Have you ever noticed how some TVs and other video devices often brag about their of support 1080p? I imagine that more than a few people see the 1080p logo on the TV’s box and think to themselves, “I’m not too sure about all this 1080p business, but whatever it is, I gotta have it!”

So what does 1080p mean? Anytime you see the numbers 480, 720, or 1080 in the context of video, it is referring to video resolution. And video resolution is basically a way of describing how much detail the video has. Not surprisingly, larger numbers mean more detail. The numbers themselves (480, 720, 1080) refer to the rows of pixels (often called lines of resolution) the video image has. Thus, a 1080p video has 1080 rows of pixels making up its image.

So what puts the “p” in 1080p? The “p” stands for progressive. Progressive video is video that plays one full frame at a time, just like film does. The alternative to progressive video is interlaced video. FYI: An interlaced video with a resolution of 1080 rows of pixels would be written as 1080i. For technical reasons, a lot of video is interlaced which means that it only displays half of its pixels at a time (for a deeper explanation go back to this post on 120Hz TVs, starting on the third paragraph). Progressive video looks better than interlaced video and is the hot new thing for TVs currently on the market.

1080p is a great big fat video signal. This is great for blu-ray and HD game consoles, but don’t expect to take advantage of the beauty of 1080p video when you’re watching broadcast TV.

Our television infrastructure was never designed to handle such a big fat video signal, so instead we broadcast a more slender version of HD-720p video and 1080i video.

720p, being a progressive video format, is not as large as it could be but it’s quite pleasing to the eye. Its rival, 1080i, is a larger video resolution, but only displays half of itself at a time–not ideal, but that’s the trade we must make for greater detail. Is this confusing? Yes it is!

I want to take a moment to apologize to the world for the mess that our broadcast engineers brought us. During the birth of HD video, the engineers couldn’t decide which HD video format was better, 720p or 1080i, so they ended up releasing both.

In the late 1990s, broadcast engineers got a wild hare to start creating a higher resolution video format. After looking at our current broadcast infrastructure, the engineers came up with a few options for how this higher resolution video could work. One option was to create a progressive video format that had 720 rows of pixels. The other was an interlaced video format that had 1080 rows of pixels. Two spirited camps formed, each was wildly enamored with their creation. Each camp was so stubborn and sure that theirs would be the victor that they both went ahead and sold video equipment to various networks supporting their formats.

Rivaling technologies usually have a winner and a loser. VHS beat BETA for the first home video consumer product. Blu-ray beat HD-DVD for the first HD home video product. Unfortunately, the contest between 720p and 1080i had no loser or winner, and because of this, we are left with some very complicated standards.

There are several options for video editing software but Final Cut Pro and Avid are the big two. Final Cut Pro was created by this little company called Apple, and Avid by DigiDesign. Both programs perform roughly the same actions; it’s just that a portion of the industry likes Final Cut Pro, and another portion is partial to Avid.

When I do work from home I edit on Final Cut Pro and at my full-time job I edit on Avid.

Difficulty:

FCP: Like every other Apple product, Final Cut Pro’s interface is elegantly designed and pretty. It’s not intimidating and it’s relatively reasonable to teach yourself how to use it.

AVID: It’s been my observation that regardless of skill, Avid editors are respected more than their FCP counterparts. I have a theory as to why: Avid is such an ugly and unapproachable piece of software that only a serious editor would ever bother with it. Even if you are an experienced editor, learning this program without formal training is almost impossible. Of course, once anybody learns something, it becomes easy. However it takes more effort to become comfortable with Avid then it does with Final Cut Pro.

Price:

FCP: $1000, or $299 to upgrade from a previous version (includes an entire suite of cool software)

AVID:$2400, $870 to upgrade from a previous version (includes only editing software)

Integration:

FCP: Final Cut Pro is best used when only one editor is working on a project at a time.

AVID: Numerous Avid’s are often networked together so that they can many editors can work on the same project at the same time.

The bottom line is that an editor is likely to prefer the software he/she was taught on and/or edits on primarily.. Avid is an ugly beast, but it’s powerful. Final Cut Pro is beautiful… and it’s also powerful. All serious editors should be proficient with both programs because the industry uses both. Each has its own way of solving certain problems, but both programs will do just about anything you ask of it.

