HD Videos

Why don't they make a 720p HD video option? They film it all in higher resolution, but they scale it down to less than SD for some reason. I'm putting this in the format of a question, because it really seems quite strange to me. What I really want is to.. make them do it, to be honest. Anyone with me? You better be!

Did I put this in the wrong place, or does everyone here have 17-inch monitors?

I would love to see HD video as well, but I don't know how much of a burden it would be on their hardware.

What are you talking about? Jeff bought himself, for his own personal use a 1080p video recorder. They have more than what they need to surpass even GameTrailers in HD quality. And they don't even upload that many videos!

When he said burden on hardware, I think he was on about the hardware they use to serve you the videos. HD uses more bandwidth, and so costs them more money.

Having said that, HD would have been useful for those Not Like This videos - the text was too small and chunky to read in SD. A more urgent requirement is a flash player that supports seeking in videos before the whole thing has downloaded. I can do this on iPhone but not on the main site, so what the fuck?

" When he said burden on hardware, I think he was on about the hardware they use to serve you the videos. HD uses more bandwidth, and so costs them more money. "

" @Insectecutor said:

" When he said burden on hardware, I think he was on about the hardware they use to serve you the videos. HD uses more bandwidth, and so costs them more money. "

.Also, huge upload times and even more stress on their compression tools which already mess up enough as it is (Endurance Run). "

I think it's the capture that's the problem there, not the compression. From the way they're nicely anti-aliased, the videos look like they're captured in 720p and scaled down during render/export. It's usually best to oversample during capture, and since Vinny is pro I guess he knows this. "

Okay, look.. of course it's going to take.. whatever resources to upload HD videos, but it's worth it! That's my whole point.

I'm sure they've considered this option and if they choose not to do it then they probably have a good reason for it. I trust that in time when the stars align, they will go HD.

Bandwidth. Probably in a couple of years when Giantbomb gets bigger then Gamespot and IGN and more well known, they will get a different more capable server. I would imagine that is the problem.

" Okay, look.. of course it's going to take.. whatever resources to upload HD videos, but it's worth it! That's my whole point.

How about we get a petition going? Or us Old Gamespot veterans unite and strike until Giant Bomb has at least 540p video!

"

I know Giant Bomb is smaller, but we all know it's just more quality.

" I know Giant Bomb is smaller, but we all know it's just more quality.

It can't honestly be that difficult to have HD video. Even 540p would be good. No, they chose SD on principal, I believe. I mean, does anyone notice a difference between "low" and "high"?

"

I notice a huge different between low and high. If you can't you probably wouldn't notice a difference between high and "540p". It's not "harder", it just takes a ton more time and a LOT faster hardware to edit properly. If they transcode at a higher resolution it takes longer to transcode, that is time they could be using to edit and transcode other videos.

It is simply a non-issue.

" I know Giant Bomb is smaller, but we all know it's just more quality.

It can't honestly be that difficult to have HD video. Even 540p would be good. No, they chose SD on principal, I believe. I mean, does anyone notice a difference between "low" and "high"?

"

lol, not Jeff, Olivia Munn perhaps, but not Jeff.

You both miss the point!

Personally notice a difference between low and high quality, and honestly an HD option could be doable for a paid subscription sort of deal. Personally my network at work is weak and i do low quality and generally when I stream video I always watch it in windowed mode, I will generally download something if I want to watch it in higher quality. You need to realize their programs are long, they are not all 1-2 minute trailers, they are often 1 hour videos and if they aren't behind a MacPro with atleast 8gigs of RAM it's gonna take a while to come out of Episode, Compressor or Sorenson on top of that if the filesize is 5 times larger bandwith is going through the roof to accomidate it. They don't have million dollar companies backing them and until they do be happy they provide raw, fun and a not so commercial look into the gaming industry.

Look, Subject, I value your input. But.. they have what it takes to do this! They most likely have more than one MacPro with 8GB of RAM.

No, no, my friend. Not the videos themselves. What was shows in the videos. They have much more than the needed equipment to encode and film HD video. Heck, I can create HD videos, and all I have is a slightly old Q6600 and a 720p camera.

Last I remember their capture machine was fairly weak according to them and extremely flaky at times, which resulted in often redoing captured material. Honestly don't see them uploading 1gig+ videos to accommodate a small niche of people yet. If they had a GiantBomb HD subscription for 5 bucks a month and access to everything in HD as well as actual downloads rather then "hacking" it to get them in flv format but rather in XVID or H264 people would jump o nthat as well in order to play it easily on iPods, PSPs, etc.

Well, I don't know what the problem is, or if there even is one.  
 
But I want them to acknowledge this!! Someone tell Vinny or Ryan or Brad or Jeff. 
 
I'll personally pay for four 5$ subscriptions off the bat.

