HD Delivery Question

[Nigel Barker]

As a promotion we are offering a free HD media player with the digital copy on SD card. These players are really cheap now (£25/$40) & play any sort of video file (or music or a photo slideshow). The one that we have found looks very like an AppleTV & you can just plug in the power & HDMI cable to connect to the HDTV & without even needing to touch the remote control it automatically starts playing the first video it finds on SD card or USB stick then repeats endlessly.

There are many of these cheap media players & they all seem to play just about any file format imaginable even raw Canon DSLR .MOV files without any transcoding. This is the one that we are giving away Xenta Full HD 1080p Media Player | Ebuyer.com

[Chris Harding]

Hi Nigel

That's the way I go too!! My current lot of media players however don't look for info on the card..you physically need to nagivate to "movies" and then find the clips ..I really like the fact that you can plug your ones in and they find and display movies on the SD card. I assume you can also use a thumb drive as the storage medium.

I don't mind buying from the UK either!! I ordered same cam batteries last Friday and they arrived this morning (Tuesday) ...if I buy from stores on our East Coast they take 6 days to get across the country!!

It would really be nice if the player could display a menu or sorts but I think if you name the clips intelligently the brides should be able to pick and choose what they want to watch?

The thing I do like about tiny media players is that the couple can bundle them up and take them to the Grandparents house and plug into their TV even if they have no DVD player.

Chris

[Nigel Barker]

Chris, it just a lucky chance that this particular media player auto-plays as I don't think that it's listed in the specifications. There is such a bewildering choice of media players in this price range that I actually ordered three different media players from eBuyer then decided this one was the best for us & returned the others. Setup options are retained so if you were a photographer delivering still images you can set it up so it will autoplay all the photos as a slideshow.

The SD card is just a bit neater than a USB thumb drive although it would be even nicer if it were seated completely flush with a spring loaded holder like cameras have. There are also two USB sockets. There is also a rather cheap looking plasticky remote that can be used for navigating round the directories on the SD card or USB device (could be a hard drive).

These cheap players are amazingly good value & very good at playing almost any file type that you throw at them.

[Peter Riding]

How are you guys who deliver an HD version on an SD card / flash drive etc getting on with allowing for the difference between the display properties of TV screens compared to computers.

This may be a Sony Vegas Pro issue as I am self-taught and there are certainly big gaps in my video editing knowledge. Elephant traps galore. But what I'm getting at is that TVs cannot display the same range as computer screens so that if you play a file optimised for computers on a TV it will look too contrasty, and if you play a file optimised for TVs on a computer screen it will look washed out n.b. the TV cannot show the whole 0-255 range whereas the computer screen (in theory) can. Sony refers to this as computerRGB and studioRGB and the latter is the TV version. Lets leave aside how the original file type and codec may impact.

So a file such as an MP4 optimised for the full 0-255 plays great on a computer Ipad and smartphone but the moment you plug it into the TV ..... too much contrast. The client thinks they are getting the HD experience but they are not.

I supply a regular DVD in studioRGB (n.b. reduced range) for the TV and an MP4 file which is full range and intended for digital devices. The physical delivery method I use is usually dual layer DVD as these MP4's are often in the 7 to 8 gb range. Needless to say if you play the MP4 in a Sony Playstation connected to a TV it is contrasty :- (

I do offer BluRay but the take up rate is very low and if my personal usage is anything to go by it will probably get even lower. It seems to becomes more and more pointless. I do showcase my work using BluRay but to be honest the scaled up regular DVDs look pretty good on my 50" plasma and that appears to be the verdict among the wider public as regards BluRay in general as well. What clients do get exited about is the Ipad playback. The smartphone playback - in my case the Galaxy S3 - is more of a novelty value.

Pete

[Roger Van Duyn]

Peter, if you want the videos to look right, all you can do is make two versions for the two color spaces and try to educate the client. It's important to know ahead of time what type of device the file will be displayed on so you can render to the correct color space. If viewed on computer devices, it's RGB color space. For TV, it's 601/709.

It's not a Sony Vegas Pro issue. The two color spaces are different, so naturally, they look different.

[George Kilroy]

Nigel your plug for the media player seems to have driven sales, there are 14 less available now than there were when you first posted this morning.

[David Chien]

With the move to HDTV in the USA, HDTV Rec. 709 should be the minimum color space to render to - Bluray output will look the best on HDTVs as such.

Given that sRGB is about the same as Rec.709, you can get away without going crazy about the slight color differences between camera, monitor, and final Bluray/HDTV output.
(Yes, there are differences: http://wwwimages.adobe.com/www.adobe...ate_adjust.pdf)

Flash/PC media players are a whole nother mess:
BT.601 and BT.709 compatibility benchmark - Doom9's Forum
Seems you can beg for color accuracy, but good luck since most players don't bother to do things correctly. Simply target sRGB since that'll be the default most monitors are good for.

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Expanded color gamut deliveries is questionable since the limiting factor is the output gamut of the monitor/HDTV - in most cases, it'll be to sRGB (for most desktop monitors) / Rec. 709 for HDTVs.

No point delivering zillions of colors the client will never be able to see/output (better to simply deliver raw files for later processing should the rare need occur).

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Easiest way around any color shifting mess?
Calibrate a HDTV properly (and use a good set like an IPS Panasonic), then hook it up to your PC for editing.

What you See Will be What you Get!

Otherwise, you'll have to calibrate your desktop monitor to reflect the final output targeted (eg. Rec 709), or at the minimum, accurately follow the sRGB color gamut.

[Peter Riding]

Thanks for the clarification peeps. Glad I wasn't missing something :- )

SVP has a mode so that you can use your 2nd monitor to emulate what a different viewing condition can resemble. In practice I edit for computer viewing and then at the final stage create a TV DVD version using the video bus to do a computerRGB to studioRGB conversion as Sony calls it - which is in other words optimising for TV viewing.

As a professional photographer I've used high end wide gamut displays and calibration equipment for many years but its a pain. Latterly I've placed more emphasis on looking good that looking 100% accurate though. I've used Joe Kane's DVE HD Basics BluRay on my TVs but since no client is ever going to have a calibrated TV, well .....

Pete

[Vincent Oliver]

Originally Posted by Greg Clark

. I would sooner give the Bride and Groom a Bluray Player, which are quite cheap, than make a low quality DVD of their wedding.

Of course if you have your authoring software and codecs set up properly then a standard DVD should produce excellent quality - how many of-the-shelf blockbuster movie DVDs have you rejected because of poor quality?

I haven't tried USB sticks but will look into this. I used Adobe Catalyst and Dreamweaver to author my last DVD production (not a wedding video) and this gives me the option to include URLs whereby customers can visit our web site or place more orders for other DVD titles or other items (relevant affiliate links etc.). I am sure this concept could work for a wedding video, without it being too obvious.