Whats better for web? Shooting in 720p or 1080p which will be compressed?

M

M1CEtro

Active member
Hey guys, I shoot music videos with my Canon 7D and upload them to vimeo and youtube. I always set my videos to automatically play in 720p for vimeo and use the "&hd=1" trick for them to load in 720p for youtube. (Most people dont want to wait on 1080p loading times) I've always been shooting and rendering my videos out in 1080p, but the video will most likely be played in 720p when viewed. Would it be better to just shoot my videos in 720p? Will I get better quality playing my video on vimeo/youtube in 720p if I shoot and render out to 720p as opposed to shooting and rendering 1080p and then just watching the compressed 720p version of that?

Thanks
 
Your 7D has horrible aliasing and moire in 720p mode. It's almost useless in any situation. Always shoot 1080p and work down when rendering if needed for file size. Now that I've seen some of my better footage from my T3i and 24 L II on a 27" Apple Cinema Display at 2560x1440 I would never think of rending down to 720p. Even APS-C soft Canon footage at 1080p looks incredible blown up on one of the better higher def monitors. Just for my own purposes I could never render out to 720p for youtube or vimeo again after seeing what you can truly get out of these things on a great monitor at 1080p.

Cheers,
Pete
 
^^ Yep, that's good advice no matter what camera you're shooting on. 1080p shots rendered out at 720p will look sharper and better than 720p shots.

Not to mention if you're editing in 720, having 1080 footage will give you room to crop and re-compose shots without a quality loss.
 
...and it's far easier to roto or key a 1080 shot. I did a spot the other day, and the heroes had the wrong packaging - I was able to motion track out the wrong element on the product. Could have done it 720, but for any effect or repair stuff, it's just like retouching in photoshop - give me more pixels!

Ever try to key 720 DSLR footage? A whole sh*t-ton of that noise is green. Try it some time. It's jaw-dropping (thought if a shot needs keying, I tend to use the HMC, the DSLR aliasing kills me).

Often I shoot 1080 and then batch all my footage down to 720 for the edit, especially if there's a lot of effect stuff (which I do in 1080 and then render at 720 - it can really glue an effect shot together). But I'll keep a set of 1080 clips for the timeline. It's pretty cool, dropping a 1080 clip in and suddenly having a sharp and useable close-up; in many cases, it's like adding a 4th camera to a 3-camera shoot.
 
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