Music and Audio Blog

Archive for February, 2009

So you have decided that you want to embark on documenting whatever in moving images for the first time, but how do you go about selecting the camera? Writing a really elaborate answer would require an entire book, so here I’ll try to give you a very brief version.

I am going to assume that you are an individual and not a professional movie maker, and that this may even be the first camera you are buying (if it isn’t – no matter, the advice holds true all the same). You are probably looking for the kind of camera that would be easy to take with you, that is easy to use and that records in a format that is compatible with the various computer programs and television screens of today.

There are a number of camera types that may fulfill the above criteria, and what you choose will be largely dependent on the quality you desire for your finished movie project. For lower resolution projects, appropriate for the web for instance, something like one of those new flip video cameras would do the trick. But Then, if you desire Full HD picture quality for displaying on your brand new flat screen, you may opt for a camera recording in the Avchd file format. This means you also need avchd compatible video editing software, which is now widely available.

Benefits of high definition

Allthough everybody talks about high definition these days, you may be surprised to know that it is not a particularly new term. In fact it was used way back in the 1930s when the British 405 line (black and white) TVs where introduced. Their resolution was higher than on the older sets, so thus it was called “high definition”.

Nonetheless, when some one talks about “high definition” they still can mean a few things, depending upon who talks about it and in which context.

Fundamentally, high definition television is the most evolved form of digital television, thus far. It makes full use of the 16:9 aspect ratio, just like in the cinema, that is standard on all new television screens. The resolution is up to five times from ordinary (SD) resolution, which on a big enough screen is a great improvement indeed. Simply put – high definition is the best available picture on a television. Nevertheless, there are three separate variants of it: 720p, 1080i and 1080p. Only the last mention one is “full hd” and is also the new blu-ray standard.

The format to work with avchd video editing, is most of the time 1080i. More reading on video recording and editing is available here.