Unit 6

Digital Video Editing

Unit 314V
Creating A Digital Video Sequence

Video Technical Aspects

Overview
Frame Rate Video Resolution Recording Formats Aspect Ratios Audio File formats Codecs

All videos are made up from a sequence of still images - like photos - played very quickly. Your brain is fooled into filling in the gaps and thinks it is seeing real movement. If we show 15 still pictures per second, we call that 15 Frames per Second (fps). That's actually about the rate that our brain works, so a video has to be at least 15fps in order to fool your brain into thinking it is real movement. Anything filmed below that (like some mobile phone footage) looks choppy and low quality because it can be as low as 8fps. TVs and DVDs in the UK normally use the PAL format, which displays video at 25fps. In the US, however, NTSC is used instead. This format displays video at 30fps (actually 29.97, but most people refer to it as 30). Both of these formats are called Standard Definition Television (SDTV).

Frame Rate

High Definition Television(HDTV) is a much newer format that is used in both the US and the UK. HDTV videos can be set at 25fps or 30fps as well as 50fps or 60fps. Finally, cinemas uses a frame rate of 23.976fps (or

Video Resolution
Every video frame, or image, is made up of a series of tiny dots (called pixels). The more pixels you have, the better quality the picture. PAL - the British format of TV, displays video at 720 x 576 pixels. On the diagram below that's the red and yellow areas combined. That means the screen has 576 squares or dots along each row, and 480 going top to bottom (that's 415,000 pixels - or 0.4MP - much less than your digital camera).
Fig: PAL, NTSC and HD formats and their resolutions in pixels.

Video Resolution II
This graph gives more of a complete view of digital video resolutions. Many of the smaller resolutions were popular sizes for mobile devices and for Internet transmission of video.

Fig: Popular video standards, their names, resolutions and aspect ratios.

Recording Formats I
It used to be that all camcorders recorded their images to tapes. There were a couple of different formats, but they all worked in pretty much the same way. Over the last few years, however, there has been an explosion of different formats and qualities aimed at TV, the Internet, and the new High Definition TV standard.

1. Standard Definition (SD)

The standard format for TV. In the UK and most of the world the picture is 720 x 576 (PAL). Pictures are 720 x 480 (NTSC) in the US. France use a different format (SECAM) with a picture size of 720 x 576. Youll see that quality of video every time you turn on the TV as its what the most TV programmes are currently transmitted on. If you want decent quality videos, you should make sure that whatever machine you buy produces at least this quality of video.

Recording Formats II
2. High Definition (HD)
The best quality video you can get. Pictures are shot at anything up to 1920 x 1080 pixels (but most often 1440 x 1080) which effectively means theyre good enough to be shown on a full size cinema screen. In order to play back HD video you need a HD Television (or you can watch them on your computer screen). In order to output them from your computer, you need a special DVD writer (called a blu-ray or HD-DVD writer) and a bluray or HD-DVD player to play them. Many modern smartphones and handheld cameras are now also recording in a variety of HD resolutions. YouTube now supports HD files and professional video editing software now specifically support exporting HD video optimised for YouTube and the Internet.

Recording Formats III

3. VGA or QVGA
The standards that were for multimedia and the Internet. Video was recorded at either 320 x 240 or 640 x 480 pixels. Its only non-standard video recorders (like digital stills cameras, mobile phones or memory card camcorders) that recorded to these standards and they do tend to fit more video into their often small memories. You can still use video from these devices in your productions, and sometimes it will look okay however, if youre buying a device specifically for video, look for a higher recording standard. Modern smartphones and compact cameras support filming in various HD standards, so VGA and are

Fig. VGA video displayed on television.

Aspect Ratios I
Most monitors and older TVs used to be fairly square (not quite square, but squarer than the following three standards).

1. Standard Definition (SD)

has a ratio of width to height is 4:3. This means that if we have a TV that is 30cm tall, it will need to be 40cm wide. It is also sometimes called 1.33:1.

2. Widescreen TV wider than the

old fashioned type. The ratio is 16:9 (so if our screen which is 30cm tall will now have to be 53cm wide). It is also sometimes called 1.78:1.

3. Cinemascope is what is used in the cinema. Cinemascope uses a ratio of

2.35:1 (there isn't a nice 'whole number' version). This means that our 30cm tall TV is now a massive 70.5cm wide.

Aspect Ratios II
If you want to watch a widescreen (16:9) DVD on an older (4:3) the picture will be too wide to fit.
Solutions: Chop the two ends off (and hope there is nothing important going on there) or shrink the video down to fit, and be left with two black bars at the top and bottom of the video (this is called

Pillarboxing
If you watch (4:3) video on a widescreen (16:9) TV you might two black bars at the sides (this is called Pillarboxing - think of an old fashioned post box). You could zoom in a bit and chop the top and bottom off. Or you could stretch the video sideways - but that might not look right.

Letterboxing because it looks kind

of like a letterbox.

Audio I
There are three main types of audio used for video: Mono, Stereo and Surround Sound.

