Chat Noir's Beginner's Guide To HD

Confused? You won't be soon. Read on.....

Chat Noir Productions offers High Definition filming as an optional extra on all projects.
So the questions are:

• What is 'HD',
• How does it differ from SD (Standard Definition)
• And why should it matter to you?

Well let’s first of all make clear what it’s NOT, and that’s a gimmick or a fad.
Speak to people in the video and broadcasting industries and you will hear them referring to the SD to HD transition as being as big as the move from VHS to DVD; some even likening it in significance to the shift from black and white to colour.

A quick explanation of video (The science bit)

There are various Video Systems used throughout the world: PAL, NTSC & SECAM (as well as variants of them). For the purposes of this guide however, all the details below are relevant for the system that the UK uses, 'PAL'.
Click on the map to the right if you're interested in knowing where the different systems are used.

All Digital Video is made up of tiny dots called Pixels (short for ‘picture element’). Pixels are combined with other pixels to make up an image. Picture clarity increases as the number of pixels increase in a measured area of an image. Click on the image to the right to see an example of the same image made up of different amounts of pixels.

The definition of, um... well, ‘Definition’

Standard Definition video in the UK has a pixel resolution (that is the measurement of the amount of pixels wide by the amount of pixels high an image is) of 768x576 & is sometimes refered to as '576'. (For the record, that's a total of 414,720 pixels).
 
Well then, surely isn't it just a matter of comparing that (768x576) against the resolution of HD to see what the difference is? You guessed it, it's not quite as simple as that.
The part where it starts to get a little silly is that there isn’t just one 'flavour' of HD, there are several.
Bear with me and I'll do my best to explain!

Unfortunately, the term 'High Definition' doesn't refer to a single resolution of pixels but in fact quite confusingly actually encompasses a range of several different resolutions. THEN, there's the scanning method; either 'p' (progressive) or 'i' (interlaced), not to metion the frame rate (24, 25, 30, 60, e.t.c....). Still with me? Don't worry if you're not - It's this confusion that often leads those that aren't sure about the different HD formats into buying or obtaining one thing when they expect it to be another.
 
Here, we're simply going to concentrate on the two most common resolutions: 1080p/i & 720p.
The numbers in these names as with the nickname for Standard Definition refers to the height of the image produced in pixels:

• 720p = 1280x720 pixels
• 1080p/i = 1920x1080 pixels

Click on the chart to the right to see a direct comparrison of the resolutions sizes between SD PAL, SD NTSC & the two different kinds of HD that we're exploring here.

720 vs 1080

As you can see from the chart (above right), 1080 has a significantly higher resolution than 720.
Chat Noir Productions offers filming in both of these resolutions, but unlike a lot of other companies we record direct to XDCAM-EX (a high speed, high capacity, solid state memory stick) as opposed to HDV (a tape based medium).
 
Although not strictly anything to do with the resolution of the image, It's worth pointing out that the light sensitive 'chip' that the lens of our HD camera is focusing the image onto (just like in stills photography where the camera's lens focuses light onto the film plate) is a 1/2" chip. What this means without going into the science of it all is that compared to all the other cameras in it's class (that only have 1/3" chips), our gear produces more polished and cinematic feeling footage.

Why should I bother with HD?

This is a question we get asked all the time & there is more than one answer.
 
First of all, if you're going to record something, why not have the clearist sharpest picture available to you?
The next comment tends to be "That's all very well but I don't have a HDTV & a lot of the people that are going to be watching the production won't be watching it through a High Definition device either."
 
The answer? - The higher the quality of the original recording the better it will look no matter the final delivery resolution or what you're viewing it on. Case in point - A DVD plays video that is Standard Definition (576), yet when you watch your favourite film on DVD it looks much better than something you may have filmed yourself on a consumer grade camcorder & burnt to a DVD.
Why? One of the major reasons for this is because the original footage was shot on 35mm film (a higher resolution than even 1080 HD). More detail to begin with makes it easier to down-grade the resolution to SD & keep it looking as good as possible, because the complex algorithims that are used to convert the video to a lower resolution have more information to work with.
 
Another reason for Shooting HD that is often over looked is 'Future Proofing'.
More & more people are buying HDTVs & more & more way's of watching HD content are becoming available everyday with the likes of Youtube™ & other online video-streaming services starting to deliver HD content; as well of course as the growing popularity of Blu-ray™.
We can film your production in HD & deliver the production in a SD format (e.g., DVD). But because the rushes (the originally filmed footage) is all in HD, should at a later date you want the production redeliverd to you in a High Definition format, we can do that for you. If it was originally shot in SD, then that's as high a resolution that it's ever going to be.

Click here for more information on our HD services, & on the banner below to see a side by side comparison video of our SD and HD cameras shooting the same image.