Dv | Glenn Ward

Should we be filming in HD for corporate / presentation video output?

The time has come to make the decision. HD or not to HD? And for those still getting mixed up, HD is High Definition and HDD is Hard Disc Drive, be sure you know the difference when you are purchasing you video camera! For a few reasons I have still been shooting in SD (Standard Definition) for corporate and by corporate I mean presentation video output (video for PowerPoint etc) File size being one, especially as I have footage backed up from my edit suite to a server daily and then an off site tape backup. Also, shooting to DV tapes provided a simple short term backup solution. Many of the videos produced are also not to be viewed on a television but accompanying information on a PowerPoint slide, so is often shown at in smaller dimension.

The thing is, more and more, stand alone presentation pieces are played on the desktop or from an online portal with the ability to display at full screen, now obviously standard definition is 720 x 576 against most monitor screen dimensions being at least 1024 px wide, in which case a SD is stretched to fit the screen causing massive pixelation.

A point to note that file compression is much better than it used to be so producing HD videos as mpeg4 with a h.264 codec has less file size implications and doesn’t cause your machine to grind to a halt when you try and play it back on desktop software.

My final point in my HD or not to HD argument that is fast leaning toward A HD win is that of Hardware. Even prosumer HDD cameras like the Everio have moved away from mere TV playback through your AV cables but not record in edit suite friendly formats. This means, drag and drop functionality that saves hours on your production work flow and produces better output.

Using iDVD to quickly output your videos with professional Chaptering and Menus

Often you will not have time to create DVD menus, chaptering, fancy graphics etc but you do need some that looks good, plays like a DVD and serves a purpose.

I personally wouldn’t use iDVD for professional output to client although it can often provide a quick solution.

Open iDVD, choose New Project and you will be faced with the default template of your current version. On the right hand side you will see a panel where you will be able to scroll through all the templates, be sure to switch through the dropdown at the top as this will show more templates from pat versions of iDVD. More templates are available on the Internet.

Choose your template and be sure the aspect ratio still matches that of your original movies. You should of by now exported all the movies you require for each chapters as separate movies (usually full quality DV or HD) and iDVD will encode them as it creates the DVD. iDVD does support chapter markers but more on that in another post.

Once you have all your movies neatly in a folder you are ready to bring them into your project. You can simply drag and drop each movie to the menu frame and a chapter menu button will be automatically created. This button is customisable.

You are almost ready for authoring. Just turn off the Apple branding in the bottom right hand corner of the screen by clicking iDVD > Preferences > Show Apple logo watermark

Hit the burn button. It will become ready and prompt you to put in a blank DVD. Do so and press burn. Your DVD will now be created. For multiple copies keep adding DVDs after each burn, this will reduce the disc creation time as the multiplexing and encoding only needs to be done once at this stage.