Basic camera physiology will give you the answer:
http://experts.about.com/q/Cameras-3213/Medium-Format-v-s.htm
I can give you real world experience. We needed to make some billboards for work, and we had to get a photographer that could use medium format cameras. We actually went through three other photographers that claimed their 10MP cameras were “good enough”, but it wasn’t true at all.
When played back on which equipment? Inferior speakers, headphones, earbuds, DSP’s, etc. can drastically change the listening experience. How well does your iPod play back MP3’s encoded in VBR at extremely high bit rates?
Oh please. I’ve played back MP3s on major audiophile equipment costing $100K. For cripe’s sake, I’ve played them back on amps that are as as big as a coffee table. Guess what? There’s simply no difference. None. Encoding has gotten so good that it’s a tossup between it and the original. This assumes though that you know what you’re doing with encoding - using Musicmatch won’t cut the mustard, eh?
Who the hell cares about iPods and their quality. Their “amps” are total garbage - look at the size of the thing, and tell me with a straight face that an amp that size is worth anything at all.
Don’t underestimate Macromedia. They are far from stupid.
The .FLV format has MORE to do with how the video enters flash, and its that reencoding that causes the quality loss.
.FLV is quite powerful, but youtube limits the largest resolution possible to 320x240, and limits total file size to 100MB. Check out their uploading FAQ for more details.
You could embed 720x480p directly into a flash document if you wanted.
Load up Flash 8 and give it a whirl.
foobar,
medium format vs digital is a totally different discussion than 35mm vs digital. The #1 takeaway about all film is how incredibly grainy it is compared to digital, so that even though the physical resolution may be higher, the effective useful resolution is actually lower than the best digital cameras. Medium format makes up for that by just having gigantic film, but 35mm film is nearly the same size as large digital sensors and more prone to noise.
This is a comprehensive comparison, made with 5-year-old digicams (which have considerably improved since) and already 35mm could only compete in certain situations:
http://www.clarkvision.com/imagedetail/film.vs.digital.summary1.html
http://www.clarkvision.com/imagedetail/film.vs.digital.1.html
http://www.clarkvision.com/imagedetail/film.vs.6mpxl.digital.html
No one is going to argue that digital can match medium format with an experience photographer, though. Totally different world.
I have seen very few mentions about video on portable devices: maybe the smallness of the screen would offer a good enough video quality despite of the high bandwith it cant afford ?
Although foxyshadis has just done a nice job of demolishing your lofty claims, I feel inclined to chip in.
Within the context of consumer gadgets set by RevMike, you claimed “Even the best digital cameras are not even close to the best 35mm film.” When challenged, you tried to defend this nonsense by citing an example which did not even involve 35mm film, and was not even about consumers since the image was destined for a commercial billboard.
Okay, so you pretended to be knowledgeable on this topic and it didn’t work. The show’s over. If the real answer is important to you then do the research.
The theme around here is that we’re all trying to discover, build, or adapt technologies that are appropriate solutions to problems. If you are a consumer with some computer savvy, a digital camera is now the appropriate solution to the problem of recording happy snaps. An amateur photographer with professional aspirations is equally served by a DSLR.
You should also understand that image spatial resolution is only one of many factors that lead people into choosing digital cameras, and with present day sensors it’s not even clear that film is much better at ISO 100, let alone ISO 400.
Image quality always comes at a price. How many 35mm film cameras have shake-reduction mechanisms? Or near zero picture processing cost?
How many times do people enlarge their 35mm negatives to a print bigger than A3 paper? Probably never, in which case even a 3MP digicam provides enough detail. ( http://www.videointerchange.com/Print%20FAQs.htm )
There’s loads of web sites that will show you these things.
flash can be good. Check our site for an example www.rip.tv. You can watch this stuff full screen on a 32" hdtv and it looks amazing for web video.
“A Hasselblad, for instance, which although not 35mm, will completely destroy any digital camera’s picture quality. It’s not even a contest.”
You might be interested to know that hasselblad has gone digital and they even make digital backs to attach to their previous medium format cameras. The film vs. digital debate is over. Digital won.
flash can be good. Check our site for an example www.rip.tv. You can watch this stuff full screen on a 32" hdtv and it looks amazing for web video.
“A Hasselblad, for instance, which although not 35mm, will completely destroy any digital camera’s picture quality. It’s not even a contest.”
You might be interested to know that hasselblad has gone digital and they even make digital backs to attach to their previous medium format cameras. The film vs. digital debate is over. Digital won.
Hi guys,
was a joy reading this bundle of expertise 
I have got a question:
Is there any possibility of getting all the youtube/gvideo/… flash videos to “real” fullscreen?
Maybe a greasemonkey script or any other solution…
Thanks for help!
Cheers!
You might be interested to know that hasselblad has gone digital and they even make digital backs to attach to their previous medium format cameras. The film vs. digital debate is over. Digital won.
If you can make that statement, then I suspect that everything you know about photography can be put into a thimble with a thimbleful of room left over.
And now the article is obsolete, as YouTube is in the process of converting everything to MPEG4 (because of their in-bed partnership with Apple).
So – is this a good or bad thing? It certainly is improving the quality, but at the cost, yet again, of incompatibility. Still, interesting to see that Flash hasn’t won the war on what web video is all about (if you accept that web video and YouTube are, if not synonomous, at least very close).
I’m pretty sure Flash now supports MPEG-4 (H.264)
http://www.kaourantin.net/2007/08/what-just-happened-to-video-on-web_20.html
To Tigerix:
You can download the original upload with keepvid.com or with the google video as avi favelet:
javascript:if(document.getElementById(‘macdownloadlink’)!=null){window.location.href=document.getElementById(‘macdownloadlink’)}else{alert(‘Go to Google Video to download videos as AVI.’)};
That transformers trailer is stretched. You need to add black borders to it so it is a multiple of 320/240, then resize, then upload.
I’ve been through lots of encoders and codecs, not to think of converters. you can check out the site: www.xdmotion.com…
on that site there is a hd movie trailer (ironman) convertet to only 20 mb with an amazing
sound and quality.
just thought I could help a bit.
that is the best converter I’ve bumped into so far.
even better then h264+++
regards
Iris
For what it’s worth, Youtube is officially in 720p now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEm8PZ_lUh8fmt=22
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUPcimeiqLEfmt=22
And my 1.6GHz Pentium M notebook CHOKES on these. I think I’m dropping 5% of the frames during playback at the very least.
Worse is never better. I hate the saying ‘worse is better’ because it isn’t. Flash videos are better because they just work. Sure the video quality is worse, but that is an another, separate, story. I watch my videos as better quality when ever practically and at least somewhat conveniently possible, so flash is not winning totally.
Here is my explanation of why youtube’s video quality is degraded and the difference between their Standard, HQ, and HD formats:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u99J7RUgswfmt=22
Flash Video quality is, in a word, hideous
This post was made a long time ago and a lot has changed in the flash video world.
For example now flashplayer supports h.264 playback and we also have the vp6 E and S formats and if you know what you are doing vp6 can give you some really nice quality renderings of hd videos. Also there is VP7 and VP8 is coming down the pipe.
Why bother yourself with codecs when you can use mplayer. And there are GUI’s for it, too.
i hate flash and everything else thats flash based.
vlc media player provides open source web plugin for firefox and IE browsers and supported in all operating systems,
not to mention that vlc web player supports the biggest video audio codec rang there is. while flash is a little only mp4 and on2 codec
flash player 10 on linux sucks, so install vlc plugin