by admin | Filed Under Announcements, Muse News
We are opening up this post to give our members and visitors a chance to sound off on the merits of HD video, or the lack thereof. Please feel free to post your cordial comments here.
First, our position — such as it is: As we all know, HD video becoming increasingly common, to the point now where some feel it is essentially a de-facto requirement for any website offering video to make HD versions of their video available. At least one website has gone as far as to post full 1920×1080 HD video encoded at 7 Mbps, resulting in some truly enormous files. This is probably overkill, as only a small percentage of surfers have connections fast enough, and hardware good enough, to make downloading and playing such large files practical. Most sites we know adopt a smaller format encoded at around 3 Mbps or so, which is more reasonable.
For our part, we consider HD to be something of a mixed blessing. First, just because video was shot in HD doesn’t necessarily make it better: we see a lot of noise in HD video on line and the size of the video makes processing and compression artifacts all the more noticeable. But mainly of course, is the matter of file size — the issue is not just our storage and bandwidth costs, but the time for you to download and quality of the playback. For a large HD file, even a decent machine will exhibit buffering issues that make the video skip, which we find rather distracting.
Of course, fans of HD will generally have systems and connections that are well matched to the needs of playing HD video, but these people appear to be a small proportion of our visitors (about 10% to 15% or so). However, that does not mean that they ar ea small proportion of our members, or people who would be members, if we were to offer HD video.
On the other hand, if HD video really isn’t that important to people or if our members and potential members actually prefer high-quality standard-definition video, then our time and resources would be better spent doing other things. (There are, alas, only two of us so giving you all the site you deserve does necessitate occassionally making some trade-offs.)
There is however something of a middle ground: Near HD quality video, which preserves the 4:3 aspect that fits most people’s monitors the best, and the 1080×720 format which is close to full-screen but does not overwhelm most people’s monitors these days. (See examples here.)
So give us the benefit of your thoughts. Which options do you prefer: HD, Near-HD, or good-old standard 720×480 video? The viewing pleasure you enhance will be your own!
Comments
quality to file size is my biggest thing… if a 5 minute video comes out to about 40-60 megs, then its about right… the newest video “Prelude” was a pretty good example of what is more than sufficient, it looked good, even at 1600×1050, and only was 54 megs for 4 and half minutes… my only thing is i’d prefer widescreen over 4:3…
To Me.Greedy:
Thanks for the input — that is very valuble!
We haven’t shot video in wide-screen yet, and we were wondering if we should start. Wide-screen format is great outdoors, but for shooting interiors it can be an issue sometimes. We are going to start playing with it, however.
save the bandwidth and the server space the lower quality is just as nice and sure its nice to be able to see every delicious fold, naughty nook and creamy cranny in full detail but the difference being hardly apparent i say more bang for the buck