DEMOREEL HD vs SD Poll

[Andreas.Jablonka]

Hey Guys,

I just saw a reel of a friend he just redid in HD one shot stood out sooo great in HD that I wonder what the general acceptance is by now. I dont(!) want to argue if HD is better quality (of course it is) but how you guys feel about:

- HD online looks great but Studios dont watch em

- HD looks great but still need for SD dvd hardcopy? yes or nor

- frustration that at an interview you are gonna watch the crappy sd dvd version on the 10 year old TV and not your glorious hd h264quicktime.

I was immediately tempted to redo my reel in HD and realized that some footage I dont have in HD.

[Gentle Fury]

well you already know my opinion of DVD....lol

But i think you said it....interviewers are always 2 steps behind...for years after DVD was introduced standard was VHS even tho it was SO much easier to burn a DVD than find someone that could output to VHS. And now that HD is standard you still have to present in the highly inferior DVD format. As for online reels I don't see why you couldn't have both and present a choice of viewing options.

[scrimski]

SD-DVD with an additional HD version(quicktime H264 or the like) on the same disc.

I signed in for Berlinale Talent Campus 2010 and they still only accept VHS reels.

[faridzadeh]

I honestly feel Standard Def DVDs are the way to go for a while. The chances of them having a blu-ray player in every room is still slim. Blu-rays are a pain to rip (still impossible on macs I think), and blu-ray still haven't taken off as a player, let alone a burner in your pc.

Online I post a 720 by 480 version of my reel.

SD is "good enough" to showcase your work. You're trying to impress the HR department, not an anal videophile.

[quety101]

where are you gettin HD footage from? everywhere seems to give you SD quicktimes. Or are you just ripping from the blueray dvds?

[Gentle Fury]

I honestly feel Standard Def DVDs are the way to go for a while. The chances of them having a blu-ray player in every room is still slim. Blu-rays are a pain to rip (still impossible on macs I think), and blu-ray still haven't taken off as a player, let alone a burner in your pc.

Online I post a 720 by 480 version of my reel.

SD is "good enough" to showcase your work. You're trying to impress the HR department, not an anal videophile.

you mean 640x480? if you post 720x480 to web you will have a stretched image. Web video tip, you can compress 740x480 anamorphic footage to 640x360 for wide footage...makes for a smaller image size and proper AR.

[Andreas.Jablonka]

@saeed I just see how much compression kills my comp. I have pirates 3 shots ripped from a dvdrip of the web since the orphanage is dead and I never got my shots. it would look so much clearer. even if i take 1080p and resize it to sd. but i agree about the availability.

@quety101 it depend son the company. luma pictures gives me 1080p prores quicktimes, r&h gave me sd interlaced qiucktimes, sony gave me 1k uncompressed quicktimes (with sound). other company let you copy all plates and elements and 2k dpxes.

[Gentle Fury]

@saeed I just see how much compression kills my comp. I have pirates 3 shots ripped from a dvdrip of the web since the orphanage is dead and I never got my shots. it would look so much clearer. even if i take 1080p and resize it to sd. but i agree about the availability.

@quety101 it depend son the company. luma pictures gives me 1080p prores quicktimes, r&h gave me sd interlaced qiucktimes, sony gave me 1k uncompressed quicktimes (with sound). other company let you copy all plates and elements and 2k dpxes.

Which becomes my biggest issue...I have some 2k some SD some HD....and while the HD and 2k plates can nicely be made into an HD movie the SD stuff wil look even worse upressed to HD Almost better to have everything go down to SD so the HD stuff will look great...and the SD stuff will look the same.

[faridzadeh]

I don't know. Maybe. Meh... it looks fine.
I take my footage into a premiere workspace I set up with the intention of DVD publishing and shrink it until the it fills in a nice space between the two fake black bars I have in a template.

It works for me.


you mean 640x480? if you post 720x480 to web you will have a stretched image. Web video tip, you can compress 740x480 anamorphic footage to 640x360 for wide footage...makes for a smaller image size and proper AR.

[Gentle Fury]

I don't know. Maybe. Meh... it looks fine.
I take my footage into a premiere workspace I set up with the intention of DVD publishing and shrink it until the it fills in a nice space between the two fake black bars I have in a template.

It works for me.

well the reason i do 640x360 is so you don't have to waste space on the black bars...the video is 16:9 so you will have a slightly smaller filesize.

[faridzadeh]

The reason I have a set standard def size is to prep it for square tv. And the fake bars is just to have a one size fits all. Scale it until it fits right. That way I don't have a varying aspect ratio problem and it's all uniform.

I keep it simple. While I can understand the need for all that, I honestly just want to do a reel with as little headache as possible and get it out there.

