STREAMING HD vs SD after COMPRESSION

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MandarichPhotography
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Joined: Apr 7 2007

Once a video is compressed for internet streaming (i.e. sorenson squeeze or H264) does it matter whether is was shot in HD or SD? Will it still look better on the internet if it started out HD?

Tony:)

StevenBagley
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Joined: Aug 14 2000
MandarichPhotography wrote:
Once a video is compressed for internet streaming (i.e. sorenson squeeze or H264) does it matter whether is was shot in HD or SD? Will it still look better on the internet if it started out HD?

What a minefield... Short answer, it depends. Depends what you mean by shooting in SD or HD, depends what you are compressing the video too (internet connections are such now that streaming 1920x1080 is doable with H264), depends how good you equipment and software is and how it is being used.

For an example, if you are shooting SD on Digibeta (or even a DSR570/450) and wanting to know whether HDV would look better then the answer is almost certainly no. On the other hand, shooting on an F900 instead of a PD150 may well produce better results if the downconversion algorithms used are good enough. If they aren't, then you'll end up with an image swarming with aliases which will just cause the compressors to choke...

Steven