U-Save Video Format
Choosing a video format can determine how to keep the project within your anticipated budget. Below are some video formats, with a short description, that you might consider for your project.
Film
Many agencies prefer to shoot their high budget productions using film. Film has a "rich" look that is preferred by many producers. Shooting a project on film is very expensive and time consuming. Special equipment is required as well as specialized personnel, high cost of the media, processing costs, time-consuming preparation for each shot, and on and on and on. The costs involved in a film-based project are conservatively 10 to 15 times that of a high-end video project. As an alternative to film there are digital processes that can be applied to video that can mimic the look and feel of film and reduce the cost of production considerably.
High Definition Video
High Definition (HiDef/HD) Video may just be the most flexible video standard on the market today. HD was developed to provide the viewing public with a high quality image that far exceeded that of its predecessor NTSC (Standard Definition/SD). The display is intended to more closely resemble that of a theater, more of a wide screen look.
HD comes in a variety of flavors from uncompressed 1080i to consumer 720p. There are technical issues of compression ratios, color space, pixel aspect ratios, frame rates, bit rates, fixed lens vs interchangeable lens, chip sizes, audio capabilities, etc. Camera prices for HD cameras can range from well over $100,000 for high-end shoulder mounted cameras, to several hundred dollars for a consumer-grade palm sized HD camera. There IS a reason that professionals pay these high prices for their equipment... one word QUALITY. In an effort to provide the masses with a consumer version of HD for home videos etc. QUALITY was the sacrificial lamb... sort of like the old VHS standard. Consumer HD has a few tale tale signs; blacks are dark gray, blues may lean toward purple, small blocks of video may appear in fast changing scenes, graphics typically have rough edges, and the video appears to stutter particularly when scenes are quickly panned from side to side.
In its native form HD video is great for BluRay authoring and broadcast i.e., commercials, infomercials, etc. HD video is also used for producing wide screen DVDs and web videos. Even though these applications may not use the full frame video, the quality of the video, due to technical reasons, is much better than native NTSC. Due to the size of the video HD-based projects are a bit more time consuming to edit and process and result in slightly higher production costs.
Wide screen DVDs are a great way to economically distribute your project to a broad audience that may not have BluRay capabilities and yet have the video displayed on a wide screen set using their DVD player.
Standard Definition Video
Before there was HD there was Standard Definition (SD). Broadcast quality SD video was the standard used by the broadcast industry for many years. Basically video was displayed in terms of 720x486 pixels vs HD which is displayed at up to 1920x1080 pixels.
SD is not dead yet! There are some advantages to SD particularly for web applications and long form DVD presentations. For web video applications where video aspect and video size are basically irrelevant SD can provide video that is moderate in size and yet streams fairly smooth due to its smaller bandwidth requirements. It is also small enough to embed in Power Point presentations.
For seminars and long-form videos not meant for broadcast but more for semi-mass distribution, SD can be a budget saving life saver. The video can be shot for wide screen DVD authoring, the storage requirements are significantly lower than HD, editing and encoding are much faster, and distribution can be done on inexpensive DVDs.
Obsolete Video Formats
These formats include 3/4 UMatic, SuperVHS, Hi-8, Mini DV, VHS, VHS-C, and consumer Hi-8. Many companies purchased their own video equipment during the late 80s and early 90s to do their own in-house video productions. Many wedding videographers followed suit as equipment prices dropped and became more available. With the introduction of consumer HD cameras most of these formats have become obsolete.
Still Photography
Still photography has been included because of the acquisition method and the increasing popularity of creating "slide-shows" and still photography being co-mingled with the video in video productions. Digital still photography lends itself to being easily integrated with computer based non-linear editing systems.