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Panasonic B AV-HS400

Panasonic AV-HS400 A

Panasonic AV-HS400 A - Rear Panel

This is my favorite choice. If we go HD-SDI, it’s a must. Making it work on all analog component would be more pricey, though, since we’d need more expansion cards. We’d already have to get one for computer input (or get an card for our computer to output in the right format). It does some awesome stuff, though. Our cameras to HD-SDI output at 1080i, so that would work.

Edirol V-440HD

Edirol V-440HD

Edirol V-440HD - Rear Panel

This is our other option. It has a SD side on the left, which is then mixed down and up-converted to HD on the right. It takes component, composite, and VGA and can output component. Another workable option. Our cameras can also output component.

Why do your graphic supers have funny jagged edges in Photoshop, but they look fine on (television) screen?  For that matter, how can anamorphic formats cram so much width into a regular NTSC-type signal?  The answer, simply put, is that pixels come in all shapes and sizes.

Recall that pixels are the individual points of color that make up a picture on your screen.  While computer screens and similar displays usually use pixels that are square, televisions, historically, have not.  In fact, the concept of a “pixel” didn’t figure into analog television signals at all — the NTSC specification called for 480 “lines,” but the signal within those lines did not specify discrete units of width.

When the notion of digital video became a reality, the standards bodies that be decided that — for both NTSC and PAL — there would be exactly 720 pixels per line.  Thus, the 480i resolutions we know and love: 720×480 NTSC, and 720×576 PAL.

Now, in order for video rendered in the new 720x___ proportions to look the same as it always had on analog screens, it didn’t make sense to think of the 720 dots on each row as square.  NTSC video, for example, was customarily rendered at a ratio of 4 units wide by 3 units tall.  That translates to 640 pixels wide for every 480 pixels tall — not 720.The solution, then, was to render pixels as non-square: about 0.9 units wide for every unit tall, in the case of NTSC video (and about 1.09:1 for PAL).  When encoding widescreen video as anamorphic DV, the ratio became skewed to “fat” pixels — 1.21:1. 

Fortunately for all of us, modern standards like HD have evolved in an age where digital editing and dissemination are the norm.  HD standards were drawn up with square pixels in mind, so pixel aspect ratios are unimportant when considering fully native HD workflows.  But unfortunately, HDV at 1080i — with a native resolution of 1440×1080 to represent HD’s 1920×1080 — assumes fat pixels just as its predecessor DV formats did, this time at a ratio of 1.33:1.

Of course, modern imaging tools like Photoshop and After Effects ship with a wide array of presets fully appropriate to each type of native footage.  As long as you realize that these presets involve more than just codecs and pixel resolution, you should avoid nasty surprises involving “squished” graphics.

Generosity from Smooth Via on Vimeo.

I’ll start with filming. We use a Canon XL-H1 to record our video of the Saturday evening service at Northeast Campus (Tech specs: we use HDV 1080i60 – 60 frames per second interlaced). (Side note: HDV is different from HD because, as far as I can tell, it records 1440×1080 pixels instead of 1920×1080. To make it a wide-screen size, however, it stretches the pixels – instead of square they are anamorphic.) The XL-H1 is equipped with a Focus Enhancements Firestore FS-C DTE Recorder (Tech specs: 60 GB Firewire 400 with an awesome battery!), which records our video straight to hard drive. We record in Sync mode, which allows us to record a backup to DV tape as well. (Tech specs: we set manual focus and white balance every week, our gain is 0, our shutter speed is 1/100, and our iris is whatever brings the light meter to the center). 

Next, post-production. We plug our Firestore drive into our Mac Pro (Tech specs: 2×2.8 Ghz Quad-core Intel Xeon with 8 GB running Leopard) and copy over the captured files. We then add them to Final Cut Studio 2, add in lower thirds, add a flicker filter for our backlit scrim, normalize our audio, add in videos we used that service (intro video, etc.), and export the raw video. We then copy that and the ProPresenter schedule for the weekend over to the iMac from the Northwest Campus and leave that for the Campus Pastor (Paul Crouthamel) to pick up the next morning. As a backup, we also export a DVD (through VisualHub) of the service and leave it with the iMac.

Finally, we post to the web a Quicktime export of the raw file (Tech specs: we export in H.264 1280×720, 3000 kbps multi-pass with 128 kbps audio) and upload to Vimeo. We link to that from our sermons page.

Hope this post makes you feel more knowledgeable. This whole setup has been a major learning curve for me and everyone else involved, but I think we’re starting to get the hang of it. If this sounds like something you’d like to do (and you go to Journey), drop me an email and let me know. Feel free to ask questions or offer suggestions here or through email. I’m always game for talking about this stuff!

Edit: We’re using Vimeo for our video solution. Works great, and even support HD!

Edit: I’ve been informed by Alex that “We actually have 6 RGB Moving-Head LED’s and 5 Stationary RGB LED’s in addition to the other lights you mentioned. They are hiding behind of the scrim and on the floor.” Just so you know.