High Definition

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One of the things I love to do in my free time is photography and video. I don’t claim to have any special talent for either, but given enough time and footage, I can make something pretty cool video-wise. For our IRS “stimulus check,” (which, thanks to my working last year for those months I earned one) we did our patriotic duty to help piss in the ocean invigorate the economy and bought a high-def camcorder. Given our financial situation, this was a rather extravagant purchase (and I bought it for way cheap as a refurb, so I think I did pretty well) but our 5-year-old camcorder was ailing so badly, I’d rarely break it out; consequently, I missed filming many moments of our little one.

Here’s the funny part: there is no HDTV in any of our family members to be found. Oh sure, the computer monitor can serve that purpose, but who wants to watch a movie on a 20″ monitor? After the firesale we had in Mexico to move back, the only TV we have is this bargain basement 21″ Magnavox which does a shitty job of showing standard definition without problems much less HD. So why bother with HD at all? Simple: futureproofing. I have yet to see my daughter’s 2nd birthday last month in its full HD video glory, but it’s on digital tape (HDV format) whenever that time comes…

…which leads me to another quandary: this whole process has underscored how much I need to upgrade my computer system. Handling HD video is seriously CPU/GPU intensive. The raw video (1920×1080) doesn’t even fit on the computer screen. The disk space requirements are enormous as well: going from HDV->Apple Intermediate Codec will cost almost 75gigs/hr of hard drive space. Ouch. Now I need a RAID array as well, because I sure as hell ain’t going to trust a single drive to be slammed with that much I/O, project after project, and survive for long.

But what a cool camera. In truth, I can record in HD and export in downsampled SD DV like any other tape-based consumer camcorder. The difference is that 1) I have the original footage in HDV format on tape for future re-import, and 2) the image quality is STILL a product of a superior CMOS image sensor and all the functionality the camera provides leveraged to make a much better video product. I’m still learning everything, and I’m scared that the more I learn, the more I discover things like “if I had this kit to use a 35mm lens adapter, imagine what depth of field control I could have!”

I am not a filmmaker, and I have no plans to change careers to become a cinematographer or movie editor. I think I am drawn to this new (and inevitably expensive) hobby because it channels the dormant parts of myself that are creative, that do yearn to create something brand new, or at the very least, transform the ordinary into something special. Just as a picture can be worth a thousand words, a visual story can be worth a thousand pictures.

This should be fun.

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  By Vijay, June 20, 2008 @ 1:04 pm

  Er… Enrico, could we have this in English please
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  By enrico, June 20, 2008 @ 4:30 pm

  Vijay: Oh I know you’re a tech geek, stop being modest.

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