The more you know.

The National Association of Broadcasters Convention (NAB) for 2011 just finished a few days ago. NAB is a big and expensive convention where all the video equipment companies go to sell their new stuff to broadcasters. This convention has everything from exciting new video cameras to cutting edge software.

Unfortunately, I’m not important enough to attend. I did however, (for the second year in a row I might add) edit a few promos, which were played on the convention floor! Here’s an original one I created for this year’s convention:

Growing up, I fantasized about working alongside big movie cameras, lights, and all the other hoopla one could expect from a big budget movie set. It was the job every film school student thought they would eventually land and I was no different.

It wasn’t soon after I graduated from college that I got to cash in on my fantasy. A big movie was coming to town and an actor friend of mine brought me along to the set. This was just the foot in the door that I needed, I thought. I figured that in no time I would be promoted to director or at least assistant director if that didn’t work out. And right on plan, about a week into shooting I got hired onto the crew as a production assistant–my plan to wiggle my way into the big times was working!

As a production assistant, I was entrusted with a walkie-talkie. The main purpose of this walkie-talkie was to give the truly important people access to me so they could boss me around. Though I was spending most of my time babysitting extras and guarding sidewalks from meandering pedestrians, I still had the walkie-talkie, which meant I was part of the club.

On one occasion I was even trusted to bring Mr. White (Bruce Willis’ pseudonym–sorry Bruce) a bundle of bananas. How about that!

For the next year or two, I worked as a production assistant (and as an extra when that didn’t pan out) for movies that would come around to town as much as I could. When I was on, I worked upwards of 16-hour days. When I was off – well, it could be months off. You basically get paid minimum wage, plus all the donuts and granola from the craft services cart your heart might desire.

Contrary to what you might think, the best part wasn’t the career opportunity. It wasn’t movie star sighting. And it certainly wasn’t the hours or the pay. It was the joy of standing on a movie set holding a walkie-talkie while Joe Shmoe walking down the street was totally jealous, I could tell.

While viewers fell in love with the cinematic look of a photographically wider picture, video editors fell in love with the composition possibilities of the black bars themselves. Black bars allowed for all kinds of new wacky things. Editors began “thinking outside the box” (or outside the bars if you will), and started placing text inside the black bars during commercials. Some even got fancy and dabbled with trading in the black bars for white ones, or red ones or green ones, and even some fancy designs made their way onto the tops and bottoms of the video. Remember back when black bars were just the result of video not actually fitting on the screen?

It was all fun and games until real HD arrived. Now we have been graced with all of these cool widescreen TVs, and it’s time that our widescreen video properly fits on our screens! Right? Unfortunately, we were playing god. We created something that no one had ever intended. We all found ourselves left with this pseudo-widescreen video that actually only works when viewed on a 4:3 TV.

What some broadcasters don’t seem to get is that even though not everything is available as of yet in HD, most people do have HD TVs. When you watch SD on an HD TV, the HD TV shrinks the video down to fit the height of the screen, which leaves black vertical bars on either side of the screen.

This is called pillarboxing (because the black bars resemble pillars). When that pillarboxed video also happens to be letterboxed, you get the horizontal black bars from the letterboxing added to the vertical black bars from the pillarboxing.

Even though the video is the correct aspect ratio in this case, it does not fill the screen, and this leads to depression.

The good people who make the HDTVs thought ahead about this shrunken video problem and gave us a button to fix it. Sometimes it’s called, “Aspect,” or “Wide,” or “Zoom,” but it always does the same thing. Pressing that magic button usually toggles though a few aspect ratio settings on the TV.

Just when you thought this couldn’t get any more complicated and messy, it did. See some broadcasters still like to mix 4:3 content with 16:9 content. As an example of this, think of a network bug (a.k.a. the network logo that hangs out at the bottom of the screen), it’s placed correctly if this was 4:3 video. But this is not 4:3 video; the aspect ratio is 16:9, so the bug displays awkwardly between letterboxed video and the black bar below the video.

