Unit 62 - Task 1

Video for Interactive Media: What You Need to Know

There are a huge variety of interactive media displayed all over the world on a handful of different media outlets. From television screens, to cinema screens, and even mobile phones. All of these screens have different sizes and aspect ratios so the same video must be rendered in a format that is viable on every possible screen outlet around the world. An example is if a film company are making a trailer for a new movie, they want to render the trailer file out so that its playable on every possible device that there audience might want to watch the trailer on, Computers, Phones, Tablets etc. They also want to make sure the quality is the best that it can possibly be so that if it gets played on a cinema screen before a film then it fits the big screen perfectly. As well as the quality and size of the video, they need to make sure the video file is able to be put on multiple platforms, they would need to make digital copies for the video to be viewable online and on computers, they need a physical copy on a Disc/DVD so that it can be featured on the trailer section of DVD's sometimes, and they would need a file allowing it to be accessible to be purchased and watched on hand held devices (Phones, Tablets etc).

With todays technology there is always an increasing number of media outlets and screens that videos can be played on, making it much more difficult for companies to render out a video to fit every possible screen that the video can be played on.  There are also a great number of platforms and softwares that add to the current media outlets that people often use now with todays ease of actability to the internet. An example of a couple of these platforms people use include, BBC Iplayer, Now TV and the hugely popular Netflix. With BBC Iplayer you are able to watch anything that has been broadcasted on the BBC channel even after it has been shown on television, even though it has been broadcasted on television, with the Iplayer app, you are able to watch it on most outlets such as your phone, tablet and even your computer. This means that when they are making/ rendering the video file for the BBC show, as they know its going too be out onto Iplayer to be watched later, they have to make the quality and size be able to fit on TV screens, computers and small phones screens as well. Each of these devices all have different aspect ratios, meaning that its not just the size of the screen the file has to worry about, its the actual shape. Aspect ratio is basically the dimensions in which the media outlet is presented in, most screens in this age use widescreen, the aspect ratio for which is 16:9, older screens use the aspect ratio 4:3 which is where instead of being widescreen, the screen is more square looking, both the height and width of the screen are the same size.

Obviously the aspect ratio is much greater when using it for cinema screens, but the main use of aspect ratios is either 16:9 or 4:3,  as TV screens and tablets are the main use for watching television playback on.  The first number of the aspect ratio refers to the width of the screen, and the second number is the length. A long time ago before we had all the cameras and electrical equipment we have today, most films and videos were shot in 4:3 because all the cameras we had were only able to film in that specific quality and no higher, and the televisions we had back then were all square looking as well. As technology advanced and our filming equipment evolved, we now are mostly familiar with having a 16:9 aspect ratio as we pretty much only have windscreen televisions and computer monitors now, there are not many square TV's left. We also have widescreen cameras, enabling us to shoot in 16:9 as well as showing the footage on a television screen of the same aspect ratio dimensions.

There are some cases where you can watch something that is a different aspect ratio from the device screen your watching it on. Using BBC as another example, sometimes as well as broadcasting news, and tv programs they also have films on. Some of these films can be quite old films that have a square width by height dimension, but as they are played in modern times they can still be shown on a 16:9 screen. In this case, there will be black bars on the sections of the screens that the video its filling up, if there is a 4:3 video playing on a 16:9 widescreen television, there will be black bars on the left and right sides of the screen as the actual video will be in a square format but obviously be playing on a tv that is wider than the square. Usually the left and right sides will be blank as there is nothing to be played on both sides, but in some cases, if you alter the settings on a tv for example, you can make it so that the 4:3 video stretches in order to fill and fit all of the widescreen, the good thing is that it means there will be no black bars on the sides of the video, but the downside is that the video will look a little odd as it has been stretched.

As mentioned before, Netflix is a widely growing popular online platform that allows you to watch a huge range of movies and television series, the platform has grown so popular now that it is becoming accessible on many devices and platforms e.g. Televisions with internet, Xbox, Phones and tablets etc. Because of this, whatever movie or series that gets added into Netflix has to be exported as a file that is able to be played on every single device that Netflix is available on.  As well as making sure the aspect ratio fits the device its being played on they also have to worry about the quality of the video file, the faulty of a movie or video is very important as it makes the picture look much better and crisp than if the quality was bad.

The quality of a video is how many pixels are presented on screen, with the more pixels making a better quality picture for the video. Whatever number the number quality is means there is that many pixels going horizontally across the screen. the second number meaning how many pixels are going up the screen. The most common used qualities people might here of is 360p, 480p, 720p and 1080p. The "P" at the end of each of the numbers stands for progressive scan, which basically means that when a video file is exported or rendered out in the "P" quality it process each individual single frame one by one. The other quality setting is "I" e.g 1080i, standing for interlacing, which means that instead of rendering out the whole video frame, it processes each individual line of pixels one by one. The downside to interlacing is that sometimes when its processing each line of pixels it can't keep in sync with the rest of the lines and the final video can end up looking very stripy (As shown below)

The quality of a video is very important for the audience as the better quality the video is the more detail they can see, making films much more enjoyable. The better the quality means that the video file can be stretched out on a bigger screen without looking any worse in pixels. 360p is the worst quality a video file can be as it doesn't have many pixels and will not look very detailed at all, the quality of videos all go up to 1080 which is usually the best quality for most devices, the highest possible quality is 4k which is 3840 x 2160 pixels, this level of video quality detail is mostly used for  shooing films on cinema screens as the size of the screen is very big and therefore needs a very good quality. Many devices have different screen ratios, meaning that there are a range of different qualities that can be watched on that device. for example a phone is quite a small so usually only requires a 720p quality screen, a computer or television screen is significantly bigger so would need at least 1080p, although with todays technology, there are a lot of televisions that now show video in 4k. 

1080p

360p

Another factor that films and video makers have to take into account is the FPS (Frames per Second). This can sound a little self explanatory but is basically how smooth the final video looks. FPS is how many single video frames are fit into one second, a frame is one single picture of the video that is shown over and over again with the picture changing sightly each time to make the object appear to move, this is how videos are made. The usual amount of frames per second you'll see is either 25, 30 or 60fps. 25 to 30 frames per second is the minimum frames you want in a second as that's the point at which it actually starts to look smooth enough to pass as a video to the audience and not just a bunch of quick moving pictures, like a stop motion animation. 60 frames per second is the maximum that is usually used as the human eye physically cannot see over 60 frames per second so to have any more frames that that would be pointless as it would make no difference than 60 fps. Most things used to be shown in 30FPS as it was easier to display and there weren't a lot of captures could record in any higher frames than 30, but now with our technology constantly growing a lot of camera can record in 60fps, a lot of films now are shot in 60 as it makes the film or video look much smoother and fluent as there are more frames showing in a second.