I would love to see HD videos if, or when, GiantBomb has the opportunity.

honestly for now im happy with the quality of their videos

" @Track:  Christ man, you care a whole lot for something that really just doesn't fucking matter.  So what, no HD?  Like 18 other people in the thread have stated, it's likely to happen sometime; why do you so desperately want a response from the staff?  And you don't need to make snide comments like the one above.   (Incase you're suffering from ADD, here's a TLDR)  Shut the fuck up, calm the fuck down. "

"Also, huge upload times and even more stress on their compression tools which already mess up enough as it is (Endurance Run). "

" @JesseG said:

"Also, huge upload times and even more stress on their compression tools which already mess up enough as it is (Endurance Run). "

Pretty much what JesseG said. Bigger files take longer to upload, cost way more money in bandwith (both up and down), and will chew up more time in an already busy compression queue. Depending on the amount of things in the compressor, encoding times can vary from 2:1 to upwards of 5:1, meaning if a show is an hour long you're looking at 2-5 hours of compression time. Then there's uploading, which can sometimes take 30 minutes to an hour depending on the length of the show, and we're already uploading multiple versions of each piece. In short, you're already looking at a few hours of turnaround time from submission to the queue to making a piece live. I'm currently happy with the quality of the picture versus the length of the show. It would be easy to justify higher res content if it we were only doing 3-5 minute pieces, but a majority of daily content is long form, around 20-40 minutes. If that were all kept at 720p the turnaround time and cost would be beyond our current capacity.  There are very expensive options, like devices that will transcode to high res .flvs on the fly, during the initial recording, but that's some pricey gear and I would much rather spend that cash elsewhere, given the option. As a note, we do keep all the 720p masters in case we ever want to re-encode them in the future, though shows like the Persona 4 Endurance Run are captured at their native 480i resolutions.  Here's to hoping!  --Vinny "

While HD would be cool, the current quality (at least on high) is really good.

I read what you claim, but I find it difficult to believe on a few levels. Even on my machine, encoding time wouldn't be more than the total length of video, as far as I know, and you all have a massive studio to work around, which should be able to churn out HD.. I just have to believe that. 

ok to start things off i am not an expert by any means (i guess you should stop reading here) 
 
but from my experience, capturing HD video onto a hard drive in clips that are generally longer than say 10 minutes, results in some kind of artifact or flickr or audio to get out of sync or even file corruption. Considering most of the content here is quite long HD for every single video would be very strenuous.  Rendering HD videos obviously takes longer as well, i assume Vinny and Drew export in H.264 to save space and perserve quality and from my experience in adobe premiere a good export generally takes 2 VBR passes not to mention the length it takes to upload HD alone in comparison to SD, meaning ur export times lengthen considerably.
 
to be honest @Track your looking at things through a really limited perspective. Just because the mainstream consumer can afford to purchase and shoot and edit in HD, doesn' mean they have the means to host it themselves. Sites like Youtube cost more than a 1,000,000 dollars a day just to maintain their bandwith and even then i still have to reload broken videos all the time. Its not like these problems cant be worked around, but despite what we might all love to think, Giant Bomb IS a start up company. It might not be like the ones of early 2000s yore but it still doesnt have the luxurious floating capital to be investing as of now in the TIME and bandwith it takes to host these videos.

There's a reason a lot of gaming sites offer HD Videos to paid subscribers. It's not cheap to stream that stuff, and it's not cheap to store that stuff.

" @Vinny said:

" @JesseG said:

"Also, huge upload times and even more stress on their compression tools which already mess up enough as it is (Endurance Run). "

Pretty much what JesseG said. Bigger files take longer to upload, cost way more money in bandwith (both up and down), and will chew up more time in an already busy compression queue. Depending on the amount of things in the compressor, encoding times can vary from 2:1 to upwards of 5:1, meaning if a show is an hour long you're looking at 2-5 hours of compression time. Then there's uploading, which can sometimes take 30 minutes to an hour depending on the length of the show, and we're already uploading multiple versions of each piece. In short, you're already looking at a few hours of turnaround time from submission to the queue to making a piece live. I'm currently happy with the quality of the picture versus the length of the show. It would be easy to justify higher res content if it we were only doing 3-5 minute pieces, but a majority of daily content is long form, around 20-40 minutes. If that were all kept at 720p the turnaround time and cost would be beyond our current capacity.  There are very expensive options, like devices that will transcode to high res .flvs on the fly, during the initial recording, but that's some pricey gear and I would much rather spend that cash elsewhere, given the option. As a note, we do keep all the 720p masters in case we ever want to re-encode them in the future, though shows like the Persona 4 Endurance Run are captured at their native 480i resolutions.  Here's to hoping!  --Vinny "

First let me say I am honored by your response, Vinny. You and Jeff both encapsulate my highschool years for me at Old Gamespot.. even though you weren't on yet, because you just fit so perfectly. 
 
I read what you claim, but I find it difficult to believe on a few levels. Even on my machine, encoding time wouldn't be more than the total length of video, as far as I know, and you all have a massive studio to work around, which should be able to churn out HD.. I just have to believe that. 
 
So, given this is worked out by.. simply buying a couple more inexpensive computers, or upgrading the ones you currently have, considering that there aren't that many videos uploaded daily, or having what you already have work during the night. Basically, I think it's solve-able. 
 
