HD & SD footage Debates

[cool spot]

those GoPros are pretty fun....

[ciaran]

I dunno man, I've seen that all of the consumer and consumer-leaning prosumer HDV cams aren't in any of the stores, but B&H has a shitload of them, and they seem to increase in number the higher up you go towards professional-grade. Kind've like Beta... consumers got suckered into using VHS because of Sony marketing magic, yet Beta is still used in the industry side regularly.

You're right on though... there's a Best Buy right by my house and they don't have any HD cams that use tape. I wouldn't want to use anything else... hell, even if the cam stops recording correctly I could still convert it over as a tape backup for data!

Sony had shite all to do with VHS, which was backed by JVC.  VHS won that format war because porn was allowed to be readily available on VHS and that there were more films available for rent on VHS.  Beta was the better, more reliable format which is why it's still the industry standard, allbeit in digital form these days.   Similarly, Sony were opposed to porn being available via BluRay, but when HD DVD (which was itself a better format) entered the battle, making porn available this time round became a no-brainer for Sony- basically any camera, format, medium, technique, etc. which the porn industry adopts is bound to be king.

As I see it, the thing with the over-abuse of slow-mo HD in recent years for me is simply down to chaps trying to stretch out a day's worth of footage to fill 3 minutes, hence the tedious cliched shots of homie setting up a board in slow-mo, eating in slow-mo, laughing in slow-mo, etc.   Recent radness like Dylan Rieder's Gravis part, any of the recent Cliche ads or Hold Tight Henry's work in the past 2 years doesn't suffer by virtue of what they're shot on.   Ultimately, any video guy who knows what he's doing will produce good footage, whether it's VHS-C, Super 8, Red or Imax.  If you don't have the eye for it, you're fucked.

Just my extra nerdy 2c worth...

[natenola forever]

Expand Quote

I dunno man, I've seen that all of the consumer and consumer-leaning prosumer HDV cams aren't in any of the stores, but B&H has a shitload of them, and they seem to increase in number the higher up you go towards professional-grade. Kind've like Beta... consumers got suckered into using VHS because of Sony marketing magic, yet Beta is still used in the industry side regularly.

You're right on though... there's a Best Buy right by my house and they don't have any HD cams that use tape. I wouldn't want to use anything else... hell, even if the cam stops recording correctly I could still convert it over as a tape backup for data!

[close]

Sony had shite all to do with VHS, which was backed by JVC.  VHS won that format war because porn was allowed to be readily available on VHS and that there were more films available for rent on VHS.  Beta was the better, more reliable format which is why it's still the industry standard, allbeit in digital form these days.   Similarly, Sony were opposed to porn being available via BluRay, but when HD DVD (which was itself a better format) entered the battle, making porn available this time round became a no-brainer for Sony- basically any camera, format, medium, technique, etc. which the porn industry adopts is bound to be king.

As I see it, the thing with the over-abuse of slow-mo HD in recent years for me is simply down to chaps trying to stretch out a day's worth of footage to fill 3 minutes, hence the tedious cliched shots of homie setting up a board in slow-mo, eating in slow-mo, laughing in slow-mo, etc.   Recent radness like Dylan Rieder's Gravis part, any of the recent Cliche ads or Hold Tight Henry's work in the past 2 years doesn't suffer by virtue of what they're shot on.   Ultimately, any video guy who knows what he's doing will produce good footage, whether it's VHS-C, Super 8, Red or Imax.  If you don't have the eye for it, you're fucked.

Just my extra nerdy 2c worth...

i hope you were joking about the whole porn thing, Vhs won because sony wouldn't license Beta to anyone, JVC licesensed  the technology to
everyone which is why it won the format war.

[Fuck Dungeon]

Taking sides in regards to the SD vs HD during this shift in skateboard cinematography is silly. If you look at it from a 'craft' perspective and are a true photographer/cinematographer, you'd be casting yourself out only sticking to one. It is important to have a full understanding of both in my opinion. Some people produce really bad VX1-MK1 footage, Some people produce really, really bad HD footage. Some marry the two together very well, as we've all seen. If you're just a viewer well, everyone who has been skating for a while has a trained eye when it comes to VX-1000 footage. Like it or not. Who know's how many hours we've all seen from the very first clip you saw and so on. I think that's why some people may not be as accepting to the HD outputs that are 'actually' well produced, As they've been so accustomed to the 1000 FOREVER. Which is fine!

The one thing that irks me the most about skateboarding related high-definition footage these days isn't really in the raw footage per-say. It's the guys who throw all their footage into color correction (Apple color, Color corrector 3-way etc) with what I assume is little to no knowledge whatsoever about color correction, and then start going dog-shit-rodeo on all the dials, pretty graphs & colorful buttons. I'm excited to see what's in the pipeline for HD and where great grandpa SD will end up in the near future.

[jildo]

I own a HD camera, so I'm naturally prone to take that side, but...
most HD cameras give you the option to shoot SD as well.

Where is the debate?

[grimcity]

\
D'Oh, I had Sony confused with... pretty much everyone else, haha. Thanks for the correction.