A Beginners Guide to High Definition Video

Formats, Specs and Types for Shooting, Editing and Watching

Delivering and Watching HD
Of course all this shooting and editing HD video is all well and good but what about watching it and delivering it to an audience? At the moment the major HD video delivery mechanism that all are expecting is still on the horizon taking its time to find its way into popular domestic use. There are two competing formats for DVD-like disc delivery of HD material; Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. Developed and supported by different developers and manufacturers, it is still unclear as to which one will ultimately become the dominant standard ? much like the old VHS vs Betamax format wars of the 1980s. Only time will tell.

HD-DVD uses existing red-laser technology which is the same as normal DVD's and so relatively cheaper to produce and more easily backwards compatible than Blu-Ray. Blu-ray however has the support of the major Hollywood studios and so potentially will attract consumers by offering first the movies they really want. In the meantime however, until you cough up the cash for a Blu-Ray burner or HD-DVD authoring system, there are still a number of ways you can watch your HD videos in their native HD resolution on a HDTV or computer screen.

Component Video
Many of the new HDV and AVCHD cameras have a component video output socket that provides an individual plug for Red, Green and Blue color signal. Most HDTV sets will similarly have Component Video input sockets. With this set-up you can directly connect your camera to your HDTV and watch your video in its native HD resolution. Component video cables however only carry visual signal so you will separately need to connect audio from the camera?s AV socket or headphone output to the audio input of your HDTV.

Component video cable

If you have shot on HDV to tape and captured and edited your video in a computer editing system, then you can perform a Print To Tape (PTT) which involves writing the completed video back out via FireWire to a blank tape in the camera. The final product can then be played back out from the tape via Component Video connections to the HDTV.

If you shot on AVCHD, DVD or Hard Drive then you don?t have the option to print back to the camera but can watch the raw HD video directly from the camera via Component cables. In the near future it is likely that there will be stand-alone Blu-Ray or HD-DVD players that are also AVCHD compatible and able to play back the native AVCHD disc.

HDMI
Short for High Definition Media Interface, HDMI is an alternative to Component connections with the advantage that the three plugs are merged into a single easy to use plug. HDMI also trumps Component because the single cable also carries the audio signal as well as the video. So one plug is all you need to connect up your HDV or AVCHD camera so long as your camera and HDTV have HDMI connections.

WMV-HD
For finished and edited projects that need to be more portable and transferable, Windows Media Video (WMV) offers support for HD images and playback. WMV is a file format and compression scheme that most video editing systems can render to. WMV compresses the video substantially so some quality is lost but the overall file size is massively reduced and the resulting image is generally very good. WMV-HD is also able to house 5.1 surround sound audio.

The other digital file format that can accommodate HD resolutions is *.mp4 files using the AVC codec (the same as is used to encode data in AVCHD cameras). Most good video editing systems can render and export in *.mp4 format at HD resolution, and like WMV, the data can be heavily compressed to make the otherwise massive HD video files much more manageable and portable.

Both these computer-based formats can be played back on a computer and if the computer?s monitor supports HD resolutions, can subsequently be seen in their native HD. Similarly your computer or laptop can be connected to your HDTV to playback these HD files. This is simply a case of connecting the computer to the HDTV via either a VGA connection or, preferably, a DVI connector cable (depending on what input options your HDTV has)

VGA

DVI cable

The shift to HD from traditional standard definition is happening extremely quickly and all sections of the market are at the mercy of corporate directions, technological changes and a steep learning curve. This is especially true of consumers and amateur video makers where there is a large degree of confusion and misinformation in the market place. But becoming familiar with the terminology and formats is well worth the effort. Once you've seen the glory of HD you never go back.