We know for many people understanding the technical aspects of video can be hard to grasp. We also know it's hard to understand what features you will need when producing a video. Here in the frequently asked questions page we will try to help you better understand video and how Aperio Studios can provide you with a great video experience.
Video stands strong as one of the best forms of media communication. Being a visual medium creates a unique and attention grabbing experience for your user. Unlike other forms of communication video can strike an emotional response with a viewer, potentially helping sell a product or service. And in recent years with new technologies, video can be delivered in many ways, such as on demand HD streaming on your website, downloadable for your iPod or iPhone, and shown on a DVD or Blu-ray.
High definition is the new standard for video production. In the broadest sense of the term, high definition means anything higher resolution than standard television and DVD video. You've probably heard the terms 720p and 1080p, those are both high definition formats and provide a much sharper and vibrant image than standard definition. And with the world of digital cinema rapidly growing we are seeing huge advancements in the technology to produce digital video. Cameras such as those produced by RED are rivaling even the best film cameras out today and at a fraction of the cost, offering resolutions over 5 times what current high definition cameras produce.
All of our projects are produced in high definition using a Canon XL H1 camera. Even with the end goal usually being web video we believe in providing you with the highest quality possible, and therefore we only produce videos in high definition. That way we can provide you with optimized versions of the video for the web as well as a high quality version of the project for the future.
Web video is currently experiencing huge growth and is one of the most effective marketing techniques on the internet. Web video enhances your website and helps make a lasting impression about your business, making your website become more memorable. It also provides an on demand delivery service for a user to view the video at anytime.
There are many ways to get a video on your website, for example you can easily embed a Windows Media or QuickTime file into your website. Or you can use a more powerful platform such as Adobe's Flash or Microsoft's Silverlight. We currently recommend clients use Flash on their websites.
Flash is a very powerful platform and provides many features such as a customized video player, optimized video playback by detecting a users connection speed, high quality codec support, and real time streaming support.
Real time streaming is the ability to watch a video immediately without having to wait for it to buffer or download, allowing users to skip to any part of the video at anytime. Most video sharing sites do progressive streaming, meaning you have to wait for the video to load before you can watch it or to skip forward.
As you can tell Flash is a very powerful platform but perhaps the most compelling reason to use Flash is user adoption of the technology. Flash is installed on about 97% of all internet-connected computers, ensuring that all your users will be able to view the video. Flash also has heavy industry support with sites such as YouTube and Hulu using it.
Here at Aperio Studios we strive to keep up with the latest technologies in web video. As stated above Flash currently stands as the leader in web video. However with new standards such as HTML5 becoming more widely supported we will continue to find the best solutions for web video.
The new HTML5 standard includes a video tag allowing for true video integration with the browser. There are also new open compression formats such as Ogg Theora with the goal of creating open standards for web video. Although these technologies are a ways off from becoming standard for web video, we want to make sure we are keeping up with the evolving standards for video on the web.
Approaching web video depends on what the end goal of the video is. The main goal is usually as simple as getting the video displayed on your website, but here at Aperio Studios we make web video an exceptional experience. We have partnered with a content delivery network specifically designed for delivering video on the web. The reason we are using a delivery system like this is because a typical web server or host is not designed to deliver video. You will cause unnecessary strain on your web server and possibly use an excess amount of space and bandwidth. For more on the benefits of a content delivery network, you can go here. We do charge a monthly fee for this feature, that covers space and bandwidth costs, but we feel the stability and performance for the video are significantly better than hosting it yourself.
So when you combine our partner content delivery network and the Adobe Flash platform with many powerful features (as mentioned above) we feel we offer a highly integrated and exceptional web video experience.
In addition to providing web video on your own website, we can also help you optimize and deliver your content on a variety of video sharing websites such as YouTube, Metacafe, Veoh, etc. That way you will have a quality player with the video that plays on your website as well as your video will be saturated around the online marketplace. This is all dependant on the type of content you are delivering, with content such as a web show we would create a solution that works for the shows website as well as for the viewers. That way viewers can find and watch the content however they wish, whether that be subscribing through a service such as iTunes, watching it directly on your website, or discovering it on YouTube.
With so many options in web video we typically recommend you have a consultation with us so we can determine what would work best for your needs.