Audio

Mono means one. One piece of audio is

recorded and then played back through the speakers.

Fig: Both the Left and Right channels are identical

Stereo means two. There are two separate tracks, or

channels. The left and the right. They might be very similar for most of the time, but the sound of approaching footsteps might be slightly louder in the right channel, making it sound like someone is just slightly to our right. The footsteps might be a lot louder in the right channel, making it seem like they must be way over to the right. Clever sound engineers (or average sound engineers with clever software) can make the sound pan between the speakers so it seems to be moving from side to side.

Audio II
Surround sound takes your left and
right, and adds front and back - making four speakers at opposite corners. This way we can position the sound quite accurately to make us think it's coming from a very specific location. Cinemas always use surround sound, and more and more front rooms are being equipped with surround sound systems. Fig: Surround sound set up.

Audio

When exporting video you will have to decide if it is appropriate to compress your audio or not (to ensure a smaller file size). Here are two common audio formats:

MP3: If a high bitrate is set, the file size will be small and the audio quality
very good.

File formats I
When your computer has a limited storage space and you need to share your videos on the Internet, having a small file size is vital. In addition to this, having a set of standard video formats that can be read on TVs, computers, Internet websites and handheld devices is essentials.
This is why videos are compressed and exported in a format that most devices will be able Fig: Realise the power of your video. to view.

The main idea is that if you make the file size smaller, you lose video and audio quality.

Main file formats II

Section 1 - Low File Size
FLV (Flash Video) is generally used for streaming video - videos
you watch online but don't usually download. The file size is very small and the quality can be remarkably good for such small files. YouTube uses FLV files for the standard quality videos. A typical 1 hour FLV video might be 250MB in size (so you could fit 3 on a CD).

Section 2 - Flexible
WMV (Windows Media Video), AVI (Audio Video Interleave), MOV (Quicktime MOVie) and MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group) also known as MP4 files are quite
similar.
They can all be very low quality, small files and they can all be very high quality, large files - or pretty much anywhere in between.

Main file formats III

WMV (Windows Media Video) is the standard filetype used by
Windows - so projects you create with Windows Movie Maker or Microsoft Photo Story will generally end up as a WMV file. WMV files aren't that popular with experts because they don't work well on other systems (e.g. Macs or Linux) and aren't always the best quality.

AVI (Audio Video Interleave) files are very popular.

They can be made using different codecs (you might have heard of DivX and XviD, which are popular codecs). A codec is a set of instructions for packaging the video.

MOV (Quicktime) format is owned by Apple, the people who make

Macs. The files are generally more popular than WMV files, though, as they still work well on other systems such as Windows and Linux. People who edit in iMovie usually end up with a MOV file at the end.

MPEG (or MPG) files are similar to AVI files, because there are several
different versions. MPEG1 was used for the original VCDs (Video CDs) which came out before DVDs. MPEG2 was (and still is) used for DVDs and MPEG4 is used for Bluray and also for iPod video files (they are often called MP4 files as well). All of the file types mentioned so far use MPEG technology.

Main file formats IV

File size vary massively, but here are some typical examples: An hour of video for an iPod might be 400MB A 1 hour video downloaded for your computer might be 800MB A 1 hour DVD file might be 4GB (4000MB) Section 3 Large File Sizes DV (Digital Video) files are what you get from most
camcorders that record to tape. DV footage is very large in size, but is a good format to edit with because you don't lose too much quality. One hour of DV footage takes up around 13GB (13000MB). For this reason, it is not a good format to transfer across the Internet. iMovie uses DV format by default, and that's why even short video clips need large project files. You can change your settings to work with much smaller files if you want to, but you will lose some quality and the finished video wouldn't be up to DVD standard.

Codecs I
A codec does two things to the pictures and audio that make up a video file:

compressor decompressor
A codec compresses a video file to a smaller size. The video is then contained in a single file. The codec then decompresses the video file for normal viewing on a PC or handheld device. Compressing video content helps ensure transfer and storage of video files happens quickly and cheaply. It is vital for example that a video file is small so not to generate an expensive internet or phone bill for people who have limited bandwidth. The recipient of the video must have a device that is able to read (decompress) the file, otherwise they might not be able to view the video. This is why it is important to consider which codecs are most widely used and most likely to be installed on the devices of clients and costumers. This consideration will guide you to decide which file format and

Codecs II (Compression Formats)

H.264 is a popular codec used for delivering online video and content to
mobile devices. Its popularity ensures its widespread support. The quality of audio and video are very good for the small file sizes it can usually create.

MPEG-2 is used on DVDs and in most digital video broadcasting and

cable distribution systems. When used on a standard DVD, it offers good picture quality and supports widescreen.

MPEG-4 standard that can be used for Internet, broadcast, and on

storage media, MPEG-4 offers improved quality relative to MPEG-2. MPEG4 has recently been adopted into a number of company products, including for example the PlayStation Portable, iPod, the Nero Digital product suite, Mac OS X v10.4, as well as HD DVD and Blu-ray discs.