The HD Revolution

Tons of High Definition (HD) electronics are popping up in the marketplace each day. There are HD televisions in various resolutions (720p to 1080p). And the battle between Sony Blu-Ray and HD DVD still rages on. Consumers are now thinking all about how many HD channels their cable provider will give them. Or to a further extent, does their favorite show even use an HD video camera yet. For camcorders, the new revolution is to use HDV technology instead of DV or miniDV tapes.

What exactly is HD or in the case of camcorders, HDV? According to wikipedia, HDV “is a video format designed to record compressed HDTV video on standard DV media”. And HD is truly what it sounds like: a higher resolution of the image. The picture comes out brighter with more realistic colors and detail (due to increased bandwith). All HD is presented in widescreen format.

Since the technology of the HD camcorder varies from a regular DV camcorder, you need new editing software. Or you must translate the HD image to apply it to previous editing systems. There are simple solutions to this problem. For Final Cut Pro, you can just use the Apple Intermediate Codec to modify the information. There is some quality loss, but HDV is still easily edited on a personal computer. There are also HD specific software like Sony Vegas, Avid Xpress Pro HD, and many others.

Some serious filmmakers have made the change to HD, but for beginners, HD is very hard to dive into using. For now, it seems HDV is still in the professional user’s domain.

Related posts:

1. Easy as Pie
2. The HDV Craze
3. Out with the Old
4. DVD Camcorder Troubles
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