Hi Joey I won’t comment too much about frame-rates, other than saying I’m lucky
we have 24p / 25p / 50i in Europe – North American frame rates are such a mess.
For resolution, 1920by1080 (=full HD) is really the defacto standard. It is
quite effective as a universal master format, covering pretty much anything
broadcast, as well as 35mm film and BlueRay transfer.
If you don’t need 2k or up, you can’t go wrong with 1920x1080 – and it has
beautiful square pixels.
I haven’t done standard definition in a decade now – but at the time, I always
preferred rendering/compositing at 768x576 square pixels PAL, and converting to
720x576 non square pixels after finishing.
Yes, at first full HD can be quite expensive for rendering compared to standard
definition at ~6 times the amount of pixels – but you can compensate some in
the sampling settings:
Standard definition, with non square pixels and interlacing is quite
problematic for small details, and requires decent sampling – eg. in mental ray
terms min1 max3 was standard for me – and sometimes 2 / 3 or double res
rendering.
I find that full HD / progressive frames alleviated the sampling requirements –
and for me standard sampling is now min 0 max 2 contrast 0.05 mitchell 4 or
gauss 3 – the need for double res never occurred for me (in software
rendering), very occasionally 1.5 times the res. On the opposite, I find that
sometimes you can get away with lower sampling as well: –1 / 2 / 0.075 for
example – something that would look quite bad on SD / interlaced.
This, together with inevitable progress in hardware, makes that I don’t find
full HD rendering today any slower than rendering SD was in the past. IMO,
longer rendertimes today come from higher expectations put on content.
Your mileage may vary – and 1280x720 (=HD ready) may be adequate – it is a big
improvement over SD – but personally, I would find it a shame not to go full HD
anno 2013.
For playback – depends on the situation.
When doing CGI, I’m used to playing less than a minute at a time - from a local
non raid disk or from a server – playback software like RV or Framecycler
handles this very well, and flipbook is no slouch either.
For more critical situations, such as monitored playback, and editing with a
client - get a turnkey NLE station, with decicated graphics, video I/O and raid
array and most importantly software that offers guaranteed performance at full
HD (oh how I liked flame and DSHD way back when... )
If you put consumer software on a regular PC, don’t expect the performance of a
high end NLE station – even if things have certainly come a long way.
Just my 2 cent and random thoughts.
From: Byron Nash
Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2013 10:16 PM
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Rendering to video and formats
Most of the stuff we work with on the commercial side is 1920x1080 - 23.976fps
because that is the resolution and frame rate most commercials are shot with.
On rare occasions we work in 29.97 and 1280x720. Youtube and Vimeo support
1920x1080 these days so I just prefer to go full raster even if the target is
web use.
On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 12:57 PM, Stephen Davidson <magic...@bellsouth.net>
wrote:
Hi Joey,
Most of my stuff ends up in broadcast.
I use 1280 x 1080 1.5 pixel aspect ratio and 1.7778 picture aspect ratio
(16x9)
I use this because it conforms to DVCPRO 100 specs.
I use After Effects to composite my animation layers so I can
dial up the final output format there, depending on what edit system is
being used for the final edit.
I also stick to 29.97 unless strobing motion is an issue. If it is an issue,
then I render
60fps and deal with either the motion blur or field interlacing in After
Effects.
I hope this helps.
On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 12:31 PM, Ponthieux, Joseph G. (LARC-E1A)[LITES]
<j.ponthi...@nasa.gov> wrote:
Hi folks,
Its been several years since I’ve had to deal with this so I thought I
would ask what the current practice is for most folks now that HD has really
taken hold.
For the record I have experience with standard def video going back to 1
inch type C and U-matic almost 30 years ago. In recent time we had a fairly
decent workflow rendering to D1/DV resolution and compositing to DV QT/AVI for
efficient video output.
However, I’m not sure what the standard practice is today regarding a
similar workflow with HD. Further I’m finding the high end 1080 formats to be
quite expensive regarding render time, disk capacity, and playback efficiency.
So the questions I have are:
1. What is the most common rendering resolution you use for 3D?
2. What video format/hertz are you targeting/using?
3. What is the best or most efficient HD format for
compositing/rendering straight to a video playback file which can then be read
into a non-linear editor, in my case Premiere Pro or Final Cut?
In general I’m looking for a silver bullet approach similar to the old:
720x480->QuicktimeDV->Final Cut approach. (720x480->MS DV AVI->Premiere Pro
for the Adobe folks).
I expect everyone is using 16:9 today and 4:3 is obsolete so how does this
translate to a modern HD format and for that matter which HD format.
I realize all of this today is dependent on whether your focused on 720 or
1080 and may also be dependent upon the broadcast production equipment you are
using. What I’m mostly interested in is what is the most efficient render
format to quickly get me to a native non-linear editing file and maintain long
term viability.
I’m also interested in anyone thoughts regarding hertz as well. As an OLD
video guy, I’m inclined to gravitate towards the 30/29.97 fps. But frankly
don’t have a clue what the accepted standard is these days in HD since at one
time 60p was the holy grail.
I’m not currently limited to a specific video hardware platform as we have
no specific dedicated broadcast equipment. Everything is delivered via
multimedia at the moment, however, there may come a time when editing in a
dedicated editing suite may become necessary.
Thanks
--
Joey Ponthieux
LaRC Information Technology Enhanced Services (LITES)
Mymic Technical Services
NASA Langley Research Center
__________________________________________________
Opinions stated here-in are strictly those of the author and do not
represent the opinions of NASA or any other party.
--
Best Regards,
Stephen P. Davidson
(954) 552-7956
sdavid...@3danimationmagic.com
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic
- Arthur C. Clarke
