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Good bye SD, Hello HD.

For the video enthusiastic High Definition (HD) video is our next step, but many people ask themselves when to make the change. The truth is that we are already late, in�the future all we are going to see is HD content on televisions (TV) and 16:9 cinema content everywhere. So if that is in the future why worry about it today?

When we record using our camcorder we are not just recording content to watch the next year and then file it away, we want our memories to last forever. Your baby first steps, the first birthday, vacations, weddings, all these content is to have and enjoy in the future, anniversaries are a good moment to go back to those tapes or DVDs and have fun. But what will happen if all your content is in standard definition (SD), and HD is what rules? What will happen if all your content is 4:3 aspect ratio and everybody only have widescreen tv’s? I though about it, you should too.

Lets talk about upconverting and downcoverting, upconverting is a technology that lets you watch standard definition (SD) content in a new HD tv. Of course that is not the official definition but for this talkis the one we are going to use. Down converting lets you watch HD on standard SD equipment. Both technologies are improving everyday and we need to understand them to work on this transition.

With this conversion utilities�we can enjoy our content anyway but they will look outdated. If you have babies now, when your kids are ten they are going to see their own videos as something old, not enjoying the quality of their technology. Lets change that, starting with the aspect ratio,it is important to understand that widescreen and letterboxed video are not the same, sure you can change a letterbox video to widescreen but if you shoot widescreen it will be easier to generate content for different media in the future. If you are shopping for a camcorder and can’t afford an HD camcorder at least get a camera that records 16:9 aspect ratio and you will be right�on track.

HD cameras are expensive, Sanyo has the cheapest HD video camera that you can get, for about $600.00 you can shoot 720p which is the lowest resolution considered HD. From the hardware to the software, you need to start thinking on how to process all these content, Apple include an HD movie editor with all their computer, iMovie HD is a fine program but it won’t downgrade your image to be show on regular�TV effectively. You will still need to buy a converter to watch you HD content on your SD equipment. There are several solutions for PC as well, but we will discuss equipment at a later post.

Watch camcorder prices, they are coming down and that’s good for us. Canon is about to put on the market a HDV camera that records 1080i for about $1,099.00 in the following months. If you like this post and want to hear more information about these topics, stay tuned as this is just the beginning of the discussion. For questions email me at lumencreativegroup@gmail.com, thanks.