Try watching this on a widescreen TV! You are either stuck with a giant black border around the video so that nothing is cut off, or you get video with half a bug cropped off. Either way this looks really ghetto! How about you broadcasters just pick one aspect ratio and stick with it?

I would like however, to congratulate the one network that finally got it right, MTV. Recently MTV figured out what year it was and what kind of TV technology dominates right now. On MTV’s standard definition channel, they play actual widescreen shows, and then they place their bug high enough on the screen so that even when widescreen viewers ultimately adjust their TV’s aspect ratio, the bug is still fully visible. Kudos!

Before we jump in, here’s a bit of background on aspect ratios for the kids:

Aspect ratio: An aspect ratio is a numerical way of comparing an object’s width to its height. A perfect square would be 1:1 (sometimes written 1X1), translating to 1 unit of measurement wide by one unit of measurement tall. For example, think of that cheesy peel and stick laminate floor tile; it is 1ft x 1 ft. Thus, the floor tile’s aspect ratio is 1:1. Another example would be a floor tile that is 2ft x 1 ft; its aspect ratio would be 2:1, meaning it is 2 units of measurement wide by one unit of measurement tall.

(There are several types of aspect ratios we encounter, here are the major ones.)

1. 4:3 Aspect Ratio: The original aspect ratio is 4:3; or traditionally called “Full Screen.” Way back in the day, believe it or not, movies were all in 4:3 (four units wide by three units tall). 4:3 is the aspect ratio of SD TV (standard definition television). Later, when TV got popular, movies had to become more awesome than TV, so they adopted a new gimmick called “widescreen”.

2. 16:9 Aspect Ratio: This aspect ratio, traditionally called “widescreen,” became decidedly sexier then 4:3 over time. After half a century of being exclusive to movies, widescreen was adopted by TV thanks to the home theater. 16:9 is now the aspect ratio for HD TV (high definition television).

Sometimes, the aspect ratio of the content you are watching, doesn’t match the aspect ratio of your TV. When this happens, some adjustments need to be made.

1. Letterbox: To fit a 16:9 image onto a 4:3 screen, the image needs to shrink down, which leaves some unused space on the screen (i.e. black bars). This kind of video is called letterbox because at some point in video history, this reminded someone of peeking though a mail slot, isn’t that profound?

2. Anamorphic: Instead of wasting a valuable portion of the video signal on black bars, anamorphic video intentionally stretches its image tall so as to stuff all the possible detail into the video signal. While letterboxed video is fine with a 4:3 TV, a 16:9 TV can benefit from a the anamorphic video. When anamorphic video is viewed on a 16:9 TV, the image is stretched back out to look its best; otherwise on a 4:3 TV, the video will be viewed as letterboxed.

These are the methods we used to jerry-rig our video so that we could enjoy the glory of 16:9 video, while we were stuck with 4:3 TVs. We wanted our widescreen! We wanted it all! We got greedy. The horror was still to come. What do you think happened once when we grew up and finally got our real 16:9 TVs? Now we have all this jerry-rigged widescreen video to deal with. To be continued… DUM DUM DUUUUUUUMMMMM!

Too many times I have tried to watch TV at other people’s houses and have to be given the orientation seminar before I can even fire up the TV:

“Okay, first you use this remote to turn the TV on, and then set it to HDMI 2. After that, use this remote to turn the receiver on. Now, the receiver defaults to input 3 so make sure you change it to input 5; otherwise you’ll be hearing my favorite country radio station. After that, use this remote to turn on the Blu-ray player. Once it’s all up and running you can adjust the volume with this receiver remote, but make sure you press this button before you turn it up or down. Otherwise, it won’t work…”

Nothing makes a hot steamy home theater system less sexy then an impromptu how-to class. You’ve seen this move when old people post the homemade how-to manual at the remote control staging table. They thoughtfully adorn themselves with reading glasses while picking up the master recipe for TV watching LAME!

Some people program that Motorola remote that everyone gets with their cable box as the universal remote. Half the time with that thing, you’re adjusting the TV volume, and the other half you’re adjusting the volume on the cable box (how about someone let Motorola know that cable boxes don’t need volume control!) And there’s nothing better then hitting the “All On” button to turn off the TV and it powers everything down including your DVR causing you to miss a valuable episode of American Idol!

