Understanding Video

What is Video? An overview of the technical parameters and quirks involved with video.
– by Sean Healy, June 4th: 3.30PM, Sandringham Secondary College.

1. Overview of video. What is it?
2. Codec Minefield. Containers and Codecs.
3. Programs for consolidating media into the one format.
4. Workflow for difficult video standards.
5. Iphones and new media types.
6. Tips and questions.

1. What is Video?

Video can refer to many different formats – from clips played inside web browsers to tape based recording on video cameras, from movies at the cinema to clips and recordings on smartphones. That it can account for so many different types of recording and across analog and digital / electrical and

Breaking down the technical aspects of video.

A good understanding of technical video parameters will help understand the delivery format needs of a client or project, and help debug any problems with software or hardware while exporting / rendering / delivering.

Technical Parameters to consider:

Frame size: This is the pixel dimension of the frame
The Aspect Ratio: This is the ratio of width to height
Frame rate: This is the speed at which the frames are captured and intended for playback.
Bitrate: The bitrate or data rate is the amount of data used to describe the audio or video portion of the file. It is typically measured in per second units and can be in kilobytes, megabytes or gigabytes per second. In general, the higher the bitrate, the better the quality.
The audio sample rate: This is how often the audio is sampled when converted from an analog source to a digital file.

2. What Is A Codec? What is a Container?

Co-mpression + Dec-ompression.

1 minute of uncompressed wav audio file = 10 MB
1 minute of mp3 ( @ 320kbps) compressed audio = 2.2MB

1 minute of uncompressed 1080p (1920×1080), 10-bit HD video = 10.86GB

1 minute of Pro Res 1080P HD PAL video = 1.34GB
1 minute of PhotoJPEG 1080P = 1.6GB
1 minute of 1080P H.264 video = 617.22 MB
1 minute of 1080P H.264 video (from Canon 7D, more heavily compressed) = 375MB
1 minute of 720P (1280×720) H.264 video = 369 MB
1 minute of 720×576 PAL H.264 video = 217.56 MB

(From the Video Space Calculator, which gives an indication of the amount of space a given video format will take up.)

How to choose the right codec for the job?

Compression basics ( from vimeo )

Explanation of a container.