By compressed size do you mean HD1080 res, 1920x1080? Not sure about AE, but in Premiere you configure your timeline to match this resolution. If your edit/capture card doesn’t support HD however, you’ll have to disable hardware support, which slows down the process considerably. As a workaround you can downscale your clips, edit with the corresponding SD clips, then export the EDL and apply it to the HD clips.
mabe i’m not understanding what is going on but wouldnt it just be easiers to get one of these cards
and cut out the x-box and media version of windows. They work with most video editing softweare. Then watch it straight out of the program of choice.
And from what i have read (as i have not used it) Discreet--opps Autodesk Media and Entertainments (they could have chosen a smaller name) cleaner does a great job of compressing and it is software.
Yeah, an HD capture card is definitely the best way to go for viewing HD content. Until now decent capture cards have been pretty expensive; the BlackMagic card you linked up is the cheapest I’ve seen so far. It’s still twice as expensive as an XBox, though. Not that an XBox replaces a capture card by any means, but we had one already, and if we didn’t it would be a good excuse to get one 
If someone around is using Avid Xpress Pro HD 5.5 or above, it can trigger a full res HD full screen play to any monitor connected to the computer. If u happen to own a 1920X1080 16:9 LCD monitor and use it as client monitor via DVI, u will be able to see HD playing from the AVID program itself. Awesome! 
HD player
FYI, for HD display, we bought one of these
http://www.digitalconnection.com/Products/Video/mb100.asp
and play it on one of these
- > true 1920x1080 LCD display
and it’s top notch.
I encode to MPEG2, 1920x1080 using Premiere Pro. I connect via HDMI.
The MediaBox is a little flakey but you learn what formats and processes to avoid so that it doesn’t lock up.
Let me know if you need any more info!
Jim Lammers
President
Trinity Animation, Inc.
676 SE Bayberry Lane, Suite 103B
Lee’s Summit, MO 64063-4389
Office: 816-525-0103
Toll Free US/Canada: 800-548-1578
fax 816-525-1594
web: www.trinity3d.com
email: jim@trinity3d.com
thats a cool little gizmo jim. Ill pass that guy onto the boss and see if we can make use of one.
Thanks PDM, I think you’ll like it. You have to buy a hard drive with the MB100, so it’s about $480 out the door. But it can use playlists, will play virtually any MP3, JPG, etc. It claims to play WMV, MPG, VOB, AVIs with DivX and XviD and some other formats. I had a downloaded XviD HD movie I tried to play and it would not work, so it isn’t perfect. But my own relatively short MPEG2 files play beautifully, and with that $2000 42" LCD it looks pretty amazing.
I think most animators will want to have a MediaBox and an HD LCD in their office, if only to play demo reels. It’s too cheap and looks too good to pass up.
Best regards
Jim Lammers
Old topic I know, but wondered what the latest thoughts are with HD outputs? Are many people doing HD animations? How much longer is it taking than SD? Are you charging more to do HD?
Our 3 last projects were HD…
Our 2 next HD too
2H to 5Hours a frame… (Rendering + Compositing)
Yes we charge more to do HD… Because of rendertime… Because materials need to be better and geometries need higher resolution…
(30 Quads 2.8Ghz + 6Gb each) + (7 workstations Quad 2.66 + 8Gb each)
Best regards…
OK, so what were your render settings out of Max? Are we talking 1080i or 1080p?
1080p always…
We’re doing more and more work in HD as well and it’s a killer. Our frame rendertimes are about the same as previously mentioned, sometimes more. Some shots from Ford “Ice” took up to 10-12 hours / frame. You can afford this if you have enough cores and if the sequence is short. But generally, these are NOT production friendly rendertimes. Ford “Rollercoaster” was also done in HD but because of the graphic nature of it, the rendertimes were not bad - just the size of the images. Fills up 1TB really quickly.
Ford “Ice”
Ford “Rollercoaster”
HD is moving much faster into the mainstream than anticipated so many of my friends’ studios are playing the catch-up game along with the rest of the world…
-Richard
That’s quite a scary question! I hope everyone is charging extra for the massive increase in technology required, modelling, texturing, rendering, compositing, etc If people try to absorb it in their normal workflow then we’re all effectively taking a massive paycut.
Massive indeed. Definately figure in the costing to your quotes. Do you want HD or not? needs to be an essential question to the client, because it really does affect all aspects of the work.