1080p: do I risk not being viewed properly by most internet users?

A

altar

Active member
Hi,

I was reading an interview of a Vimeo admin saying only 10% of it's users were equipped to view 1080p properly.
If my aim is to be viewed full screen by average internet users (not video producers), and I don't plan to offer download options, isn't 1080p overkill compared to 720p?
Can I shoot in 1080p and then downgrade to 720p for editing?
Will it make editing and rendering faster?

Thanks
 
yeah shoot in 1080p downgrade to 720p for web thats what i do, but only because of the smaller file size and faster to upload. As far as an "overkill" with 1080 - no way, videos are still scaled up/down to fit full screen so you're safe on either route you take.
 
If you're going to edit in 720, just shoot 720. No sense in downconverting to edit. It doesn't really give you enough extra to justify the time, hassle, and shorter recording times . . .
 
One thing to consider: It's only a matter of time before more and more people have the ability to view 1080p properly as they buy faster computers. So do you want your content forever limited to 720p, or do you want to have shot and edited in 1080p and have that ready to go when people are ready for it?
 
>If you're going to edit in 720, just shoot 720. No sense in downconverting to edit.

I do not agree. It's always a plus to shoot in higher res, and then zoom-in during post production. I do it all the time on my music videos in order to create effects, and to fix bad framings. Besides, the day will come one day that 1080p would be piece of cake. So pros should always shoot and edit at the highest quality ever, and then export according to the capabilities of each medium used.
 
altar said:
I was reading an interview of a Vimeo admin saying only 10% of it's users were equipped to view 1080p properly.
Click to expand...

Given he's a network-video guy, it might well be he's thinking about bandwidth. I have enough horsepower on my laptop to play 1080/06p video.. and my desktop is several times more powerful. I'm editing AVCHD and other video types, as you might expect for a person posting here.

But for playback in realtime, fuggetaboudit! I'm in rural South Jersey, with satellite as my only option for broadband. That's 1.5Mb/s down, peak. YouTube is coding their 720p at something like 2Mb/s, and their 1080p at something higher still. Vimeo I don't know, but most of the non-YouTube sites are catering to quality over, well, things like viewers. Netflix peaks at about 3.6Mb/s on their HD, which is only 720p.


So if they're doing something in the 4-6Mb/s range for HD (or better), I'll bet they're right -- only about 10% of users can stream that in realtime.

altar said:
If my aim is to be viewed full screen by average internet users (not video producers), and I don't plan to offer download options, isn't 1080p overkill compared to 720p?
Click to expand...

Depends entitely on the material and your target audience. If you're using a server like YouTube or Vimeo, you get to have your cake and eat it too... you upload at your best resolution (I sent 1080/24p at 20Mb/s up to YouTube back in June, and they were happy with it), and they create the various downscaled versions, so your viewers can choose. On my own server, I usually figure out the minimal spec for the time, put that up as a streaming video, and then offer a few higher quality downloads. But you could get smarter than that if you wanted to spend the time.


altar said:
Can I shoot in 1080p and then downgrade to 720p for editing?
Will it make editing and rendering faster?
Click to expand...

You can, and it will. But I'd never edit at 720p if I shot at 1080/x. Well, almost never. If you're doing something for a customer, and the only possible use ever is 720p or 480p or whatever, and they want a fast edit, then maybe. Editing and rendering will be faster for lower rez than higher rez. If I shot in 1080/60p AVC but only needed to edit at 720/30p for a 720/30p target, I'd first convert to 720/30p... that's going to make yoru edits go twice as fast as 1080/x for the component of the CPU time actually spent on video... faster still if I downcoded from AVCHD to CineForm or MPEG-2.
 
Eugenia Loli-Queru said:
>If you're going to edit in 720, just shoot 720. No sense in downconverting to edit.

I do not agree. It's always a plus to shoot in higher res, and then zoom-in during post production. I do it all the time on my music videos in order to create effects, and to fix bad framings. Besides, the day will come one day that 1080p would be piece of cake. So pros should always shoot and edit at the highest quality ever, and then export according to the capabilities of each medium used.
Click to expand...

I didn't say there weren't advantages. They just don't outweigh the hassle for what they were planning to do, especially when it was going to involve downconverting before editing. While it's often true that shooting in a higher resolution will be advantageous, that's when all other things are equal -- and many times, they aren't.

Then again, there are no hard and fast rules to anything, so often it's a matter of personal preference.

I would, however, caution against the crutch of shooting a bigger frame in order to reframe or fix bad frames later. For a planned shoot, a disciplined pre-production and disciplined shooting should alleviate the need to reframe. I'd rather people be in the mindset of already knowing what their framing should be and getting it on set and in camera the first time.

But if you do have to, a robust acquisition codec gives you a surprising amount of leeway for zooming in with little quality loss, as long as you don't push it too far. A really bad frame job, if you need the shot, should really just be reshot.
 
>a disciplined pre-production and disciplined shooting should alleviate the need to reframe

In theory, yes. But in reality, for no-budget shorts or music videos (like mine), or for other kinds of videos, re-framing is a reality because not all of us have a director of photography on staff. I usually re-frame 20% of my shots in any given music video, and I'm not ashamed of it. Given the conditions my videos are shot (usually within a few hours, and without myself having seen the location before in my life), it's a miracle that number is not 80%.

In fact, many movie and TV show editors re-frame all the time, for many reasons (not just to fix things, but to also to create supposed new camera shots, e.g. a shot closer to the face of the actor). CSI:Miami does that a lot (I wouldn't have noticed if it wasn't for one time where they zoomed-in too much to the point that was visible that this was not a normal quality).

In the brand new music video I released yesterday (link: http://is.gd/eh9kQ ), about 15% of the shots are reframed, at about 15% (meaning, zooming-in/rotating at about 15% of their size). Still, I exported at 720p, even if I shot in 1080p, since my main target was Vimeo. A lot of people can't playback 720p via Flash fast-enough, so I prefer to not make things even worse for them. However, if the band asks me for a 1080p version for TV broadcast or something, I will export one such version for them.
 
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Eugenia, I'm not saying there aren't cases where it wouldn't be appropriate. As I said, there are no hard and fast rules.

I'm just generally cautioning against getting into the habit of relying on post to fix problems, which can engender bad habits while shooting. That's general advice for all aspects of filmmaking.
 
Thank you all for your answers. Very instructive.
I'm asking because I have a brand new pc and there still is a very slight stuttering when I play a clip I put on Vimeo, so I'm supposing it must be impossible to read for users who have a system a few years old...
 
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