Hd

scotman

scotman

Well-known member
ok, just because I make a composition an hd preset does that mean in will be HD footage. I am really confused about the whole HD thing.

Let me explain, when I watch law and order I can watch it in HD or standard. But its the same camera shots, the same everything, the same commercials. Either the camera men were standing on top of each other when shooting of the footage is from the same camera.

I have a widescreen laptop and when I play videos the side of the video is black. I made a comp ntsc and I got the same results. i made the comp wide screen just to test it out, same results, the sides were still black. im running the same comp using hd setting to see if this will change,

but will the quality be HD or is that a whole other learning curve. I hope im not too confusing, just want to make sense of it all

lastly, what does red giants HD conversion plugin do. thanks

ooops. in AE will plugins like trapcode, zaxwerks, be in HD
 
In After Effect there is no HD "presets" as far as I know. AE will immediately recognize HD footage and create an appropriately sized composition for it. There are technical details here involving different HD codecs and such, but they will only affect the speed at which AE works with your footage. Everything else is the same as DV, meaning that the effects and plug-ins will all work (just don't expect them to run as fast). I'm not exactly sure what your other questions are so I'll try to go through your points one at a time.

I believe that two versions of the same show are created, including commercials, one HD and the other standard def, and broadcast simultaneously on different channels. So yeah, the footage is from the same camera, the SD version is just down-rezzed and then blown up on your HDTV. Not sure why you would expect this to be different.

You seem to be asking why there are black bars on either side of your videos. The only reason I can think of is that your original footage is 4:3. Playing 4:3 footage on a widescreen and you'll see those bars. Changing the composition settings won't help if the footage that you're working with is already that size, you'll just end up stretching it out. Do you use an HD camera? That would be odd because I don't know of any HD camera right now that shoots 4:3 natively. The only explaination is that you've decided to output the footage as 4:3 when you capture. Check your camera capture setting.

Lastly, Instant HD from Red Giant uprez your SD image into HD.
 
I am using a DV camera. So shows like law and order are filmed using HD then downsized. So you cant shoot HD if you dont have an HD camera?? the HD preset is more of a comp size in AE 7.0. When I rendered out the same 7 second clip as 4:3 it took 45 minutes, filled up my whole screen, and was about 2 gigs. But the resolution didnt look HD.
 
scotman said:
I am using a DV camera. So shows like law and order are filmed using HD then downsized. So you cant shoot HD if you dont have an HD camera?? the HD preset is more of a comp size in AE 7.0. When I rendered out the same 7 second clip as 4:3 it took 45 minutes, filled up my whole screen, and was about 2 gigs. But the resolution didnt look HD.
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Right. Actually, I think L&O is shot on 35mm film, then scanned to HD.

The broadcast networks have hardware that facilitates simultanious broadcast in HD and SD at once, so you get to switch between the two at home. You can generally even switch your TV tuner to convert HD->SD, and your TV will automatically up-res SD to fill the screen as best it can ..... this looks blurry of course.

All that happend for you is that your SD pixels were essentially made "bigger" to fill out all the pixels in an HD comp. You still have only have data for 720 RBG values across and 480 down (assuming NTSC) ... when dropped into an HD comp, these values are mostly just spread out to fill 1920x1080 or whatever HD res you selected.

Redgiant has special computations built in to estimate the color values of the "in between" pixels, so the blending looks smoother/cleaner when you scale up than AE's standard stretching. That's the value you get for paying for their software.
 
so what about effects and all. trapcode zaxwerks, etc.

Right now with what I have can I make HD quality graphics in AE or do I need something else? THanks so far
 
Anything can be HD in After Effects 7. HD is a resolution, and thats it. If you want your SD content to be HD, then you can do it. Just create a HD Composition (by using a HD resolution such as 1280x720). Bring your SD footage in there and scale it up to HD. Your clip is now HD. It is ugly HD, but it is HD. HD is a standard of video, thats it. If you blow up your SD content to HD, it will not look any better, but it will be HD (technically speaking). There is no point in doing this, because all it does is make larger file sizes and doesn't give you any benefit. The only reason you'd ever want to do that is if the end product had to be in the HD standard for some reason. Now, if you create graphics in After Effects at the HD level, they will also be in HD, BUT they will also look like HD too (in other words, it will look fantastic).

So, there you go. You can make anything "HD", but that doesn't mean it will look like HD. For the true HD look you must create graphics at HD resolutions, or you must shoot your footage with a HD camera.
 
One more quick analogy...

Think of it this way, you can take a wallet-sized photograph and blow it up to a full-size poster. It is going to look terrible, but it will be a poster.
 
MrPolarBare said:
So, there you go. You can make anything "HD", but that doesn't mean it will look like HD. For the true HD look you must create graphics at HD resolutions, or you must shoot your footage with a HD camera.
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Well .... there are a few ways to get HD without an HD camera per se :)

1) Shoot timelapse with a DSLR and compile the images into an HD video
2) Shoot DV for one area of your frame and comp an HD res matte painting around it (no scaling of the DV)
3) Shoot film (preferably 16mm or better) and telecine to HD resolutions

Granted, these options are not particularly practical for many common situations, but just thought it would be worth mentioning. Most of what I work on these days comes off an F950 and working with these shots is really a totally different experience than using DV. It can be good to go through the effort of working on creating HD shots from time to time, even just to get an idea about how heavy the pipeline can be, so these tricks can be handy to try if you have no other way of acquiring your own HD shots to work with.

Of course, yes, the catch-all solution is to shoot on HD gear. Keep in mind that you can rent an HD or HDV camera for a day or weekend and shoot and capture like mad. HDV cameras can often be found for around $300 for a weekend, and a CineAlta rig can be as low as $1000-$1500 for a weekend. (less than the cost of buying an HDV camera!)

Have fun.
 
HD refers to the 2D resolution of the finished image, not bit depth or 3D (X,Y,Z axis) position.
As a result, all the effects, solids, etc. work in "HD".


Where are you going with this line of questions?
What is it you are *really* trying to do?

if we go back to this question...
so what about effects and all. trapcode zaxwerks, etc.

Right now with what I have can I make HD quality graphics in AE or do I need something else?
Click to expand...
The answer is YES.
You can make HD graphics.
Especially if you use solids, text, line art from something like Illustrator, photos from 2mega pixel or better cameras, photoshop files that are HD resolution or better, etc.

It's only when you take an SD video shot (or image that is low res like SD) and try to enlarge it to HD size that you will have results that don't "look HD quality".
 
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