HA4 - Task 3

Technical Comments - Evaluation. For the first task I had to choose to research two idents and two interactive menus. I chose a ToyStory and Iron Man interactive menu and two BBC Three idents. I had to describe what I saw whenwatching the advert and what specific techniques were used and give my opinion on why I thoughtthey were used and what impact it had, if it did. I watched all of these on YouTube as this were the only access I had in terms of viewing them. I will mainly be talking about the codecs used, video formats and aspect ratios. A big part of the research was to find out more about the technical side things, not just about what the idents, e-stings and interactive menus looked like, we had to look further into it the technical side of things like how they were actually created using specific software. The first two clips I looked at were the two interactive menus, Toy Story 3 and Iron Man. As they are interactive menus they would normally be viewed on televisions of different sizes however I didn‟t have access to the DVD‟s.I found that there are all different types of screen sizes and they vary for different things. Obviously the screen size will change when on a differentsized screen, for example, normal box style televisions will be different to flat screen televisions as they will be wide screen. The basic way to classify TV quality is by resolution; here are a few standard resolution sizes, 480i, 720p, 1080i and 1080p. The bigger the number is, the greater the screen resolution. The „I‟ and „P‟ stand for interlaced and progressive scan.The first interactive menu I looked at was Iron Man. I found that it had an aspect ratio of 16:9 and aframe rate of 29.970 fps (23.976 Internal). Straight away this tells me that the interactive menu was in HD, I know this because the aspect ratio is 16:9. The first BBC Three ident I looked at had a format 1080i which means it‟s shown in HD and so implies a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels. After finding out the format for the Iron Man interactive menu and then finding out the format for this BBC ident, I found out that the Iron Man menu had 480 pixels, display aspect ratio of 16:9, and frame rate of 29.970 fps (23.976 Internal) which isstandard, which means it has the same aspect ratio as the BBC Three ident however the frame rate is different as it‟s bigger. Personally I think because the actual Iron Man and the menu in the interactive menu are such sharp and clear images I think the interactive menu would be better viewed in Blu – Ray so that it would be in high definition and would be even clearer.

1080p is full definition whereas 1080i is just high definition. 1080p produces a really good and clear picture but you have to have the right equipment to be able to view it as only recently new TV‟shave come out that will let you view things in 1080p. To most, the fact that the ident is not in 1080p wouldnt bother them, as nobody would think an advert should be in 3D as this is a whole new generation of TV‟s and technology and has not really been made the “norm” yet, only certain televisions have 3D built in. Below is a picture showing the different size screens you can get. Viewing the BBC Three ident and the e4 ident together I get to see that both the formats are 1080i, as are the aspect ratio‟s which both 16:9 are. You find that most of the ident will have the same formats and frame rates usually as they‟re technically created using the same types of software and technology and will be created extremely similar as they‟re being viewed on the same thing (TV‟s,online). However if you were to view the Iron man interactive menu on YouTube and then using the frame rate and everything else, say if you were to watch it on a flat screen television screen then individual pixels would be visible and the picture would look stretched. The frame rate and videoformats have to change when being shown on different things otherwise you would barely be able to make the picture out that was on the screen. This is why frame rates and screen ratios etc. are so important and why there is so many.Next I looked at another BBC Ident from 2011, the frame rate in this ident was 24 and it was in HD.This means in this ident there was 24 frames per second. From research I have done I know that the format will be between 720p and 1080i as the ident is in High Definition so it will have to be between 720p and 1080i as if it was anything higher it wouldn‟t be high definition.This display resolution of a television or other display device is the distinct number of pixels in each dimension that can be displayed. The term the higher the resolution the better the picture isn‟t always true as with the Iron Man interactive menu the resolution is 420p and this doesn‟t mean the pictures is of a lower quality than the BBC Three advert which is 1080p. The resolution changes depending on what we‟re viewing say the interactive menu on; the screen size will effect what the resolution is. The research we had to do all builds up to the main project we have to do. We have to create an E4ident and enter it into a competition. The ident will be created on Adobe Illustrator, Light Wave and Adobe After Effects. By doing this research it has given me a clear idea of how I would go about creating my ident as before I didn‟t have an idea how I would first start as it‟s something I have never done before.