[faridzadeh]

I just checked my demo reel. It's 720x480.
Plays fine on my website, and on DVD player it plays great.
I could open up premiere on my pc and read the settings on the project, but it's all the way over there... and I'm sitting here on my mac in the dining room. Too lazy.

[Gentle Fury]

I just looked at your reel...it looks great btw. I'm guessing that since your manually resizing it it's probably a 720x405 image in a 720x480 container for the borders, which gets you a bigger picture than you normally would. I encode to that occasionally too.

How did you do your lightbox? Did you code that or get the code from somewhere, I wanted that for my site, but im not a coder and don't know how to.

[Andreas.Jablonka]

im with saeed here, im doing a premiere dvd project so while your right it helps for smaller filesize it also means encore is gonna freak out that its not standart dvd resolution. keep it simple.

[Gentle Fury]

well i worked in video production for a couple years....I use final cut studio and I've had to encode for dvd and web a lot...so i have my own system down for doing it.

[faridzadeh]

@Gentle Fury. You did video production? That explains a lot then. :)
I resize my footage until it fits into my predetermined template. Luckily I've had full size plates so I can shrink down. I haven't had to blow up 2.35 footage off a DVD. Then I might have to take off the blu-ray and shrink it down.

As for the lightbox, I mixed up a bunch of code I found on other sites and put it together in Rapidweaver for mac. I'm definitely not a coder and just kept dicking with it until I got it working. Once I did I just left it alone.

@Andreas. I just have premiere encode the DVD for me. The fewer steps I have to deal with, the better. And that way since my timeline is 24fps, premiere will know how to properly format it frame wise.

[Andreas.Jablonka]

@Gentle Fury. You did video production? That explains a lot then. :)
I resize my footage until it fits into my predetermined template. Luckily I've had full size plates so I can shrink down. I haven't had to blow up 2.35 footage off a DVD. Then I might have to take off the blu-ray and shrink it down.

As for the lightbox, I mixed up a bunch of code I found on other sites and put it together in Rapidweaver for mac. I'm definitely not a coder and just kept dicking with it until I got it working. Once I did I just left it alone.

@Andreas. I just have premiere encode the DVD for me. The fewer steps I have to deal with, the better. And that way since my timeline is 24fps, premiere will know how to properly format it frame wise.

you mean you rendere a mpeg 2 dvd complient file right? encore is dynamic link so it takes the prepiere timeline and just writes it onto a dvd.

i noticed that resizing in premiere is AWFUL in quality, verry jagged. you do it through the motion tab or how do you do it?

[faridzadeh]

Premiere used to export the timeline right onto a DVD. No menus. No nothing. Just the video. I think I remember them changing it to force you to burn it in encore. For some reason I remember thinking "screw that" and just exported out the video_ts file and burning it myself.

As for resizing. I do that in combustion into a comp that is prepped for the premiere time line.

[Andreas.Jablonka]

Premiere used to export the timeline right onto a DVD. No menus. No nothing. Just the video. I think I remember them changing it to force you to burn it in encore. For some reason I remember thinking "screw that" and just exported out the video_ts file and burning it myself.

As for resizing. I do that in combustion into a comp that is prepped for the premiere time line.

ah ok so it doe not actually burn the disc for you. thats what i thought, encore does.
ans combustion to premiere timeline? how? all your edits are in a combustion workspace?
I was hoping to avoid rendering EVERY resize through ae/cb ;(

[Gentle Fury]

@Gentle Fury. You did video production? That explains a lot then. :)
I resize my footage until it fits into my predetermined template. Luckily I've had full size plates so I can shrink down. I haven't had to blow up 2.35 footage off a DVD. Then I might have to take off the blu-ray and shrink it down.

As for the lightbox, I mixed up a bunch of code I found on other sites and put it together in Rapidweaver for mac. I'm definitely not a coder and just kept dicking with it until I got it working. Once I did I just left it alone.

@Andreas. I just have premiere encode the DVD for me. The fewer steps I have to deal with, the better. And that way since my timeline is 24fps, premiere will know how to properly format it frame wise.

my first 1.5 years was in a digital video house. Only started working with film a couple years ago.

[faridzadeh]

Premiere used to burn the disc for you. For some reason I think they removed that option in the last one I got, but I'm not sure. i haven't created a master DVD copy since spring 08. I'll be making a new reel next month so I get to revisit everything again.

Combustion I just use to resize and position the clip, then render it out as an avi in the proper size and format, and bring that into premiere. Combustion is just the formatter, and premiere is the editor.

