HD AMVs

Willen · Post by **Willen** » Thu Dec 14, 2006 8:26 am

DJ_Izumi wrote:Thirdly, while the majority of people have displays that can do 1280x720 without scaling down, the same can not be said for a resolution of 1920 × 1080. Only extreamly large displays can even do 1080p resolution without it being scaled down and making it a waste. Most LCD displays capable of 1080p start at about 24 inches. Even if LCDs are smaller and lighter these days, most people don't want anything larger than 17-19 inch displays on their desks. Which are great for 720p but 1080p will be scaled down. 1080p displays start at 24 inches and the price tags start around $800usd.

I forgot to mention the monitor issue. Most LCDs in the 17" to 19" range are 1280 x 1024 assuming non-widescreen (17" widescreen would be 1280/1366 x 720/768/800 and rarely 1920 x 1200) so 1280 x 720 is a better resolution. Now at 19"+ wide, we have 1440 x 900 and the occasional 1680 x 1050 so resolution-wise, 1280 x 720 is still better suited although at the higher resolution, downscaling 1920 x 1080 may be preferred. Greater sizes (20"+) have greater resolution, but full 1920 x 1080/1200 is still not common.

I haven't checked prices on 23/24" widescreens in a while so I was shocked that prices have dropped so much. And personally, I'd love to have a 24" widescreen 1920 x 1200 monitor (or 2) on my desktop. After having 1280 x 1024 pixels for a while, going with less vertical resolution is kinda a downer -- I want wider, not shorter so 1680 x 1050 is the minimum. I'm willing so compromise for my notebook (which has a 14" 1280 x 800 screen), but less so for my desktop.

Hopefully, with the increased adoption of either Blu-ray or HD-DVD, efficient H.264/MPEG-4 AVC will become more widely available. Although I'm sure that the computer companies rather have people buy newer, more powerful hardware (along side Windows Vista) than stick with their older machines.

Oh, and if you do release 1080p and 720p material, I hope it plays on my PS3. I've seen 1080p and 720p (even upconverted 720p stuff) on my HDTV and I like what I see.

DJ_Izumi · Post by **DJ_Izumi** » Thu Dec 14, 2006 8:59 am

From an editors point of view. I'm one of those types who uses VirtualDub to convert their souce to lossless (Yes, I even do it with DVD sourced AMVs). By exporting short 1-20 second long clips as needed to work on in my timeline. I... Don't want to imagine the disk space necessary to use that tactic with 720p... o_o

I'm open to someone suggesting a quick and automated bait and switch tactic, since I do like to have all these short clips, it's hard to bait and switch those compared to just doing whole episodes. Or I might just have to relearn a new method, compared to my tried and true method I've been using for 4+ years.

Adding to that, the idea of doing 720p work in AE scares the bejebus out of me. I've had long enough rendering times with my big AE project (Which is now on hold till a DVD series release that starts in Jan that I need. :/) at 640x480. Blarg. @_X

On a side note, I'm in charge of managing all the video rooms for a convention and I keep looking for new, simple inovations. First was having animated 'count downs' between episodes and rooms that run 22hrs without needing supervision. Next is rooms that announce on screen what airs next, in the space between episodes and remote control of the video machines from elsewhere in the convention. But the idea of HD presentations has been bugging me. Most all data projectors are 1024x768, or at least the run of the mill ones are. I can't in good consience advertise 'HD anime theaters!' when in actuality it's being scaled down to 1024x576... :/

HoshiNoKaze · Post by **HoshiNoKaze** » Thu Dec 14, 2006 9:40 am

As far as I'm concerned, anything with HD slapped on it is license to rape the consumer.

Agreed. I've always been one of those people who watch a new technology for awhile before investing my time/money with it. Sure it looks pretty, it's nice, and it's for greater e-peen, but until the formats (HD/Bluray) get weeded down/condensed, I don't see wasting my money on it. If anything, I'll be buying a whole bunch of regular DVD's, because they're getting cheaper all the time. Sure they'll become obsolete, but that is the way of things. And I guess we do have to thank the people that jump on the new technology just as soon as it comes out, for they are the ones that drive the market/pave the way for me.

As for doing a video in these larger formats, my main reason for doing it is just so I'll have it in the future. For cons and such, I'll have to scale it down and sharpen it, as well as do that for the org to save some space. I might not even offer it in HD when I release it. But if I'm going to invest the amount of time I think I'm going to invest on this one, then I'd kinda be dumb to not take advantage of it since it's available. And I do have a pretty powerful computer with a lot of ram, which is there to be used for things like this :) Why not push it to it's limits?

Oh, and Makoto Shinkai ftw.

DJ_Izumi · Post by **DJ_Izumi** » Thu Dec 14, 2006 9:49 am

On this topic, relating purely to AMV source of course... Can Blu-Ray and HD-DVD disks even be ripped yet?

JudgeHolden · Post by **JudgeHolden** » Thu Dec 14, 2006 10:11 am

DJ_Izumi wrote:On this topic, relating purely to AMV source of course... Can Blu-Ray and HD-DVD disks even be ripped yet?

Ya, and do any computers come with HD DVD players or Blue ray installed? Can Blue ray DVD players play standard DVDs? If not, then I don't see computer companies going Blue Ray ...

Minion · Post by **Minion** » Thu Dec 14, 2006 10:14 am

i saw some vaio desktops at best buy a few weeks ago with blueray drives coming standard.

DJ_Izumi · Post by **DJ_Izumi** » Thu Dec 14, 2006 10:16 am

There are several Blu-Ray and HD-DVD drives ready to buy. Most of the players are actually PCs anyway, infact some people have hauled the drives out of HD-DVD players and connected them to PCs and they run.

And of course HD-DVD and BR drives can read DVD and CD... It'd just be stupid if they didn't...

JudgeHolden · Post by **JudgeHolden** » Thu Dec 14, 2006 10:20 am

Ya, they do ... But they are far out of many people's price ranges at the moment. At least if you want to upgrade.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp ... 2227797037

DJ_Izumi · Post by **DJ_Izumi** » Thu Dec 14, 2006 10:22 am

Well, note that that is a BD burner you pointed out. ROM drives will be much cheaper. Burners, yeah, expensive, but CD and DVD burners were both expensive as hell in their first generation...

...Even if BD isn't in it's first generation, it's actually been out for PC for a while, the VIDEO disk format is only a recent release. ^^;

HoshiNoKaze · Post by **HoshiNoKaze** » Thu Dec 14, 2006 11:32 am

I'll be curious to see how "open source" the blu-ray format will be...and on the topic I'm somewhat uneducated...is there a standard way of authoring that both formats support? (like video_ts audio_ts) or the same structure on the disc? or are they vastly different and proprietary? (I'd imagine blu-ray would be very proprietary)