Is there still a place for SD video?
 

I'm a video production professional and shoot (professionally) in 1080p with DSLRs. (So I understand the advantages of wide-screen HD video!)

But I'm really starting to wonder if casual, home-use, amateur video hasn't gone beyond the limits of today's average broadband connections and home computers?

My point is that 1080p video cameras at the consumer level are proliferating like mad. But I don't personally know anyone who...

a) has the patience to wait an hour or more to upload their HD videos to sites like Vimeo and YouTube, and
b) has the computing horsepower at home to easily edit HD video.

I'm talking about our parents, our kids, our grandparents, etc. I've heard from many people like this who are all excited about their latest HD video toy...only to be disappointed (or downright angry) with how large the files are and how difficult it is to edit on their (often older) home computer systems.

So I'm wondering...isn't SD video good enough for these uses? Let's face it...while most people don't argue that HD is superior, most people (non-video professionals) are perfectly happy with SD video.

I'm even considering tracking down and buying a flash-memory-based SD camera for my own casual use...just because there are times when it's nice to have relatively small file sizes and to be able to edit video (with effects!) on my aging WinXP laptop.

Finally, it's worth remembering that well-framed and well-edited SD video will (in my opinion) beat poorly-shot HD video any day.

Does anyone else agree there may still be a need for SD video? Or is it "Damn the old formats---full speed ahead! Let 'em suffer and upgrade their computers and connections!"

Scott

Not only do I agree, but, I am actually a video production professional who still does 95% of my work
in SD. Almost all of my clients chose the SD option when hiring me. I do NOT charge the same
amount of money for producing a video in HD as it takes more time (editing HD takes longer on
my computer), Most of my clients end up choosing the cheaper SD option, many of them are
looking for a DVD as the finished product, and they do not want to be 'upsold' on the benefits of
HD, if SD production is cheaper. I think the only clients I have had that have chosen HD in the last
couple years, have been the federal or state government....maybe the economy is somewhat the
problem here, but my clients have very little interest in HD.

Since the advent of HD I have only had 1 corporate client even ask about it and only out of curiousity. Every corporate job I have done has neen SD.

Weddings have really been the same. Perhaps 1 out of 25 ask if I shot HD. I always ask them "do you want HD?". Only one time has the answer been an emphatic "YES". The clientel I service want solid stable, well composed, properly exposed footage and at least up to now don't care about HD.

Next year might be different but hopefully I'll be retired by then. Til then, for me SD is the way unless something comes up that requires HD, then I''ll rent what I need.

I just got this in my email box:

Advertisers Slow to Adopt HD

13% of TV ads in HD......not very high.

I know of quite a few HDV cameras that have never shot HD.

When the JVC GY-HD100 first came out I was wondering why so many local camera people were buying them, even though people were having problems with the HDV post at the time. Turned out they were all shooting DV.

Gotta say that for many years I shot 16:9 SD in the Z1 simply to make tapes that suffered less when a dropout occurred and could be replayed in my DSR-11. Now with the NX5 I only shoot HD - and why not - what's the point of SD im MPEG?

Sony think there's still a market for SD - their PD175 is mopping up the demand in - how shall we say?- less well to do countries such as Africa, India, South America.

And anyway, by DVDs get upscalled into my big TV and look just grand. You can't upscale the BD - it's already hit the ceiling. I love the ubiquity of the DVD as well - hand 100 people a BD and see how many people can play it in their car, on their portable, in their laptop.

tom.

That is very intresting.

I have an upcharge for HD just because of the time to edit and additional rental of a P2 store. Most people I have talked to has also said HD is not important to them. EXCEPT, my music video prospects. They seem to want HD.

Interesting replies! I half-wondered if I'd get a pile of posts shouting "BLASPHEMY!!! How DARE you impune the perfection that is HD and suggest people reduce themselves to knuckledraggers by shooting SD!" LOL

Looking at the retail marketplace for video cameras (across the consumer-to-pro spectrum) you'd think SD was all but gone for good. (But I guess this is no surprise.)

Though I have a high-powered Mac/FCP system for editing HD at work...at home I only have my lowly Pentium 4, WinXP system with Vegas 8. It chokes and wheezes on HD...but slices and dices SD without a hitch. I have a feeling I'm not alone.

I've always been amazed at the number of HD vids uploaded to YouTube...but then these are probably being uploaded by folks who are happy to babysit their uploads for hours hoping for a moment of online glory...

We (the general, average public) typically assume that technological improvements are in fact "improvements." Sometimes they are...(as in the case of more pixels for finer detail). But when you get right down to it, the 16:9 ratio is pretty arbitrary. (I doubt there is anything inherent in the anatomy of our human eyes that adds up to 16:9.) 4:3 is arbitrary too. They're just standards that stuck.