I can probably turn on my pc and look at my settings for you if you want. I'm still at work, and chances are once I get home I'm not going to want to look into this. Just a fair warning.


ah ok so it doe not actually burn the disc for you. thats what i thought, encore does.
ans combustion to premiere timeline? how? all your edits are in a combustion workspace?
I was hoping to avoid rendering EVERY resize through ae/cb ;(

[Andreas.Jablonka]

Premiere used to burn the disc for you. For some reason I think they removed that option in the last one I got, but I'm not sure. i haven't created a master DVD copy since spring 08. I'll be making a new reel next month so I get to revisit everything again.

Combustion I just use to resize and position the clip, then render it out as an avi in the proper size and format, and bring that into premiere. Combustion is just the formatter, and premiere is the editor.

I can probably turn on my pc and look at my settings for you if you want. I'm still at work, and chances are once I get home I'm not going to want to look into this. Just a fair warning.

nah dont worry its fine!

[hiphopcr]

Andreas is already thinking about all the sweet demo reel shots he's gonna have from the current project he's on.... :)

[Andreas.Jablonka]

Andreas is already thinking about all the sweet demo reel shots he's gonna have from the current project he's on.... :)

ha ill have none. all im doing at the moment is nothing i can show on a reel believe me. it sucks.

[Aruna]

As some already know, I'm prepping a new reel in HD, burn on Blu Ray. Most of the films I want on my reel I already have in HD, except for Constantine! Waiting for that one, I've got some nice shots from that show. I conform in Premiere Pro 1.5 (that was the last version that could write to DVD immediately, IIRC), and usually burn a DVD through that. For BR I'm conforming with 1080p/24, and will be outputting BluRay via some other method. I'll most likely downrez to 720p for a web reel, and keep 1080p for BR. I think the power of BR will allow me to add breakdowns and such when the shot is viewed.

However, I don't plan on sending BluRay out to studios. Most of my work is via reference, so I seldom send any out. I'll probably send a BR out to family, keep one on hand to show guests when they come over, etc.

[Andreas.Jablonka]

ok how are you planing on doing breakdownor do you actually have plates etc in HD?

[Aruna]

I've breakdown plates from shots I did breakdowns for in HD for Siggraph the past several years.

[tharrell]

Ha, with the amount of reels I've been sending overseas, I think I'd have to take out a second mortgage to afford recordable Blu-Rays for all of them. Postage alone (if you want things to arrive in a week or so and be trackable) is already outrageous without spending $10 a disc!

I've found that most places I've been going after in London still want a straight up DVD-R (not +R, not +-RW, only DVD-R) disc to keep on file with a breakdown, even if they refer to your web reel for the initial screening.

[beaker]

tharrell: the lame blueray spec has a backdoor that allows you to burn on dvd but still playback at 1080p without paying the horrid 3k in fees per disk. On mac you just need toast and a few other hacky tools.

These guys talked about it at NAB and macworld:
http://www.recipe4dvd.com/
http://www.dvdafteredit.com/

[Gentle Fury]

@Gentle Fury. You did video production? That explains a lot then. :)


I am still trying to figure out what you meant by this......

[RobPhoboS]

I'll keep the originals at a 2k resolution or full HD, then resize properly for any format, most post production houses will want a standard DVD but there isn't any harm including a blue ray disc as well.

Now, the MOST important thing is to make sure you watch your reel on a few different screens, and a few different TV's.
Just like when making music demo's, we check it on different systems to see if anything sticks out badly, and just with a showreel, you want to make sure nothing nasty is happening.

[piotrek255]

Hi, i'm making my first demoreel and i need help with putting my video pieces in one video

I started putting my portfolio from various renders, some of them are 1440 x 972 (when making these renders i though about later scaling down by 50% to 720 x 486 for better quality), some of them are 720 x 480, two of them are in 1280 x 720.

I have done some tests, and rendered one of my 1440 x 972 to 720 x 486 with H264 quick time compression, and the video turned out really desaturated, most of the vivd colors were gone, and a lot of large artifacts in background came out (mostly in DOF blurred areas in the background).

i'm struggling with:

-compression type -> what format/codec should i use

-resolution -> i read this topis and 720 x 480 seems like the best choice for web, i dont think i will be putting any HD renders, or should i? if so, what resolution should i use?

-footage type -> i though about putting 2 typical TV commercials videos
2 product previews (laptop, cell phone, car, etc.), 2 shorts ,one with several characters interacting with each other, second with one character interacting heavily with enviroment and 2 CG renders integrated with video footage, the last 2 pieces i'm making right now, is it ok if i download some royalty free hd footage from some site and work with that? what do you think? how should i approach this?


Thanks for reading and i hope you can help me with this one.