Point and shoot cameras offer pretty limited options for video settings. The decision is based on the trade-off between storage space and video quality. Always, always, always go for higher quality.
You are generally given a choice between 640×480 (VGA) and 320×240 (QVGA). Some cameras will give you the option of 848×480 (WVGA). This gives you a 16:9 aspect ratio, as opposed to 4:3. Sometimes you can choose frame rates. 30fps (frames per second) or 15.
A frame rate of 15fps will look a little jerky, kind of like stop-action animation. We have all become a little used to this from the early days of YouTube. This doesn’t mean that it actually looks good.
Here’s an example of a low-resolution movie:
This video was encoded at 320×240, then uploaded to the web. YouTube then enlarged the video to fit their player. Looks a little pixelated, don’t you think?
Here’s the same movie at full resolution.
In today’s world of 2 GB and larger flash memory cards, storage isn’t generally a problem. However, if you are using your camera to film your epic reenactment of the latest episode of Star Wars the Clone Wars you could run into storage issues.
Especially if you accidentally leave the camera on while getting into your Bane costume. Why is this an issue? Because when your camera runs out of room on your card it will write to the internal memory of the camera and that can sometimes be a pain to get off of the camera.
Usually your camera will tell you that it is going to start writing to the internal memory. If your cameraman happens to be proficient at cinematography but not at reading, he may accidentally ignore this warning.
The smaller video size will take up less space on your card but will also be of lower quality. If you plan on burning this video to a DVD, showing on AppleTV, or ever watching it on your flat screen, you want the highest resolution possible.
When you download and edit the video on your computer, you can always have your editing program optimize the size for sharing.
Your camera will tell you how much space is left on the memory card. If you are recording video, it will indicate how many seconds are left. When you start getting low on storage space you have two options. Either swap out your card or download the video, erase the card, and record more video.
So remember to always set your camera at the highest possible video resolution.
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