It's like arguments over how wide a lens to frame a subject. Some gripe about a given lens not being wide enough...but how wide is too wide? And why is it always better to capture everything in one view versus a slow pan? (After all, we sometimes have to turn our heads to take in a wide view in real life!)

I'm getting a little off-track. Nice to see some pros out there still shooting and producing in SD.

Finally, one of the most powerful (and only) arguments I can think of these days for HD is that it fares better when run through the "Mangler" of YouTube compression. If the major video hosting sites would allow full-res uploads (with no recompression) of SD video...I think a lot of people would be surprised by the quality of SD (especially SD shot on a good camera).

Scott

Some very good points, really got me thinking about this. I definitely agree about slow upload times. I upgraded to a premium internet service with my ISP, but I still only get 1.5 Mbps up, which is pretty bad comsidering it's around 20 Mbps down!

I upgraded to shooting and editing file-based HD a few months ago and don't regret it for a second. I wouldn't recommend an SD camcorder for home use because I think people should collect the best footage possible. Editing may be tough for many home users, but with HD they are capturing their memories in a far superior format. No regrets about it in years to come. Computers will soon deal with AVCHD as easily as they do with DV now. (e.g. SSDs instead of spinning hard drives). I wonder how many home camcorder users really ever edit anything they've shot? I have a feeling most people just put the tape or mini-DVD into the camera and play it back to the TV. Are they doing that with their HDTVs? Probably just plugging their little HD camcorders in and watching them on the big screen. The one big "gotcha" I see is that consumer cameras are quickly becoming flash based or HDD... and they have to dump that footage to a hard drive once in a while to free up more room for shooting. At least with tape there was a physical copy. I kind of doubt many people have backup drives and off-site archives of their footage. Going to be some tears when people lose that precious family footage due to a break-in or a HDD failing or stuff being deleted accidentally.

The one thing I do like about SD though is the nice and easy DV-to-DVD workflow. But with the transition to web delivery, streaming video, and hard-drive based media players, the optical disc may not even be missed.

I have been doing wedding videos as well as school theatrical shows for the past 4 years and all my work is done in SD and the reason that I have purchased the Sony HD Z5 is because I can shoot SD 16:9 ratio.

Stelios

SD is more than sufficent for most purposes.

But try telling that to the marketing departments. They need something to make the masses buy a new TV or camcorder or video-player, so they force the idea that SD is old, outdated, and inferior to HD. Because of what they are fed by the marketing departments, most consumers don't understand all the components in the HD pipeline and how it will effect what they are watching on TV. They don't understand that having a HDTV doesn't mean all those TV shows still shot and broadcast in SD will suddenly appear sharper, or that a Blu Ray player is not very helpful without also buying a HDTV.

They go to the shop, looking for a new camcorder or whatever and the sales clerk says "you have to get this one becuase it does HD" and they believe him. Then they come back a week later and say "my HD camcorder doesn't look any better than my old one" and then the clerk says "that's because to get the benefit of the HD camcorder I forced you to buy, you have to buy this gigantic HDTV and a new top-of-the-line PC as well. Otherwise you basically just threw away $1000 on that camcorder."

The same thing is happening now with 3d too. It's being used as leverage to force consumers to upgrade their TV's again.

Except 3D wont work; consumers bought into the the HD craze easily enough because for the most part they were getting a product that was bigger, better (and slimmer). But with 3D all you're getting is an awkward system that gives you headaches, the glasses will get lost, and it doesn't allow you to multitask. Consumers aren't being fooled by this one.

By the way, the Canon XL1 produced some of the finest images I have ever seen on video - plus it looked great on DVD and it was so easy to edit. Those were the days...

It's a numbers game
 

The general public gets easily hooked on numbers. While it is true that a higher number of pixels captured by a camera (still or video) gives you more detail, a cheap 12MP still camera produces a far less clear picture than my old 8MP Sony... why? because the lens on the new high MP camera weighs maybe 50 grams and it's made of plastic while my old Sony has a 2 pound glass lens.

Same with video. Under favorable lighting conditions you may get a good picture with a $500 "full HD" camcorder, but an old SD semi-pro camcorder will shoot the same quality both in sunlight and candlelight.

What the sales people will never tell the buyer (consumer or pro) is that the "full HD" camcorder is pretty far from capturing 1920x1080 pixels - most will do 960x1080, or maybe 1440x1080, then double each pixel horizontally, or use some other trick. Heck, even Varicam records only 1280x1080 pixels in the 1080i mode!

