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Hi, this is Anna Callahan from Super Indie Films, and you’re reading the transcript of our fourth podcast for independent filmmakers. This podcast covers two questions indie filmmakers often have about distributing their film online: what’s up with download times, and how do tv monitors and computer screens relate to hi-def and standard-def. Let’s get started with:

Hi-Def: The relationship between tv, computer video, and hi-def

Playing video on computer monitors is driving the hi-def market. TV resolution is 640×480, and that’s also standard definition for tv and films (widescreen standard-def is 720×480). Computer monitors have much higher resolution; they go up to 1680×1040 and even higher. What this means is that if you take a video that has been filmed at standard-def and you play it full-screen (which you can do — the player will just enlarge whatever image it has), that footage is not going to look good. You’re trying to stretch 640 pixels out to 1680 pixels. It simply doesn’t have the data; there aren’t enough pixels in what was filmed, so it’s going to look pixelated. If you film in high-def, then when you play your film full-screen on a computer monitor it will look crisp and clear.

So if you plan on using the internet to distribute your films (which will eventually be the way films are distributed — in the near future, I think), you should probably start looking at getting some hi-def equipment. For now using standard-def is fine because a lot of other people are still using it, but hi-def will radically change how your film looks when played on a computer monitor. And fortunately, hi-def equipment is becoming pretty reasonably priced, with consumer hi-def cameras under $1000 and some pretty great cameras for under $20,000.

Does Size Really Matter? Download speeds and wait times

People ask me sometimes if you really can download a feature length film. Absolutely. There’s no question about it, but how long you wait can range from minutes to hours. Download times for video on the web depend on basically three things.

1. User’s bandwidth. If they have dial-up they probably won’t be downloading films, but if they have high-speed internet that will be much faster for them. In 2007 at least 47% of adult Americans had a broadband (high speed) connection at home. Since 2000 this has been growing by at least five percent per year, which is great for us.

2. Compression. The compression of your film will make a big difference in how long it takes to download your film. Compression is the process used to convert raw footage into its final format. When you make a dvd, that’s compressed. When you make a quicktime movie, that’s compressed. Compression reduces the quality of the video and reduces the size of the file. Every year compression gets better. So now you reduce the quality of the video a little bit and you reduce the file size a ton so you have a relatively small file with pretty good video quality.

3. File transfer. This is the most important one, because different sites use different methods of file transfer, and they are very different. There are essentially three types.

• The slowest is http download. That’s the way we get pages and images over the web. It’s very slow. It ranges from 1/200th of your bandwidth to maybe 1/10th of your bandwidth if there’s no traffic. This slow speed is just the nature of the http download format. Let’s say you have 1Mb/s download speed, then you might get 50kb/s to 100kb/s download speed on a site that uses http download.
• Peer to peer is the next level. The technology is essentially the same as bit torrent. What this means is that other users are helping to speed up the process of downloading your film. It’s the middle tier; it can range from really slow if no one else is downloading your movie to maybe 1/3rd of your bandwidth. So if you have that 1Mb/s download you might be able to get 200kb/s on an average, not too much traffic day with one of these sites.
• UDP is the fastest; it’s used by iTunes and Super Indie Films. The download speeds range from 1/10th of your bandwidth (when there’s lots of traffic) to your bandwidth. With 1Mb/s bandwidth you might get 900kb/s when there’s lots of traffic, but with no traffic you can download at 1Mb/s. I’m very lucky to have 20Mb/s at my house, which I love, and using Super Indie Films download I can download movies at 20Mb/s which is ridiculously fast, much faster than the video plays. So once you start the download, within seconds you have enough information to start playing the video, and the whole file will finish downloading long before you’ve seen the end of the film.

Thanks for listening to Super Indie Films fourth podcast. Our next podcast will cover three topics: Rate Me, Review Me! The problem of too many options, The Perfect Match – What to look for in an online distributor, and finally, The Future of Internet Video

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