That Shakespeare knew a thing or two even if he didn’t realise that the word glister would become glitter and thereafter he would invariably be misquoted.
Making less worthy things glisten more than they justify has become the advertising man’s forté. Take for instance HD or High Definition. By reducing the term to mere shorthand, today it can legally be applied to cameras costing from £250 to £50,000 or more, yet the results delivered by the two extremes are so far apart as to remove any meaning from the term HD entirely.
Indeed when potential clients tell us their friends “HD wedding video on a Blu-ray disk” didn’t look any different from some of the weddings they’d seen on DVD, we have to resist a technical explanation that will send them to sleep faster than Horlicks – and mean about as much also!
The same goes for “Broadcast” grade. There was a time when all television equipment in the UK did conform to a standard, largely set by the BBC and ITA, which ensured that most television programmes met a certain quality standard. But satellite broadcasting’s insatiable appetite for something to broadcast in between the adverts, and the willingness of mid-western police departments to sell the outdated VHS tapes recorded in their patrol cars, put paid to that. To the point when although the main broadcasters invest in the best quality equipment available for their mainline programmes, there is much that is broadcast which frankly demeans the term.
So what is the non-technical bride or groom to do? Here’s some key advice:
1 Ask if your programmes will look as good as the demo disk. Here I’m reminded by a correspondent that the disk on which the programme is recorded (DVD or Blu-ray) will have its own limitations but of course they’ll apply to all programmes.
2 Ask what the production company will do if their programme runs over about 80 minutes – if the company doesn’t say they’ll either use a dual-layer disk or two single-layer disk, beware because they’re going to squeeze on more programme by reducing the image quality.
3 If you are prepared to be baffled by waffle, ask them what bit-rate their cameras record at.
If they say 50Mbit/s (megabits per second) your video should look as good as a top-line drama sold on disk by the BBC or ITV. You can also expect to pay an arm and a leg for your wedding video because their investment in cameras will be huge.
If they say 35Mbits/s you’ll be getting a top quality wedding video at a price you can afford which will be barely distinguishable from the best recorded programmes.
If they say anything less, – well, you know the rest.
But it will still be HD; just remember the Bard’s caution, all that glisters isn’t gold.
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