Shooting for Web (anyone want to help me beat this dead horse?)

[USLatin]

I am going to shoot a little project for the web and I am doing it with my camera equipment only.

There isn't really the need for this project, and I have no money to throw at it and rent stuff for it. That got me thinking...

Should I shoot 720p? (the old dead horse comes back from the grave for yet an other beating) :)

I would be happy with working with a 640 x 360 for a final QT of 640 x 267 (or 266) with my intended 2.4 aspect ratio crop. That would be exactly half the size of 720p so it would keep it as sharp as it could, and it is a decent sharing size for the WWW, wouldn't you say? I can do some vertical stabilization on it thanks to the 2.4 crop... and I would always render a bigger one or re-frame at a minimal "loss" of sharpness. A DVD would look quite nice too.

Also, for production I'd be able to fit 20min at a time in my single 8GB card, edit on my laptop if I felt like it, and if I remember correctly the camera would be tinie bit more sensitive, right? Plus framerate galore which would be sweet, especially since we'd have no adapter, or steady cam which I thought this project called for... So at least we'll get good framerate capabilities, plus no sound is being recorded so there is nothing holding me back...


Here is a representation of the size... it seems quite big when you look at it!
(Black is the 640 x 360 and blue is the 2.4 crop)



. . . . .. http://www.dvxuser6.com/uploaded/6586/1234942489.jpg
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/%5BIMG%5Dhttp://www.dvxuser6.com/uploaded/6586/1234942489.jpg%5B/IMG%5D

[Zzx4k]

Hey Latin,

I never shoot anything other than 720PN for web based stuff. It looks great online, as well as on DVD, plus its closer to the sensor size in the actual camera, which is always good.

www.youtube.com/zzx4k

95% of my stuff is 720PN, and looks great in HD quality.

Don't know if that was the answer you were looking for...but good luck!

[USLatin]

I am just putting it out there to see if there is anything about it that escapes me, and hopefully someone might post it.

I was looking at that too, though the recorded resolutions are actually 960 ×720 for 720p and 1280 ×1080 for 1080p. So as it was pointed out before, the best 720p comes from 1080p downconverted. But I guess for 640 x 360 the 960 x 720 would be plenty of information... the question would be whether you get less re-scaling sharpness loss from rezising to 640 x 360 or to the actual recorded size divided by two... however of course you can't do both since the horizontal resolution isn't proportional... what would be best? and how much effort does this question deserve?


BTW, I made a chart but didn't draw in the recorded sizes. (HVX RASTER may be off by a bit)
http://www.dvxuser6.com/uploaded/6586/1234943005.jpg

[Jarek Zabczynski]

HVX Raster? 1440 has nothing to do with the HVX.

[USLatin]

I actually thought the pixel count of the sensors after factoring in pixel shift was something like 960 vertical but I couldn't remember so I looked it up and found this on (I know, I know) wiki... I figured it would have been corrected it it was wrong. regardless it is somewhere around there between 1080 and 720

[heavyG]

Way too much thought... I shoot 720-24pn for web based delivery. it has become over the last 18 months my bread and butter, far out earning all of my other projects.

One thing that I learned very soon out of the gate is this: Every site that you upload to will in some form or fashion step all over your footage! They will up / down / cross convert to another codec, they will compress, re-res, squish, and stretch.

Some places will do a great job -Dailymotion - and some will do a poor job, that list is endless.

In the end you have to realise that we all live in a bubble, and 90% of the people watching don't have a fast enough connection for great quality, and they don't have their screens set-up properly either.

I still tweak my settings to shoot the best that I can, I still output 4 different formats so that the conversions that take place on the web end don't destroy the picture, and I still would love to shoot 1080 just because...

But the reality is no-one, absolutely no-one can tell from web delivery with that screen size and compression whether it was 720 or 1080; and if they claim that they can... well you know how BS piles up.

G.

[Nick Walters]

My only bit of advise is this: be sure to keep your pixel aspect right throughout editing/encoding(I'm using CS3 and it routinely has the incorrect pixel aspect ratio selected when I go to encode), and once you upload it play with the embed settings if you are in fact embedding it somewhere, as many sites need their code tweaked a bit to finally output your stuff right....like YouTube...I always have to add some extra height to compensate for their play bar. I use 480x295 alot for my 16:9 content and it usually seems to come out ok.

[Luis_]

Shoot it in 720, edit it in 720, export it in 720, upload it in 720. You'll have good results.

[USLatin]

Heavy and Luis, I am working on a 15-30 second spot, so I'll be able to e-mail this thing as a QT H.264 with 48/16 audio. Also planning on uploading it to my server to be able to share the link for those who prefer that.

Heavy, I do definitely agree that I am giving this too much thought, but it can't hurt :) and also agree with what you say about the YouTubes and Vimeos.

Nick, I am going to keep it square through and through, so this aspect of my post should be lossless if I am not mistaken.

Jester, I edited the post with a disclaimer that the HVX raster numbers may be off by a bit.

[MikeWilkinson]

You may find this link useful: http://www.flashsupport.com/books/fvst/files/tools/video_sizes.html

[The Media Monster]

I work with the Vancouver Island Health Authority.

For all of the web based stuff we do, we shoot in HD, and then down res. it, and it looks a lot better.

If you are adding a lot of graphic content, always best to shoot in 30 p.

Just my 2 cents.

Regards,

MM:Drogar-Smoke(DBG):

[USLatin]

You may find this link useful: http://www.flashsupport.com/books/fvst/files/tools/video_sizes.html

So 512 x 288 seems to be a good size based on that multiple of 16 rule, but does that apply to h.264 quicktimes?My only other concern would be that if the size isn't 1/2 then there might be a bit of loss from rounding, while with 640 x 360 each two pixels would make one...sort of what red wants to do with their quad HD setting where you'd be able to shoot at exactly 4 times 1080p 3840 x 2160 in that case every 4 pixels make one

[Nick Walters]

if this is your own encoding, hosted on your own site, and you're looking to save some space, while keeping utmost quality, then yes, take the resolution and divide it in half.

If you film at 720 make the final export/encode 640x360, and do not do any cropping, re-sizing, or anything of that sort. if you film at 1080 then to save bandwidth you may want to re-size at a factor of three, with the end result being again, 640x360.

[USLatin]

Why would I not want to crop? I am not doing it for bandwith, I am not worried about bandwith at all, this is for possible additional investors to get a taste really. Traffic will be minimal. I am cropping to add a bit of film style to it... personal choice. The size of the video would still be 640 x 360 but there would be black bands making the image only 640 x 266.

[manglerBMX]

i shoot all my webs tuff at 1080. but thats in case my news paper wants to use exported stills for prints. and if you're going to web, why put black bars on it? just make the file 640x266. unless you have some dedicated player that only supports 640x360, then there's no need.

[Nick Walters]

I only said what I would do, if for artistic reasons you want to throw the camera in a river and show the audience that perspective it's up to you. If you want to crop it's up to you....low key lighting....up to you

Don't worry about what I, or anyone else, says they think about anything when it comes to your artistic vision. I was only stating what appeared to be the correct math for the output file.

Good luck with your project :thumbup:

[USLatin]

Nick, I wasn't trying to sound defensive, just saying in case it came across like that. I was asking cause the whole 16 rule thing got me all confused about the possibility of other weird rules to follow for compression, etc... I wanted to make sure you mentioned it if there was something else.

BMX, I dunno why.. the only upside I can think of is that it gets the window edge away from the image but mostly just used to doing it that way and it can't make the file much bigger...no big reason I guess.

[Noel Evans]

For web only? Im shooing 720 for 75% of everything I do (HPX500).