The Technology of Editing

Both can produce good quality for what they do, but IMAX has the best quality.

However, some may differ on what they feel gives the best picture quality.

The quality of digital and film cameras are quite similar, but digital cameras tend to be more expensive.

Film vs Digital

There has been many different diverse types if film used over the years which made history.

The dramatic change from having small televisions to more than double the size of a cinema screen

The wider the film in mm, the better the picture quality/resolution.

Film Size

The frame is broken up into pixels, the more pixels that are used, the better the quality is.

When it is zoomed in there are more pixels to make the resolution better as the picture will be clearer.

Digital Resolution

The aspect ratio of an image describes the proportional relationship between its width and its height.

The majority of the time it will be simplistic numbers with the width as the first number (4) and the height as the second number (3).

Aspect Ratio

Either PAL or NTSC Lower quality than HD Either 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratio Can be broadcast/ shown in Digital (Freesat) DV PAL is a SD format – it’s a very common thing

used a lot by many companies.

Standard Definition vs High Definition

Capture Formats

DV - DV is a format for recording and playing back of digital video. DV is an intraframe video compression scheme, which uses the discrete cosine transform (DCT) to compress video on a frame-by-frame basis. Audio is stored uncompressed.

HDV - HDV is a format for recording of high-definition video on DV cassette tape. Conceived as an affordable high definition format for digital camcorders, HDV quickly caught on with many amateur and professional videographers due to its low cost, portability, and image quality acceptable for many professional productions.

Computers encode video in many different formats, they are used for a variety of different reasons such as listening to music (Mpeg-4) or watching a movie (WMV). These are very common consumer types, there are others but most prefer the reliable formats.

MPEG-4 is a method of defining compression of audio and visual (AV) digital data. Uses of MPEG-4 include compression of AV data for web (streaming media) and CD distribution, voice (telephone, videophone) and broadcast television applications.

Windows Media Video (WMV) is a video compression format for several proprietary codecs developed by Microsoft. The original video format, known as WMV, was originally designed for Internet streaming applications, as a competitor to RealVideo.

Formats

Diagram illustrating the relative frame sizes of several common video resolutions targeted by Windows Media Video 9 Professional, starting with 480p.

Important to use the right format to maintain quality and to make sure it works sustainably.

Some editing systems can’t accurately edit with certain formats due to problems caused by compression which is hard to alter.

The Right Digital Formats

Editing online uses the highest possible quality, this results in a higher resolution to make the picture look better.

This takes a large amount of computer power and storage – when working with very large formats 2K/4K is not a good idea as it will be very slow and stressful to use.

Online Vs Offline

Footage must be imported at a lower level quality. Create an EDL (edit decision list using the software. Re-import the footage used in the edit at high quality ready

for final export. Can speed up working. Used to be used more. Modern computers can deal with 1080p footage online. VFX operator still use offline/online processes.

Offline Editing

Film from a camera is linear

Linear Vs Non Linear

Editing with Digital Video is non linear You can reorder the footage and make

changes at any time without any major problem

You can go back and change an edit easily You can make fine adjustments You can create digital transitions and effects

easily and quickly

Non linear

Tapes are not commonly used in Digital Video cameras to record information as they can be incompatible.

These have almost all been replaced by hard disk drives/memory cards.

The process of digitalizing is faster The files are less secure.

Tapes vs Hard Discs