Where I see the advantage of HD cameras is: shooting HD gives you more data to work with if you need a high quality SD finished product, especially if you need heavy post production (special effects).

most of my work is distributed via client's websites, via client's dvds and via large venue presentations.

the web and dvd still need standard definition (sd) digital media.

only the last method-large venue presentations-ever warrants hd and even in those situations the source is usually a dvd NOT a blu-ray so i'm back to sd.

if my dvx100b could shoot true 16x9, it would still be my camera of choice.

heck, i still like my 1/2" 3-chip jvc dv500 so what do i know!

ymmv

be well

rob

Africa and South America are CONTINENTS... <sly grin>

I shoot 720P60 (JVC ProHD on two GY-HD200s) solely because it gives me:
-60 frames per second for conversion to SD DVD (and the "pixel math" makes sense on downconvert)
-Progressive video which is far superior to interlaced media for web content
-The ability to post HD on web sites as requested.

Agreed, most of my work goes to SD but I PERSONALLY like the workflow for me.

Do I recommend everyone jump ship? Not at all but I did the math and for ME the choice was simple. Having said that, my 200's also work just fine in DV mode which I use for multicamera live switched gigs as I get 1.5 stops better low light performance... The HD200's are light PIGS, especially in 720P60.

You have to go with what YOUR business model tells you.

Absolutely 0% of my work makes it to sites like YouTube, as I produce broadcast TV commercials. As someone posted, advertisers slow to adapt HD as only 13% of commercials are HD. Well to be honest, The decision to either produce in HD or SD has nothing to do with the advertiser, and everything to do with where the commercial is going to air. For a TV station to convert it's infrastructure from SD to HD is a larger undertaking than most people realize, and is a huge expense. For example, in my local market only two TV stations are able to accept commercials in HD. Let's not forget that TV stations had the huge expense of converting from an analog to a digital transmission stream not too long ago. So it will be some time before every TV station is fully HD compatible. I will say that the last 4 cameras we have purchased have all been HD, and I charge the same price per hour for editing SD and HD. As far as SD or HD for consumer use, sorry I really don't care about what uncle Bob shoots on or how long it takes him to upload to YouTube.

All the Best!

Dave

You couldn't say it better John.

While I understand this is primarily a forum for video professionals...I think how "the masses" shoot and edit their video (and what they do with it) is very important.

There is a gigantic paradigm shift happening right now---from old-school marketing (pushing information, talking AT people, shouting about features and benefits, etc) to Web 2.0 marketing---which is all about participating WITH the masses (e.g. thru social media, but not limited to only that).

A big part of the new-school of marketing is authenticity---people's "bullsh*t radar" is higher than ever---meaning slickly-produced video often results in skepticism and doubt from typical consumers.The popularity of reality TV and YouTube have made lame-quality video footage a hot item, because people think it's "real." I know as production professionals many of us hate to hear that, but it's true. Look at the video quality of the most-watched videos on YouTube and you'll see exactly what I mean.

I'm not suggesting we should all champion crappy video...but rather saying that if you try to step out of your "video professional" shoes and take a cold, hard, objective look at what's big these days...it's NOT quality. It's content, content, content. (And authenticity---which for better or worse is inversely proportional to quality.)

On a different front, look at the audio industry. Years ago, audio hardware/software makers started shouting about 24-bit...48-bit...then 96-bit audio. Some high-end people bought it...but for most of us (even a trained professional like me) it's pointless---you physically can't hear any differences beyond 16- or 24-bit audio---you've exceeded the human capacity for perceiving the difference. We may not be there with video yet...but we're getting very close.

I'm not trying to make any specific point. :-) Just musing aloud. Well, I guess I was making one point---which is that from a marketing perspective, we as professionals *need* to be paying attention to what Uncle Bob does with video---because if we're beyond Uncle Bob's daily reality, then he'll ignore us...which is to our detriment!

Scott

I'm in the local viewing area of the US's first HDTV station, WRAL. It's been fully HD for ages. And to illustrate your point, the commercials on WRAL come in all shapes and sizes, from straight up SD (4:3, broadcast pillarboxed), to widescreen SD (broadcast with a black frame all around), to standard HD (16:9). The oddest thing to me are the HD (4:3) commercials (I'm guessing they figure it looks better to those cable customers still using analog SD 4:3 TVs, but IDK), and the occasional HD widescreen (something around 2.4:1, shown letterboxed).

The thing I find most interesting is of course how people react to it. I was watching a basketball game the other day in beautifully detailed HD (national game), and Ford (national ad, not local car retailer) was showing SD widescreen commercials that looked just amazingly crappy in comparison. My wife pipped up that the low quality ad sure made her want to buy a Ford (she can do sarcasm when the mood strikes). I'm sure that's not the impression Ford wanted to make, but that's what happened.

Companies aren't stupid. Even Ford ;-). I would expect that they have an idea that this happens. And over time they'll be taking into consideration how their commercials look and sound in comparison to the content they are "interrupting" so to speak.

By the end of the SD era, commercials generally looked considerably better than the broadcast shows. For the money spent, they should have. And people sort of expect this now. I find it interesting that part of the fallout from the great HD change over is the reversal of this situation. I did not expect it.

