How Hi is Hi Def?

Peter Copestake · Post by **Peter Copestake** » Wed May 21, 2008 9:01 pm

Back in the winter I took video, using a tripod, on our PD 170 (4:3!) of a foggy view of a tree in a big RHS garden. My wife took the same shot, hand held on our Panasonic DMC FZ50 still camera. It has a 10 megapixel chip, I think.
Her picture shows twigs and branches, mine branches only. Would HiDef have matched the still? (We can't afford it anyway!)
I tried to import the still file into premier hoping for HIDef on the cheap but it wouldn't swallow it and experimenting with the still camera I found that Premier would only import the poorest setting pictures. I suppose there is nothing I can do about this?

Graeme Webb · Post by **Graeme Webb** » Thu May 22, 2008 11:34 am

Hi Peter,

As I understand it there are various flavours of hdv but the one that most here on the forum would be familiar with is 1080i which is effectively 1440x1080 pixels as opposed to 720x576 PAL standard DV. My Nikon D80 which is billed as a 10 mega pixel camera is capable of images of 3872 x 2592 pixels so even in HDV you might not see too many twigs against the FZ50. Interestingly enough I have just finished a stop mo animation where I used the Nikon at a setting of 1936x1296 and captured each frame to a laptop. I then dumped each scene into Final Cut Pro for post production along with 1080i footage a bunch of Bob's photoshop graphics and matte paintings rendered in Vue 6 infinite (landscapes that were being panned across). I had to set up the software to understand that it was a 1080i project and this took care of the import of all the stills. I have not used Premier for a number of years but there should be a setting that enables you to import high quality graphics or set up a 1080i project.

G

stingman · Post by **stingman** » Thu May 22, 2008 3:27 pm

Premiere Pro WILL handle all sorts of reselutions. My recon is that it should reconise an image up to 600%. I think this because if you inport a standard image the same size as the reselution of a normal DV project then you can Zoom this image upto 600%. I may be wrong. I do like working with bigger images because you can pan and zoom into them more without loosing quality.

Be good....

Stingman

Peter Copestake · Post by **Peter Copestake** » Tue May 27, 2008 6:59 pm

Thanks for both replies. I am a dunce as far as these things go, and I'm not sure I understand but I have a friend who will. His Premiere 6.5 imports stills of the quality I wanted and it remains to be seen if he can work out why mine won't.
As for the first part of my question it appears from what Graeme wrote that we are in much the same state, though nothing like to the same extent, as in the old cine days where 35mm slides had so much better quality than 8mm film.
We felt the movement more than made up for the lack of definition but were secretly jealous. However it did make the point that if you were filming immoveable objects you'd be better doing it in AV and I guess AV people still say the same.
If we can work out what my problem has been I'll let you know under 'importing stills' or some such.
Peter.

billyfromConsett · Post by **billyfromConsett** » Thu May 29, 2008 6:34 pm

I haven't tried it today, but Prem 6.5 can import stills, and you can use the motion gadget to zoom in, rotate and pan them if you want.

Not sure if the resolution gets screwed. I'll test it and say.

billyfromConsett · Post by **billyfromConsett** » Thu May 29, 2008 9:15 pm

The zoom and motion gadget in Prem 6.5 basically screws hi res picture when you use the full x500 zoom.
It must redraw your hi-res still at 720 x 576 and then zoom in from that resolution. So if your still starts from 3817 x 2439 (like my 10MP Sony SLR) then you've lost 96% of the detail you had to start with.

Another drawback for my beloved Premiere 6.5. I think we're falling out...

I can use Edius since I've got a Storm card. Anyone know if this happens in Edius?