This is something I ponder often. What image size is acceptable for videos these days? It’s a relevant question to those of use who use programs like Blender, and have to take into account render times and memory usage, but also the quality of the finished image.
I believe that the largest video resolution I would use is 720x480-- standard DVD resolution. It’s big enough to capture the most relevant detail but not so large as to be cumbersome on a low to mid-range system. Most of the time, I think 360x240 (standard DVD 50%), or sometimes 480x270 (Blu-Ray 25%), are plenty for my own work (because my machine is ancient and I’m not doing anything too fantastic yet anyway). That said, I often see people using images up to the Blu-Ray res of 1920x1080 or more, and even rendering video this way.
This might be a no-brainer for most people, but I thought I’d bring this up for consideration.
It really comes down to your target audience. If you’re aiming for video streaming, 480x320 (or whatever the height ratio is) is fine, but if you’re rendering for HD output you’ll need to account for the render time that comes with 1080HD. Although it’s not as important to render time, you’ll need to make sure you have the right pixel aspect ratios for PAL and NTSC rendering for TV and that sort of thing.
In the end, it’s all down to time and target audience.
depends on what you’re doing, really. I use 1280x720 for Vimeo and YouTube HD (tutorials and other stuff), and I often use 720x480 when doing animation renders and things…though to be honest I haven’t rendered that many animations, mainly simulations
1280 x 720 is pretty standard in the work I do, though I try to be ready for a change to a 1920x1080 workflow. It’s usually easier to start large and go smaller. If you’re working with film-res stuff (something shot on a RED for instance) then you’re into 2K files. So, of course, it depends. But if the client doesn’t care, or doesn’t know, I suggest 1280 x 720.
Everything revolves around your intended delivery and only that. Just make sure you understand the pixel aspect ratio as well as frame aspect ratio for different formats.
What you render at is an entirely different question. As long as you know how to take that to the delivery format without aspect ratio distortion you are fine.
Any basic NLE can output to the various delivery formats. So what you put into that project has to look right coming out the other side. That is mostly about aspect ratio.
Quality is up to you and your resources. If you put a small image into an NLE that will deliver at a higher res, then of course quality will suffer. But don’t make the mistake of confusing these two issues.
Rendering at a higher resolution than the intended output is one solution people have used to tackle anti aliasing.
Rendering at a lower resolution that the intended can also work with some software that can up-res such as photo shop. I have done that a lot with my artwork.
Also if you intend to go to film, you may only have resources to deliver to HD and that can then be transferred to film. It is done very often with nice results. Not ideal But you have to balance available resources against quality.
We produce everything in 1080p seems there is nothing else anymore and customers start to wish for BR and 3D-BR rather than other compressed videos.
Recently we film with the Canon 5D, which is originally a photo camera. It has a 1" chip, records HD and gives awesome results (House M.D. season 6 was filmed with the 5D) and it is well worth its money.
We also use them on a rig for stereo 3D filming which has a big hype in product presentation at the moment.
Customers on the other hand usually got the WTF look when you come with the 5D, because they expect you to come with a heavy huge camera system
Good thing everyone knows House M.D. thats what usually calms them down when you state the fact you´r filming with a photocamera
That said, the real footage usually being 1080p, I got not much choise but to render composits or animated scenes in 1080p as well
And as long as you obey the rules of title and action save it´s no problem to cut or render down to a lower resolution, while producing in 720p and then needing 1080p delivers ugly results.
Always better to remove existing data scaling down than invent non existing data scaling up.
As Richard said… downsampling.
I see no reason why not to use a DSLR for movie productions if the resulting quality and mood fits. For what I saw it produces a shallow DOF due to its lenses and has an astonishing image quality.
In my opinion its a step away from hightech and a step back to art in movie production, it is like a painter chooses his canvas and paints.
I am sure you can make an incredible movie today as well with Super8 if it fits the “masterpiece”
I´ll see if I can get an ok on some scenes from the foundry we lately shot and post them up in 1080p if you´r intrested. They are amazing, for the scenery and how the camera handles the contrast, light and especially the red values.
I personally use 720p for most animation and 1080p for stills… each project is different though and you need to think about it if 1080p is going to run render times into the 20 mins per frame
Customers on the other hand usually got the WTF look when you come with the 5D, because they expect you to come with a heavy huge camera system
I know that feeling! lol… I was part of a team doing some video project for non profit organizations in eastern europe and we had a dslr and 2 hdv cams… no one there was expecting us to be using the slr as main camera it saved our buts in the end though because there was quite a bit of fluorescent lighting and we didnt notice it at first but the 2 dv cams were picking up quite a bit of strobing the slr was fine though
yey for more portable better colour more zoom cameras!
You really should subdivide this issue into two separate issues: (1) screen resolution, and (2) aspect ratio.
In both cases, you need to have your intended target(s) very firmly in mind. If your final prints are only going to be seen on a NTSC (old-school) television set, then there is no point in doing any renders that are higher-resolution than that … even though they will look like “this sucks large” on your computer monitor. If, on the other hand, you might be deploying to HD, then you have a decision to make. You might decide to render to that higher resolution and then “bump down” to low-res. Or, you might decide to render only to low-res now, and save the HD work for another day.
Either way you slice it … aspect-ratios will figure into the equation. This is, of course, an expression of the general “shape” of the screen. You might well find yourself blocking-out each shot with two fields-of-view in mind: the large, “cinematic” field-of-view that characterizes HD, and simultaneously the traditional confines of NTSC (or PAL) video.
P.S. You might also need to bear in mind that the pixels on a TV set are not square: they are rectangular. Video “bump-down” programs are generally aware of this, and generally do a good job with it. But, nevertheless, you will need to plan to actually generate some test-outputs, very early on, so that you can see for yourself exactly what the final prints will look like, when actually viewed. (Legend has it that Abbey Road Studios had “a very cheap set of car speakers” in their mixing-room for precisely this purpose.)
Just make sure that it looks good “enough” on the target equipment.
Animation tests can obviously be pure-crap … :yes: . There is, after all, no reason to waste computer-time on what is “throw away.” Just make sure that the aspect ratio is the same. (As it is, in your case.) The “hastily rendered” tests are, after all, “drop-in replacements” for their final versions.
At work, everything I do is 1920x1080, but I have to make sure that any important stuff is within a 720x540 central zone. The editors take my HD frames and crank out NTSC videos because the stations all play that still. But as they phase into HD, we are already ready.
the slr was fine though