So what’s the solution? Truthfully TV has just gotten so damn complicated, there is no great solution. It’s tough to get one magic wand to get a multitude of different devices all made by different manufacturers to dance in harmony with each other. I’ve looked and looked and have never found the solution.

The best option, in my opinion, has to be the smart remote. A smart remote basically takes that ghetto hand-written how-to manual for firing up the Blu-ray player, and automates it into a one-button “activity.” Pressing “Watch Blu-ray” turns on all of the relevant devices, sets everything to the correct inputs and then reassigns its buttons to Blu-ray actions, all so you’ll only need one remote. It’s both pretty cool, and also it’s your only hope in dismantling the remote control staging table. I’m not promising that you’ll never touch your old remotes again, but hopefully after bringing the smart remote into your living room you’ll only need them on very rare occasions.

But beware! There are a few downsides to the smart remote.

1. They are expensive: Our first smart remote cost $80. It didn’t work all that great so we had to upgrade to a $160 one (and that was on sale).

2. They eat through batteries: Our remote has a charging cradle (How obnoxious is that? Answer: Not at all, that’s awesome!) If you get a non-rechargeable smart remote, you’ll end up replacing the batteries every other month.

3. Difficult to set up: One needs to be quite savvy to program one of these remotes properly. I fancy myself awesome at understanding these things and it took me hours and hours to get ours just right. You’ll need to teach it which commands to send, and in what order, and what the timing should be for each. And the programming software it comes with is no prize either.

4. 100% functionality is not to be expected: I feel like ours works right about 85% of the time. Sometimes if you don’t aim it just right certain devices don’t turn on, or maybe completely irrelevant devices might do something unexpected. 85% is close… better then the annoyance of having to deal with numerous remotes. (For that 15% of the time when the remote doesn’t do everything right there is a “Help” button which basically makes the remote try again, and this always works.)

5. Limited brands to choose from: In fact, if you want a smart remote you’re going to have to buy a Harmony because, well, I’ve never seen any other smart remote brand. When I was at the checkout at Best Buy purchasing our latest remote the guy behind the counter was like,
“A Harmony!”
“Yeah I know! Is this a good one?” I asked.
“Oh I don’t know, I don’t believe in universal remotes, I’m a purist…” he replied.
“…Ok…” Awkward.

Really, now? The purist argument almost never does anything for me. I do agree that the universal remote is not perfect, but it’s better then dealing with 20 different remotes.

It’s always been my dream that someday Apple will swoop in and fix all of this for us. Maybe once Steve is feeling better I’ll give him a call.

TV manufacturers are now marketing a new feature-higher refresh rates. Not sure what that means? Let’s break it down.

Until recently, all TVs in the U.S. had a refresh rate of 60Hz. This means that every one second, your TV turns all of it’s pixels off and on a total of 60 time-hence 60 Hz. The new fangled 120Hz TVs fire up all of their pixels 120 times every second. And the 240Hz TVs do this 240 times a second. “So what,” right? Does it really matter?

Let’s start at the beginning, American TV is broadcast at 30 frames per second. When broadcast TV was first created, engineers decided that 1 frame of video was too big to transport in just one trip.

The solution was to break each frame in half and broadcast each half-frame (a.k.a. “field”) twice as fast. This process is called interlacing.

You don’t need to know this, it helps to know that that are two different types of interlacing I can tell you that it comes in two flavors:
1. Progressive Segmented Frame (or PsF if you’re in the “biz”) An example of progressive segmented frame would be video that was converted from film. With film there is no interlacing, each frame has only one field. With PsF video,  one field is simply cut in half and then turned into two fileds. The viewer still only sees half of each frame at a time but because this happens so fast it looks very much like progressive video.
2. Standard Issue Interlacing (my name for it) Instead of starting with one full-sized image, this version, starts with two images at half resolution. It annoys me that this process is still called “30 frames per second” because the viewer sees 60 unique images every second. The effect is much less cinematic then progressive video.

