MovieChat Forums > Filmmaking Gear > HD Overkill?

HD Overkill?

posted 15 years ago by rooprect
1 reply | jump to latest

I'm a newb in the world of video, so please forgive the potentially dumb question. I'm wondering how much definition is "too much"--meaning how high can you go before you reach the point of diminishing returns on the human eye?

My background is in audio, and in that world there's a pretty clear line. Human ears can only hear up to around 22 kHz which means the average human cannot discern between CD audio (44 kHz) and some of the crazy new digital sampling rates like 384 kHz. Most audio engineers will tell you that sampling rates maxed out the human ear 10 years ago, and anything more is overkill.

So I'm wondering if a similar threshold exists in the video world. I have a camera that shoots 1080p. Is that good enough? What is the industry standard for digital video, and do you see it going up as technology becomes more affordable, or is there a ceiling?

[–] axel-50 15 years ago

The image resolution that the human eye can perceive is depended on the size of the image so if you would have an Imax projector for a 50" screen it would be overkill. I'd say Imax has reached the limit since you can't have much larger screens then they have.
For your camera it's hard to say since the pixel resolution doesn't say much but if you are happy with image quality that's good enough for you. There isn't really a standard for cameras but for HDTV broadcasts it's 720p or 1080i and for digital cinema projectors it's 2048 or 4096 pixels in width.