Bills Films, Inc.
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Latest news:
October 3, 2006:
We finally upgraded to the far superior High Definition (HD) format! See Why HD? for more information.
October 13-14, 2006:
Filming stock HD footage at Mt Rainier. Check it out at:
Why High Definition (HD)?
HD was designed to offer existing video production environments a cost-conscious upgrade path from standard-definition (SD) to high-definition (HD) video. Since HDV operates at the same recorded datarate (25 Mbit/s bitstream rate) as DV, HDV recorders share the same physical (MiniDV ) tape transport as existing DV equipment. For the camera, the main expense is concentrated in the optics and imaging electronics. Compared to HD video equipment built on more professional standards (such as HDCAM and DVCPRO HD), HDV enjoys a tremendous cost advantage. HDV camcorders open high-definition video acquisition to consumers, amateur videographers, and low-budget TV production.
In HDV, the video frame is defined to have an aspect ratio of 16:9, and permitted resolutions are 720p and 1080i.
HDV 1080i, like other new HD recording formats, uses a pixel aspect ratio of 1.33 to store data in a more mathematically and algorithmically efficient way. HDV 1080i uses a pixel resolution of 1440x1080, but when displayed is scaled to an aspect ratio of 1920x1080 = (1440 x 1.33)x1080. While this reduces horizontal resolution, the loss is less than the numbers would suggest, because the vertical resolution is also reduced by interlacing. The benefit of adding pixels is reduced if resolution in only one direction is increased, while the other lags too far behind.
