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Unit 314V
Creating A Digital Video Sequence
Overview
Frame Rate Video Resolution Recording Formats Aspect Ratios Audio File formats Codecs
All videos are made up from a sequence of still images - like photos - played very quickly. Your brain is fooled into filling in the gaps and thinks it is seeing real movement. If we show 15 still pictures per second, we call that 15 Frames per Second (fps). That's actually about the rate that our brain works, so a video has to be at least 15fps in order to fool your brain into thinking it is real movement. Anything filmed below that (like some mobile phone footage) looks choppy and low quality because it can be as low as 8fps. TVs and DVDs in the UK normally use the PAL format, which displays video at 25fps. In the US, however, NTSC is used instead. This format displays video at 30fps (actually 29.97, but most people refer to it as 30). Both of these formats are called Standard Definition Television (SDTV).
Frame Rate
High Definition Television(HDTV) is a much newer format that is used in both the US and the UK. HDTV videos can be set at 25fps or 30fps as well as 50fps or 60fps. Finally, cinemas uses a frame rate of 23.976fps (or
Video Resolution
Every video frame, or image, is made up of a series of tiny dots (called pixels). The more pixels you have, the better quality the picture. PAL - the British format of TV, displays video at 720 x 576 pixels. On the diagram below that's the red and yellow areas combined. That means the screen has 576 squares or dots along each row, and 480 going top to bottom (that's 415,000 pixels - or 0.4MP - much less than your digital camera).
Fig: PAL, NTSC and HD formats and their resolutions in pixels.
Video Resolution II
This graph gives more of a complete view of digital video resolutions. Many of the smaller resolutions were popular sizes for mobile devices and for Internet transmission of video.
Fig: Popular video standards, their names, resolutions and aspect ratios.
Recording Formats I
It used to be that all camcorders recorded their images to tapes. There were a couple of different formats, but they all worked in pretty much the same way. Over the last few years, however, there has been an explosion of different formats and qualities aimed at TV, the Internet, and the new High Definition TV standard.
Recording Formats II
2. High Definition (HD)
The best quality video you can get. Pictures are shot at anything up to 1920 x 1080 pixels (but most often 1440 x 1080) which effectively means theyre good enough to be shown on a full size cinema screen. In order to play back HD video you need a HD Television (or you can watch them on your computer screen). In order to output them from your computer, you need a special DVD writer (called a blu-ray or HD-DVD writer) and a bluray or HD-DVD player to play them. Many modern smartphones and handheld cameras are now also recording in a variety of HD resolutions. YouTube now supports HD files and professional video editing software now specifically support exporting HD video optimised for YouTube and the Internet.
Aspect Ratios I
Most monitors and older TVs used to be fairly square (not quite square, but squarer than the following three standards).
Aspect Ratios II
If you want to watch a widescreen (16:9) DVD on an older (4:3) the picture will be too wide to fit.
Solutions: Chop the two ends off (and hope there is nothing important going on there) or shrink the video down to fit, and be left with two black bars at the top and bottom of the video (this is called
Pillarboxing
If you watch (4:3) video on a widescreen (16:9) TV you might two black bars at the sides (this is called Pillarboxing - think of an old fashioned post box). You could zoom in a bit and chop the top and bottom off. Or you could stretch the video sideways - but that might not look right.
Audio I
There are three main types of audio used for video: Mono, Stereo and Surround Sound.
Audio
Audio II
Surround sound takes your left and
right, and adds front and back - making four speakers at opposite corners. This way we can position the sound quite accurately to make us think it's coming from a very specific location. Cinemas always use surround sound, and more and more front rooms are being equipped with surround sound systems. Fig: Surround sound set up.
Audio
When exporting video you will have to decide if it is appropriate to compress your audio or not (to ensure a smaller file size). Here are two common audio formats:
MP3: If a high bitrate is set, the file size will be small and the audio quality
very good.
File formats I
When your computer has a limited storage space and you need to share your videos on the Internet, having a small file size is vital. In addition to this, having a set of standard video formats that can be read on TVs, computers, Internet websites and handheld devices is essentials.
This is why videos are compressed and exported in a format that most devices will be able Fig: Realise the power of your video. to view.
The main idea is that if you make the file size smaller, you lose video and audio quality.
Section 2 - Flexible
WMV (Windows Media Video), AVI (Audio Video Interleave), MOV (Quicktime MOVie) and MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group) also known as MP4 files are quite
similar.
They can all be very low quality, small files and they can all be very high quality, large files - or pretty much anywhere in between.
They can be made using different codecs (you might have heard of DivX and XviD, which are popular codecs). A codec is a set of instructions for packaging the video.
MPEG (or MPG) files are similar to AVI files, because there are several
different versions. MPEG1 was used for the original VCDs (Video CDs) which came out before DVDs. MPEG2 was (and still is) used for DVDs and MPEG4 is used for Bluray and also for iPod video files (they are often called MP4 files as well). All of the file types mentioned so far use MPEG technology.
Codecs I
A codec does two things to the pictures and audio that make up a video file:
compressor decompressor
A codec compresses a video file to a smaller size. The video is then contained in a single file. The codec then decompresses the video file for normal viewing on a PC or handheld device. Compressing video content helps ensure transfer and storage of video files happens quickly and cheaply. It is vital for example that a video file is small so not to generate an expensive internet or phone bill for people who have limited bandwidth. The recipient of the video must have a device that is able to read (decompress) the file, otherwise they might not be able to view the video. This is why it is important to consider which codecs are most widely used and most likely to be installed on the devices of clients and costumers. This consideration will guide you to decide which file format and