage room. A dual-layer disc can hold up to 54GB, and a prototype 100GB version is in production.

Over the year, a winner should hopefully begin to emerge from the format war and you’ll be able to make an informed decision. Until then, shoot on HD to future-proof your client, and once a technology becomes standardized, provide them the HD version on disc.

HD is most definitely the future. If you don’t choose to become involved in learning the HD technology now, you might find yourself playing serious catch-up later. Don’t get left behind –invest in the future of your business by learning the future of the Avid DS Nitris industry.

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