Every company will have a different way of pricing out how much a video will cost to create. There are many factors to consider, such as equipment, actors/talent, post production, etc. Our pricing can be found here, we have a couple generic packages to choose from as well as an hourly pricing break down. Depending on the services required and the nature of the project prices will vary but the mentioned page provides a general guideline.
There are a couple choices you have to make in regards to the choosing a video format. First is the frame rate, the frame rate is measured in frames per second (fps), meaning how many frames/individual images are displayed per second. The two main frame rates are '30 fps' and '24 fps'.
30 fps is what a majority of television is produced and broadcast in and what most typical consumer cameras record in.
24 fps is what film and most high definition projects are shot in. This frame rate has become very popular among independent filmmakers, as it is able to create a cinematic like feel on a digital format.
The next choice is the aspect ratio, which determines the ratio between the height and width of the video. The two main choices in digital video are widescreen (16:9) or full screen (4:3). 4:3 had been the standard for a long time and is the typical square-like tube television style. However in recent years televisions have been produced in the widescreen format and are finally starting to adopt the cinema format. The aspect ratio for feature films and theaters are usually a wider ratio such as 1.85:1 and 2.39:1 but most digital cameras do not shoot in these aspect ratios.
To compensate for these two different aspect ratios a television or DVD player will have different ways of dealing with the footage. The first option is letter boxing. This means for an older full screen television widescreen video will have black bars on the top and bottom. When a full screen DVD is played on a newer widescreen television, the video will have black bars on the left and right. The second option is called pan and scan, which is used to make a widescreen video fill the entire screen on a full screen television, this is done by cutting out parts of the frame considered to be less important. In contrast a full screen video can be stretched to fill the entire screen on a widescreen television, however this is not recommended.
All high definition footage is captured in the widescreen format. Since we always produce projects in high definition, we will be using the widescreen format. The frame rate depends on the projects final destination, but generally we recommend 24 fps to provide a cinematic look and have a final product ready for the future.
Video encoding/transcoding is the process of converting one digital video format into another. This is used for such things as converting a final project into DVD format or a format for the web.
Video compression is a technique used to squeeze/compress the data of a video into a format that takes less space and requires less bandwidth to transmit. This is done using a codec. A codec is a term that comes from the Compressor-Decompressor process. This means a codec is used when compressing the video, which uses a variety of techniques to make the data easier to transmit and store. At the receiving end, software or hardware devices then decompress the video.
High quality and full resolution video files, especially high definition ones, are very large file sizes. This means that no matter what the final destination of the project is, encoding and compression will always be used. Aperio Studios specializes in creating high quality encodes for your video in a variety of formats. Whether that be optimizing several different versions for your website or creating a high quality DVD. We are also able to create high definition encodes for your website, offering amazing quality but are still web optimized.
DVD authoring is the process of creating a DVD, which can then be played on any standard DVD player as well as in your computer's DVD drive. The DVD can be created with or without an interactive DVD menu. An interactive DVD menu allows for buttons and other graphical content to be displayed when the DVD is inserted. These buttons link to each other allowing for a variety of videos and information to be displayed by navigating to different areas on the DVD. This is the same process for Blu-ray, but Blu-ray allows for high definition video, higher quality audio and enhanced user interactivity and engagement to add to the experience of the video/movie.
Because Aperio Studios mostly focuses on web video we recommend on having a DVD that plays the video immediately after being inserted into the player. When the project is finished, in addition to your web video strategy, you will leave with a master DVD as well as a DVD-ROM data disc with a high definition file of the project. Since we focus heavily on web video we do not offer duplication, replication or packaging services.
We currently do not offer Blu-ray production because we focus mainly on web video and we believe streaming video and on-demand downloadable content is the future of entertainment distribution. For clients looking for a physical medium we feel DVD provides adequate quality for most projects and reduces costs significantly compared to Blu-ray. We recommend using web video as your primary distribution method and using a DVD simply for archival purposes. Offering a high definition download of your video can offer almost identical quality as a Blu-ray, while saving costs in physical production and distribution of a disc.
Creating a compelling video is much more than having high-end production equipment. Even videos shot on cell phones can have a huge impact. That being said here at Aperio Studios we believe in having the right tools to help us get our message across.
Here is a list of our primary production tools:
Production Suite:
Video / Audio Equipment:
Lighting and Support:
Other Applications:
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