Preserving Home Videos To DVD: Deciding On Standard Or High Definition
Posted by Babies - 19/02/12 at 01:02 am30 second commercial for The Reel House who converts 8mm/Super8/16mm film to High Definition DVDs.
Home Videos to DVD Transfer : Deciding on Standard or High Definition
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There are positive aspects to both standard definition (SD) and high definition (HD). If you want greater contrast range and higher resolution then HD is the solution. This leads to far better detail and a more all-natural look. Even though it is smaller, interlaced SD tvs are quickly being phased out in favor of bigger, progressive HD televisions . You will still come across SD television sets in most of your parents’ houses to watch TV on. They are less costly, still easy to find used, and can have a good picture under the right situations. HD TVs are more pricey and, usually, do only a poor-to-marginal job of up-converting Standard Definition material .
So which do I opt for for converting my home videos ?
One answer would be “whatever you currently have.” A better solution would be for you to think about what you may have in the next few years or, in some cases, the next few months. Look in the TV sections of most stores . You will discover that the digital future is very difficult to disregard. Digital has been mandated by the FCC for all broadcast stations in the United States for several years now. If you have your home movies scanned to SD , it will be lower resolution and interlaced and will only look correct on an interlaced TV , such as an older, SD TV set. But if your film is scanned to High Definition, then you have a choice of progressive HD or interlaced SD because HD footage can always be down-converted to SD in the computer much better than SD can be up-converted to HD during playback on an HD television .
The shape of things to come…..
But whether you convert to either High Definition or Standard Definition, there are some additional things to look at. The aspect ratio, that is the “shape”, of HD and SD is totally unique. SD is 4:3, while HD is 16:9 in proportion. But home videos have a completely different “shape” and it fits neither SD nor HD ideally. And here’s the bigger surprise: Even if you project the original movie in your living room using Grandma’s old Brownie projector, you STILL don’t have a perfect “match” for the authentic film frame!
Of course , if you do convert your film to HD on DVD, then you end up with black bars on the left and right sides of the image but the advantage is that you see all of the picture frame with no information loss. When you think about the additional bonus of better detail and a smoother, far more all-natural display , the positive aspects of an HD conversion becomes clear. If the black bars on the left and right bother you, then you can have the 16:9 frame filled by zooming in during conversion as observed in example “D”. If so, then recall it is far better to cut off people’s feet rather than their heads! But the black bars are actually the better alternative due to zero information loss.
