The DVD of The Face of HD is an excellent example of the benefits of originating on a high resolution low noise medium like HD. Why shoot on HD if the movie is going to DVD producers ask! For the same reason we shoot 35mm and not 16mm because the audience notice the difference. But why?

Christos, of UK duplicator Dubbs explains

"A major difference in quality results from far lower signal to noise ratio in HD. This allows encoders to focus solely on the picture content and not attempt to interpret noise as part of the image.

Equipment such as the S&W "Prefix" is normally used to improve encoding from SD material (using noise reduction) to MPEG's, QuickTime, and DVD. This is not as essential with HD content. Most times it will still look superior.

In addition from recent experience, we've noticed specific images, which MPEG 2 has problems encoding, such as water, fast pans, red colors, from SD video appear to be less problematic from HD source video.

In order to keep such a high level of detail on your transfer a superior encoder is still needed.

The equipment and settings used to produce the DVD were a Sonic SD2000 real time encoder set to CBR (constant Bit Rate) 2 PASS at 8MB/S. The DVD was burnt using a Pioneer 201 drive.

Some of the advantages in transferring HD footage to DVD using a high level encoding and authoring package such as Sonic are that you can insert time code accurate chapter points throughout your program for quicker access, also still images (tiff, bit maps etc) frame grabs at full HD resolution can be saved as Rom contents."

The Face of HD can be ordered from

Dubbs

25-26 Poland St

London W1F 8QN.

Tel +44 (0)2074392525

contact Seb Tyack