Monday, July 5, 2010

Using Photos in Video - Part 1

At Pardiman Productions we often get asked by clients to incorporate photos and other images into the videos that we produce for them. Unfortunately, these photos are often unusable for one or more reasons.

We hope that the following information might help you in choosing photos for use in your next promotional or marketing video.

To help you understand what goes into determining if a photo is usable or not for video we'll look at the resolution, dimensions, and file types that are most suitable.

The resolution of standard definition video and HD (high definition) video are both 72dpi (dots per inch). A digital photo from your camera is more than likely going to be 300dpi. However, the resolution of the web is 72dpi as well, so when that photo is converted to be used on the web, more than likely the resolution is also decreased. A photo coming from a mobile device like an iPhone is also going to be 72dpi.

The dimensions of your screen and photos are where you'll find the real difference in numbers. The dimensions of a standard definition video are 720 pixels by 480 pixels. In both photo and screen dimensions the first number is always the width, and the second number is always the height. A wide-screen standard definition image is 854 x 480. 720p HD dimensions are 1280 x 720, and 1080p HD are 1920 x 1080. An image at highest resolution from a 10 megapixel camera is going to be aprox 3872 x 2592, while your iPhone image is listed at 1600 x 1200, and a web based thumbnail is usually a mere 150 x 150.

You can easily find the dimensions and resolutions of your photos by right-clicking or control-clicking on the photo and choosing the 'get info' option.

Next time we'll show some examples of differen't images and how they match up to video screen dimensions.

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