I'm not saying it's good or bad, or really drawing any conclusions one way or the other. But it is interesting to watch it unfold.

Scott,

Unless I've got you wrong (or am seriously out of touch!) - you are confusing bit depth with sampling rate. Bit depth is generally 16 bit or 24 bit with sampling rates of 44.1 (CD), 48 (DVD) and 96K. And yes most people can't tell the difference BUT there is a real reason for using 24 bit to record in quieter environments as it gives you far more headroom and a better S/N ratio - you don't have to push the record levels up high thus reducing noise considerably and if you have to push the levels up in post, at 24 bit, there is little noise increase. At 16 bit the noise increase is considerable either way.

Not much point if the output format is only destined for website or Powerpoint delivery.

One major customer of ours ONLY EVER wants 640x480 WMV files - so: SD is OK, but HD is OK too, if I can't be bothered to switch. There is NO chance of ever being asked by this customer for any other format, so SD is OK.

Is there a place for SD? Sure there is - it's called 1998.
Heh.

But seriously, I still get requests for SD shoots, although I prefer HD. Recently, I shot for a national news organization and a nationally broadcast TV program, and they both requested DVCPRO 50. I don't know why, they certainly can handle the HD workflow.

Out of interest, when you refer to "SD" in the US, is it likely to be 4:3 or 16:9?

In the UK, HD broadcasting came later than the US - but 16:9 SD broadcasting started back in around 1998. The result is that although the majority of broadcast programming is only now starting to go HD, it's been a long time since any new programmes were made in 4:3.

That seems to have filtered down to non-broadcast work as well, and I'd guess that a lot of cameras like Z1s were bought primarily to give native 16:9 (at SD) rather than HD as such. As far as this thread goes, then whatever the situation may be with HD v SD, I'd argue the place for 4:3 SD is rapidly disappearing.
The aspect ratio was always going to cause more problems than HD/SD, but if 14:9 is used the difficulties should be kept small. The basic idea is that if a programme is made in 16:9, the analogue (4:3) network gets a 14:9 letterbox. If it's wanted to use 4:3 archive in a 16:9 programme, it gets pillarboxed. The whole thing sounds a lot more complicated than it actually is - if you want more details, 14:9 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia .

i thoroughly agree with david.

as i offered in an earlier post, if only my dvx100b shot native 16x9, i would be a happy producer!

with my efforts on client's websites and distributed via dvd, standard definition video remains part of my workflow.

when i can, i shoot everything 16x9 and my clients are pleased.

ymmv

be well

rob
smalltalk productions

Almost everything here is still SD 16:9.. Some football and concerts gets shot in HD but that's about all. Atleast in the broadcast world, it actually seems like HD is more accepted in the lower scale market (the professionals), though that is mostly for Youtube use.. with eventual downscale to SD broadcast.

David,

Not to speak for everyone or the entire US, but what I have seen (and what my clients request)
is pretty much standard 4x3 SD. I think you guys over 'the pond' adopted the 16x9 SD much
more than we ever did.

I'm trying hard to remember the first time I saw a 16:9 TV on sale here in the UK. I remember it was a 32" Philips CRT and I remember my surprise at the thought that a lot of the picture tube seemed to be missing. I reckon it was about 1996, and all that could be shown on it was stretched 4:3 material. Looked to be a silly move to me, as DVDs were sill behind the curtain.

tom.

Europe had PALplus 16x9 long before the U.S. had HDTV. As I sat in my hotel room in Amsterdam one night in the early 90s, I recall marveling at the image quality PALplus had to offer compared to NTSC.

In the end, it's not so much a matter of SD vs. HD nowadays, as much as it is 4x3 (1:1.33) vs. 16x9 (1:1.78).

My cable box and Blu ray player upscale SD content that looks relatively decent. It's the 1:1.33 aspect ratio that I find irksome.

I don't think I've shot any 4 x 3 since about 2000. For a number of years you had to protect the action for that aspect ratio, but it's not really a consideration now.

I used to hate having to "shoot and protect" - you just couldn't depend on what the final composition of the shot would be.
In the end, I used to tell my cameramen to frame for 16:9 and be damned...

I know a lot of people shooting HD, but going to computer through firewire in SD resolution. So I definitely wouldn't record in SD if I could avoid it - but in my opinion SD does have a place for the next 3-5 years for many of the reasons already mentioned.

It's worse because consumers have been led to look for the letters HD, and on seeing them, assume it means better. If they can buy an HD camcorder for £250 and watch the pictures on their HD TV they are happy. The trouble seems to be that the image from these camera, despite being 1080i or p have quite average detail. I'm still seeing better pictures on DVD from my SD kit than from an 'HD' cheapo camera. Nobody is asking me yet for HD material, and one recent one shot on HD for production convenience, was accepted without any comment as to how good it was visually.