Render to 1080 or 720?

[Patrick Janka]

I know the Canon captures in 1080i, but I've noticed some people's videos on youtube, et al that were shot on xha1's are rendered to 720 (according to no 1080 option on youtube). Is there an advantage to doing this? Is it just to conserve space?

[Danny Winn]

I shoot exclusivly at 30fps with my Xh A1s and then I capture and export everything using Adobe Premiere Pro's "HDTV 1080p 30". I just cant stand the look of interlaced footage, some commercials on TV are beautiful except sometimes you can see the interlacing thats going on. Plus if you're going for a "Movie look" Progressive is the way to go.

I believe that in the future more and more broadcast companies will drop the interlaced footage standard and switch to progressive. Some are already doing it.

You can see my 1080p videos here: YouTube - DannyWinnVideo's Channel

[Patrick Janka]

My question wasn't interlaced vs. progressive, it was 1080 vs 720

[Tim Cee]

You can do them in 720 and as mp4. Vimeo and you tube handle it on their end pretty well. I am unsure as to YouTube but I believe they offer 1080 but Vimeo asks for and handles 720 pretty decent.

I have no idea why they do it, could be file size or could be it is all they can handle but it looks good when you send them mp4's at 720 after they put it up.

I had some issues but got some great help from a member here (Thanks Perone) and the difference was huge. If your using Vegas and need help let me know, it is the least I can do to pass the favor on that was given to me.

[Patrick Janka]

I am using Vegas right now, but I'm seriously considering getting an iMac and going over to FCP. As of now if I'm making a data dvd I render to wmv at 720p and 4.8mbps so it fits. If I'm making a DVD movie I render to mpeg-2 and ac-3 separately and burn in DVD Architect. The thing is, the files look like crap. Dull and soft. Is it necessary to render to mpeg-2? When I first made a DVD I just imported a wmv file into DVDA, and I think it looked better than the route I've been taking. I saw a tutorial on it where the guy said to do it this way.

I really wish Vegas would give an estimate of how much space the final product will take up so I could adjust the settings until it's a size I can deal with. YouTube will accept 1080p, but they have a 2gb file size upload limit, so going 720 can get you more data. A DVD is obviously 4.7gb. I hate rendering a file only to find it's too big for a DVD. I had a concert I shot recently and after rendering to mpeg-2 and ac-3 it was 107% of the disc's capacity so I had to go back, split it into two files and re-render. Is there a way to know beforehand about how big the file will be? Also, when rendering a shorter clip to mpeg-2 is there a way to compress a little less so you can get the file just under the 4.7gb for a DVD? I hate burning a DVD that's only at half capacity when the file could have been compressed a bit less for better quality.

[Danny Winn]

Originally Posted by Patrick Janka

My question wasn't interlaced vs. progressive, it was 1080 vs 720

My bad Patrick, I read through your question quicky before running off to work and when I saw the (i) I misinterpeted what you were asking.

My rule of thumb is that if theres a potential for your video to end up on TV where a full 1080i would be used then I would always export it as 1080 (all my Youtube commercials are 1080 because they may end up on TV, I use Mpeg2 so the files are pretty small, WMV are even smaller in file size and still look nice for HD.)

But if this is just for internet purposes I would probably just export it as 720 because in general it will most likely only be seen on a computer where it won't make that much of a difference and of course your file size would be smaller.

One thing that is confusing in your post is when you wrote "according to no 1080 option on youtube", but there is a 1080p option with Youtube, so not sure what you meant there.

If you are concerned about your file size, you really should try exporting as a WMV someday you'd be surprized at the smal size yet nice quality.

Hope this addressed your question a little better.

[Patrick Janka]

Hey, Danny, I meant sometimes the only options on a video shot on an XHA1 on youtube will be 360, 480, and 720. Obviously it means they're not rendering to 1080. I was just wondering if there was some sort of advantage, sort of like how ESPN broadcasts in 720p.

I like wmv, as it retains quality quite well, but if you render to 1080 the file sizes are huge, so I don't know how you mean they're small.

BTW, I'm a multi-instrumentalist, as well. I play guitar, bass, drums, trumpet, piano, and sing. I've played trumpet in a handful of ska bands, and arranged full scores of ska music that I plan to record some day. I listen to everything, but ska-wise I like Mad Caddies, Blue Meanies, Aquabats, Buck-O-Nine, The Urge, Madness, Toasters, Skatalites, Bosstones, 311, etc.

[Danny Winn]

Very cool,

I guess I'm still confused about the whole Youtube sometimes not having a 1080 option thing, all my HD videos on Youtube are in fact 1080 so I guess I'm missing something.

Also most of my HD videos are usually 30 second MPEG2 spots which is about 68MB's, the same spot using WMV would be about half that file size. I guess if you're doing short videos like I do the files sizes seem smaller compared to a 10 minute full 1080 HD video.

BTW, my band "Danny WInn and the Earthling" has opened for many of the bands you mentioned and I'm really good friends with Bucket from "The Toasters". My band is done now though but I do still write and record Ska for video projects like on my site. I also have a song called "Rejected" in the Michael Moore movie "Sicko" (about 12 or 14 minutes in), that was pretty cool...