New Years Resolution : 1080

Once again we look back and look ahead, here you go with an insider's rant.


And Yet Again we will say YOUR NEW YEARS RESOLUTION IS 1080. Why? because that is the broadcast standard and name of our domain: HD 1080i. Finally the thought that interlace delivery of 29.97 frames per second 1920 x 1080 doesnt have to be full frame progressive to be perfect, and the performances on many cable and dish more than amply proved the technology is solid and here to stay for a long time to come.

2007
...was a great year for HD in general - new channels that had been sitting "in the can" so to speak were rolled out widely, INHD re-morphed into MOJO HD ( a personal fave for us here ), MHD hit Comcast ( thats HD MTV and its very clean crisp work )... SCRIPPS negotiated a full lineup of HD for HGTV and FOOD network ( all good ) and UHD ( universal ) is doing a great job. KUDOS however only go to DISCOVERY HD and NGO ( National Geographic ) for pristine 1080 performances and superb content quality. We were hoping to RSS aggregate schedules for HD but that is not yet there on the supply side, so keep an eye out for it.

ESPN HD as always... super.

A note to the 1366x768 crowd... do not worry that you have an inferior display, its probably fine, but jump on the upgrade path offerings that will provide trade-ins coming in 2008. ( sorry i cant spill the beans on who is prepping the clever 1080p upgrade markteing, but it is coming ) I will probably no longer speak to the VHS/1366 stuff in 2008, and anything not 16:9 widescreen is basically old news.

WINTER 2008 Pricedrop season.

If you didnt get a nice big flatscreen under the tree, you probably are among the smarter of the population, since DLP and most all Rear Projection systems will see a massive price drop and the large $999 HDTV will be within reach as a very good bang for the buck,... LCD sizes increase and price competitive economy of scale kicks into full gear. We will list our picks for you.

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HD and look of large.

HD 1080 is a different world to videographers, and a happy place for Film producers... why?

In the old days of TV the image was so blurry that facial details were generally only visible in very close shots, in HD very close shooting is way too much detail usually. I sort of feel sorry for Hillary Clinton because she really cant take an HD closeup without looking rather scary, and it will happen in the coming elections as camera operators defy producer guidance and zoom in when they should not, old habits will be hard to break, and hard to take in HD. Yikes. Benefits of HD definitely goes to Mitt Romney who really looks presidential in closeup HD ( scary thought, but true )

TMFD. a new term for you.

New Technology that extracts from noise reduction filtering is already in use on News Channel HD, Smooths the skin tone color table but makes for rather plastic cheeks unless you are very good at it on the news anchors of the business, but its getting more tuned all the time. I am guilty of employing this myself in post production, since all i have to do is draw a box around the area of the image i want filtered and the rest is automated for me, no more stray hairy zit blemish wrinkle farm whatever... Temporal fNoise Filtering tools are rather cool and rescue the situation of what i will now call TMFD. ( Too Much Facial Detail )

Sorry Conan, but you should be the first to start really using this.

Another comment - does Makeup fix the problems? In Short, yes it can , but at $250/hr for quality makeup vs just clicking in Post Production... the producers will migrate to the digital solution and instruct the make-up poeple to use color standards that favor the "fix in post"

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HD-DVD

Anyhow, enough tech rant - whats in it for you? HD-DVD for one thing, its pricing and performance is just too damn good, there is not enough difference between Blu-ray and HD to merit a larger price for the Blu-ray. You will see $99 HD-DVD players in 2008 - they may not be really great in some ways but they will enable the masses who also chose to buy the $999 widescreen. That said, i still really like the Disney stuff for its high action clean look Blu-ray work, it really is state of the art, but its current economics just dont really favor middle america all that well. http://www.tacp.toshiba.com/hddvd/ Kind of caters to the Sci-Fi side, what with a toy Phaser gun universal remote, if only it could zap-away the crappy enforced trailers in the DVD.


SHAMELESS PLUG:
http://cpmotionpictures.com/ "Before The Devil Knows You're Dead" getting Nominated!


More in a bit and HAPPY NEW YEAR.

Happy Holidays

HD Virtual 1080

Among other things besides HD cable and DVD, there are other full screen 1920x1080 places to go and visuals to get, live and interactive for those who have a computer attached to a DVI input capable HD monitor.

Firstly and foremost, you need a powerful graphics card, nVidia 7600gt is a great bang for the buck there, and my system is a dualcore 3ghz connected to verizon FIOS, so my interaction is quite good.

SecondLife

Normally i have some measure of disdain for virual worlds and the addicted virtual user, but Second life has attracted a lot of talented graphics artists and the newest rendering engines make this worth a diversionary moment or 2 just to look at. Therefore, each thumbnail below links to a 1920x1080 screen snapshot so that you can see also.




This is Arcadia - a floating tudor village



This is Arcadia - my avatar in the street


I get about 29 frames per second update speed from mouse moves that change the full screen, and zooming into a location always produces more detail and things to see and do. This is basically an interactive solids modeling system where users provide the texture maps for the solid model primitives, cube, sphere, cone, cylinder etc. The rendering engine is called Windlight and since it runs on your computer, only changes to the world data are sent. That can mean a lot of new data when the screen is full of other people walking around.




A garden enviromnet with flowing water and waving tree leaves.

The tessellation ( polygon density ) of the modeing is quite accurate, so zooms into detail are generally rewarded with an image in greater detail, except for inserted video which is streamed off other servers and is mapped in quicktime.




my Avatar looking at my video edit of the Area 51 Midway ad- in quicktime on virtual HD screens - Click for the video itself

... expect to waste a couple of hours at least ... but it is free and HD capable.
http://www.secondlife.com/

If you have wireless Keyboard and Mouse, then this is wonderful exploration, provided you stay in locations that are well crafted, everything you see in HD will look great. Since the "teleport" function can lead to rather excplicit mature environments, it is expected that users are over 18.

Hit the PageUp key and your avatar can fly like superman through the scenery, chat with other users in real-time. The virtual Day-Night cycles provide rather stunning lighting in the Windlight viewer, almost to the point where a virtual set could be made to angle and light a movie set in pre-production mode if so-inclined... and i will make an HD video of some travel inside this virtual modeling space. The architectural experimentation alone is worth the effort, and results are immediate, lighting control and surface textures rival today's videogames.

CBS and Cisco are already big into this ( and Sony BMG which is usually empty and abandoned, with concert stages and music video, whatever)
Visit -- http://alpha.cbs.com/primetime/csi_ny/second_life/
They have a virtual New York City already built. No kidding- look at thier video. CSI:NY is in Second Life, talk about convergence, virtual greeters... solve a crime or something.