Okay, back to refresh rates. Picture a train. Trains can’t fit all of their cargo into just one car, so cargo is divided up over several train cars.

Video does the same thing; one frame can’t be be broadcast within a 30th of a second so each frame is broken in half and then broadcast twice as fast.

American video plays at 60 fields per second, which means that TVs need to put a new picture on the screen 60 times every second otherwise known as having a 60Hz refresh rate.

So what’s the deal with the fancy new 120Hz TVs? Its my understanding that this is all because of 3DTVs. 3DTVs basically have to show two videos at the same time (RIGHT EYE and LEFT EYE) so that the screen will need to refresh twice as fast (60Hz RIGHT + 60Hz LEFT =120Hz 3D). My theory is that once engineers figured out how to do that they wanted to slip that technology into all TVs whether it was essential or not.

These 120HzTVs do a few neat things that standard 60Hz TVs do not, such as:
1. Reduced flicker and eye strain. This is not something that will necessarily impress your friends but it does make a more pleasant viewing experience. You may have noticed on some LCD TVs that when going from a bright scene to a dark scene it takes a second for the screen to fully adjust. It can make a hard edit look more like a dissolve. 120Hz TVs fix this problem.
2. Supports true 24 frames per second playback. Most blu-rays are encoded at 24 frames per second to preserve the motion quality of film and standard 60Hz TVs have to modify that frame rate in order to be able to play. 120 is divisible by 24 so 24 frames per second video can play without blending frames. If you’re not a real stickler for video then this feature might not blow you out of your seat but it makes me feel legit.
3. Simulated higher frame rates. Modern TVs are starting to act more like computers. Once this higher refresh rate was figured out, engineers decided to teach the TVs computer to simulate more frames per second. The TVs computer can look at two adjacent frames of video and guess what a frame between the two of them might look like. It isn’t perfect, but the idea is that it will happen so fast that less than 100% accuracy will do. This is the one feature of these TVs that is extremely noticeable. Personally, I hate this feature. It makes video look like fast motion. It’s especially annoying when watching movies. The movie industry has made such efforts to make HD look like film, and this effect completely undoes a lot of that. Personally I don’t care about hurting the movie industry’s feelings; I just don’t like how it looks. It might be cool for video games though. Try it out and see what you think.

So, in conclusion, 120Hz vs 240Hz? It’s the same thing, only 240Hz is an even higher refresh rate. Most people are perfectly happy with their 60Hz TVs so I imagine that there is little perceivable difference between 120Hz and 240Hz TVs.

This new TV feature is yet another example of how Americans are out of real problems, but go buy one anyway-we did!

Little black vibrating gargoyles sit perched atop of pedestals or on your wall as the glory of the almighty YOU rings throughout your home. If your personal cathedral has been blaspheming your ears with TV speaker audio, then I aim to ready you for the glory of surround sound.

Stereo audio is the most common form of recorded audio on the planet; it consists of two channels, a RIGHT channel, and a LEFT channel. Both channels play a little something different to trick the listener’s brain into perceiving space. This is most effective while listening to headphones. Most music, radio and TV is played back this way.

Surround sound is basically taking the intimate concept of stereo audio and scaling it up to fill a large room. Instead of 2 audio channels playing to each of your ears, surround sound has 6 audio channels (typically the number of speakers is 6 but there could be more) playing 360 degrees around you. These speakers include: FRONT RIGHT, FRONT LEFT, CENTER, FRONT REAR and RIGHT REAR. After this gem of audio science was discovered I imagine that some dude came along and said to the creator of surround:
“You know what would make this even better!? Adding a 6th speaker!”
“No no I think we got it with 5,” the creator would say.
“Yes you have done well with creating good sound perspective, but I think we need a 6th speaker that will be dedicated to vibrating your house!” And thus 5.1 5.1 audio was born-5 directional full range speakers and one house vibrator (or better known as the sub woofer).

It’s important to understand where your 5.1 audio comes from. Today digital 5.1 audio comes in two flavors: DOLBY DIGITAL and DTS. They are the Coke and Pepsi of surround sound.

