GETTING READY FOR HD!

If you are not editing in HD it is only a matter of time before you will shoot, edit and distribute your work in an HD format. Here at Digital Preserves we are also gearing up for HD. Our first two packs "A Wedding For All Seasons" and "Memory Lane" were originally created only in DV and PAL formats. With the rise of HD in the market place we too realized that we would need to offer our animations in an HD format. Moving forward, all of our new animation products will be offered in HD, DV and PAL. We currently offer all 10 packs in our "All Star Sports Library" in HD 1920X1040, DV 720X480 and PAL 570X725 25 fps formats, and all the products in the new products category are available in an HD pack.

One hurdle editors must jump while switching to HD is the amount of storage capacity needed for HD video and files. Because of the large file sizes needed for HD, editors are moving from drives that contain gigabytes (1 gigabyte = 1000 megabytes) of storage to terabytes (1 terabyte = 1000 gigabytes) to handle these large file sizes. This also applies to internet server and bandwith capacities. At Digital Preserves we have taken the cutting edge approach of providing our animation library as downloadable Single Serving animations, but because of these limitations we only offer large file format animations such as HD and AVI in DVD packs, We do have plans to offer HD downloads from our web store in the future.

We understand that making the move to HD won't happen over night. There are many factors involved in making the switch and justifying the cost of purchasing new equipment. For most, it will be a gradual change, you will find you may need to integrate HD into your SD projects or vis versa until you are in the position to produce all of your projects in HD. Even if you have not yet made the switch you may find that investing in Digital Preserves HD animations is a worthwhile investment. Here are several things you may want to try to make the transition a bit easier.

We are always striving to find ways to help you save time and money in the edit suite. When using Digital Preserves HD animations in your SD projects there is no need to crop or resize our HD animations to work within your DV productions because we've done the work for you! When you purchase our HD DVD Packs you automatically receive the DV format of those animations as downloadable files for free! This is a a really cool way to build your HD animation library while still using a DV system.

On the other hand, suppose you have made the switch to an HD production suite but need to use SD footage you still have on hand. I have discovered a product that will enable you to do that. Instant HD up-converts DV video into a variety of HD video formats. You can choose from a list of preset resolutions to make it easy to integrate DV video into your next High Definition production. When scaling from standard definition (SD) to high definition (HD), the missing pixels must be generated in an intelligent way. Instant HD provides a high-quality method for converting SD sources to HD within your favorite video application. The product is specifically designed to work with progressive (non-interlaced) images. That means that if you are starting with interlaced video such as a standard Sony PD150 DVCAM capture, you will need to convert the image to progressive in the host application before applying Instant HD.
Instant HD requires one of the following
• Final Cut Pro v4.1 (or later, including 5.0)
• Premiere Pro v1.5 (or later, including v2.0)
• Adobe After Effects 6.0 (or later)

Another great technique for using HD files in your projects is to use them to make DVD labels. Because of the large file sizes,HD animations can be used to create custom DVD disc labels. This involves the use of your editing or animation application and an application such as Adobe Photoshop. Click here for further discussion in our forum on how this is done.