My proposal, if anyone will still read this, is that instead of uploading three quality types already, that are objectively indistinguishable, or compartiively to HD, you should say, take the "Medium" quality file, and call it SD and upload an HD quality file, 540p or 720p if possible, and that will surely be about as good if not better than uploading three SD files.  That's my solution. I hope someone listens to this, and unless I am disasterously wrong, think it over! If nothing else, an option to download the 720p masters for, say, premium members, at a nominal montly fee, would be right up my ally.  Thanks again, Vinny. You always did sound like someone I could trust.  --Chris "

Vinny pretty much summed everything up.  Even on a top end machine, compression takes forever.  I'm not sure what kind of camcorder equipment Giant Bomb uses, but if it's either HDV or AVCHD, render times are a nightmare to deal with on either formats. 
 
The issue is how the compression out of the camcorder is handled.  Typical NTSC video is 29.97 frames per second.  On a standard definition DV camcorder, you're recording a true 29.97 frames per second.  The video totals up to about 10-15 gigs per hour.  Oddly enough, HDV and AVCHD measure in at about the same size.  The high definition camcorders record fewer frames per second.  HDV only records 15 true frames, and then instructions on what has changed to each pixel for the other 15.  When you're exporting the video after editing, the compression software has to generate the other 14.97 frames that the camcorder didn't.  This adds a tremendous amount of time to rendering.  It's also how the high definition files aren't any larger than standard definition files when they're being captured onto the computer.   That's how compression works. 
 
I'd love to one day see Giant Bomb videos at 1080i or 1080p, but unless they have a few Mac Pro or iMac systems laying around to do nothing but rendering all day while Vinny works on a third system, I wouldn't expect 1080 anytime soon.  Then again, I'm just a video guy on the outside looking in at their setup.

Yeah so am I. The high quality option is just fine for all your semi-HD needs. Like.. there's no mega advantage to go full HD, there are a lot more cons then there are pros.

720p videos are all find and dandy, but processing, uploading and bandwidth fees are probably why there arent any yet. Plus the site is not that old, its still growing, give them time.

Jesus Christ, what is wrong with this guy. You've been proved wrong more times than I can count. You said you just want an answer, and you've had it, over and over again. STFU.

" @Vinny said:

" @JesseG said:

"Also, huge upload times and even more stress on their compression tools which already mess up enough as it is (Endurance Run). "

Pretty much what JesseG said. Bigger files take longer to upload, cost way more money in bandwith (both up and down), and will chew up more time in an already busy compression queue. Depending on the amount of things in the compressor, encoding times can vary from 2:1 to upwards of 5:1, meaning if a show is an hour long you're looking at 2-5 hours of compression time. Then there's uploading, which can sometimes take 30 minutes to an hour depending on the length of the show, and we're already uploading multiple versions of each piece. In short, you're already looking at a few hours of turnaround time from submission to the queue to making a piece live. I'm currently happy with the quality of the picture versus the length of the show. It would be easy to justify higher res content if it we were only doing 3-5 minute pieces, but a majority of daily content is long form, around 20-40 minutes. If that were all kept at 720p the turnaround time and cost would be beyond our current capacity.  There are very expensive options, like devices that will transcode to high res .flvs on the fly, during the initial recording, but that's some pricey gear and I would much rather spend that cash elsewhere, given the option. As a note, we do keep all the 720p masters in case we ever want to re-encode them in the future, though shows like the Persona 4 Endurance Run are captured at their native 480i resolutions.  Here's to hoping!  --Vinny "

First let me say I am honored by your response, Vinny. You and Jeff both encapsulate my highschool years for me at Old Gamespot.. even though you weren't on yet, because you just fit so perfectly. 
 
I read what you claim, but I find it difficult to believe on a few levels. Even on my machine, encoding time wouldn't be more than the total length of video, as far as I know, and you all have a massive studio to work around, which should be able to churn out HD.. I just have to believe that. 
 
So, given this is worked out by.. simply buying a couple more inexpensive computers, or upgrading the ones you currently have, considering that there aren't that many videos uploaded daily, or having what you already have work during the night. Basically, I think it's solve-able. 
 
My proposal, if anyone will still read this, is that instead of uploading three quality types already, that are objectively indistinguishable, or compartiively to HD, you should say, take the "Medium" quality file, and call it SD and upload an HD quality file, 540p or 720p if possible, and that will surely be about as good if not better than uploading three SD files.  That's my solution. I hope someone listens to this, and unless I am disasterously wrong, think it over! If nothing else, an option to download the 720p masters for, say, premium members, at a nominal montly fee, would be right up my ally.  Thanks again, Vinny. You always did sound like someone I could trust.  --Chris "

My monitor is at least 15 inches (too lazy to measure it). I think the quality could be a little better, but I'm fine with the way it is now. It'd be nice though.

The quality on giant bomb videos are so much better quality than tons of media players online. I don't see the need for HD quality, especially since I know that my computer wouldn't handle it all that well, as I'm sure a lot of others wouldn't either,
 
And you have to be spoiled rotten if you can honestly say that "it's just a matter of buying new equipment", you have to realize that most people do not have the luxury to spend that much money.
 
If you don't like it, stick to your Gamespot. They could use some users.