As
mentioned yesterday, LifeWay has taken it's first steps into delivering HD content, with the "
Because" music video by Jeff Slaughter for VBS 2009.
In preparing this video, I was hit with the battle that will continue to hit our team as we try to get this content out to you: the balance of quality and file size.
There is a full range of definitions that could be qualified as "HD" and, as more and more digital delivery takes place it's going to get more and more convoluted. In other words, not all HD is created equal.
For me, the standard bearer of what should truly be considered "HD" is the broadcast specifications for HD television. This is the standard against which most of the HD content we actually consumer will be judged, because the TV is the primary source of entertainment.
So, what defines the standards for television HD?
1280x720 pixles (720p) or 1920x1080 pixels (1080i)
Surround Sound
15 MB/s data rate
That bit rate is where things start to get sloppy with "HD". For example, "HD" downloads from the Apple iTunes Store sit at
4 MB/s, Xbox 360 HD downloads are
6.8 MB/s, and Blu-Ray movies can actually go all the way up to over
54 MB/s.
So how does our first HD content compare?
Well, I've found that the 'sweet spot' that people are comfortable downloading in today's world is somewhere between 100-200MB for a Standard Definition, long format video. So my goal was to get the video, which is only just above 4 minutes, as close to 200MB as possible. This was a decision made entirely on trying to help he customer experience with an easy-as-possible download. We hit 190.6MB.
Size: 1280 x 720
Bitrate: 6 MB/s
So are we 'true' HD? No, I guess not. But... it's nice to say that we're offering better quality than the iTunes Store and (almost) on par with the Xbox Downloads.
For comparison's sake, I maxed out the render to see what a "Full HD" file might be like...
Size: 1920 x 1080
Bitrate: 20 MB/s
That file ended up being 678MB. And it won't play on the Windows machine that rendered it. Or the Mac that I edit our videos on. In other words... it's amazingly beautiful, but completely unusable by the average church.
I'm glad we've been able to gently step into the HD content space with a great quality video like Slaughter's "Because." To be honest, though, while we've been able to push out this video at 6MB/s, there's no expectation that all of our HD materials will get to be so sharp and fine. It's a hard balance and, with any video much longer than 4-5 minutes, the file would simply get too massive to efficiently deliver to churches - let alone let the church's computers even be able to play the file!
If anyone out there has downloaded the "
Because" video, please feel free to let us know how it looks to you, and if the quality justifies the file size!