The only difference between these two is that DOLBY DIGITAL audio is compressed and DTS’s audio is not. Audiophiles (or audio nerds) have done audio tests and many can’t tell the difference between the two. Get as excited as you want when you see that your Blu-ray has DTS on it but don’t tell me that you can tell the difference, because I won’t believe you. The DOLBY DIGITAL signal is small enough to be broadcasted for TV so it’s signal is smaller, but the good people over at Dolby did a good job on their compression algorithm you can’t tell it’s compressed.

When HD video really got going, DOLBY and DTS wanted to call themselves HD too. So both companies created new standards for what they deemed “HD Audio.” DOLBY created: DOLBY TrueHD and DTS created: DTS-HD. These of these as the energy drinks of surround sound. Again they are both basically the same, only in two different flavors, and both uncompressed. They increased the specs for both and added the possibility for 2 new speakers to bring 5.1 audio up to 7.1 audio. (The audio for the extra 2 speakers are usually simulated). If you must chose between HD Audio, and non-HD Audio, obviously chose, HD Audio. But if it’s price prohibitive, don’t mess with it. You probably won’t notice a gigantic difference between the two any way.

If you’re like me and the wife, most of our self-worship time is spent watching broadcast TV. Like I said before DOLBY DIGITAL is the only broadcasting surround sound format, however not every show contains surround sound! BEWARE! OH BEWARE! Many commercials, and even TV shows, never got the memo that the church of ME demands digital 5.1 audio. They are still broadcasting only stereo. DOLBY and DTS also both have a diet version of surround sound, which takes stereo audio and simulates surround sound.

DOLBY has Pro Logic II, and DTS has Neo6. What happens is, your receiver takes in stereo audio, breaks it apart and pumps out the broken up pieces through each of your speakers. It’s cool but it’s not perfect, and sometimes you may hear audio elements awkwardly moving from one speaker to another. But it’s still cool.

Don’t be too bummed out that not all broadcast audio comes in as DOLBY DIGITAL. Broadcasters have a dirty little secret too. Just like your receiver simulates surround sound for you at home, broadcasters simulate surround sound for you before it even gets to you. True they may be sending you a DOLBY DIGITAL audio signal, but that surround sound mix may been created by breaking up stereo audio and mailing them to you in six different pieces. It’s like pouring Diet Dolby and giving it to you in a Dolby Classic can. It’s not perfect, but buck up, broadcasters have better 5.1 simulators than you do, and in the end does What Not To Wear really benefit from surround sound anyway?

I love audio and video and up to this point my wife has been very good at humoring me as I talk endlessly about it at home. Before I was around she used to not notice whether she was watching HD or SD. Now I have her detecting variations in frame rates, compression artifacts, and text outside title-safe-she’s a regular technician. If I could ruin video for her I figured it might be a good idea to start writing down some my pearls of wisdom on the subject and try to ruin it for a few others as well. Just for a little bit of background about myself, I am an editor for Discovery Communications Inc. in Silver Spring, MD and I also run Henlivision Productions which is a small video production company in Frederick, MD. I’m passionate about creating media as well as consuming it which will be the focus of this blog.

So back to guy seeking home theater assistance. He wanted to know what the best way to set up surround sound speakers. After spending several thousand dollars on a home theater, I understanding him wanting to make sure everything is just right. After all you want to be able to tell you friends that each speaker has been carefully calibrated according to THX specifications and that you had to hire a scientist to come out to your home to calculate your speaker placement according to the layout and humidity of the room. Technically, speakers should be a specific distance and angle relative to where the viewer sits. Here is what the good people at Dolby have to say about the subject: http://www.dolby.com/consumer/setup/speaker-setup-guide/index.html.

If you can do what Dolby tells you to do then just do that. Sometimes however the room or even the wife may not allow you to place the speakers exactly where’d you like them to be. If this is the case you’ll still be better off than all the saps who are only rocking just the TV speaker. There are no unbreakable rules in audio and video. Every home theater (and real theater too for that matter) is set up completely differently and it’s just fine. True, some theaters are better than others but you just have to do your best with what you’re working with. If nothing else, at least now you know that your speaker placement is “wrong.”