1. HA1 – Task One
There are a lot of motion graphics and the ones that I am going to talk about are:
Pixel
Resolution
Screen Ratios
Frame Rate
Video Formats
Compression
Pixel
Firstly we have Pixel, it is used in; digital imaging and a raster image. A pixel is a physical point in a
raster image, or the smallest addressable elements in a display device; so it is the smallest
controllable element of a picture represented on the screen. The address of a pixel corresponds to
its physical coordinates.
A pixel can only be one colour at a time but since they are small, they blend together and they make
several of shades and blends of colours. The number of colours each pixel can be is determined by
the number of bits used to represent it.
Bits
A bit (short for binary digit) is the smallest unit of data in a computer. A bit has a single binary value,
either 0 or 1.
Although computers usually provide instructions that can test and manipulate bits, they generally
are designed to store data and execute instructions in bit multiples called bytes.
In most computer systems, there are eight bits in a byte. The value of a bit is usually stored as either
above or below a designated level of electrical charge in a single capacitor within a memory device.

2. Resolution
Resolution is the quality of the image and how sharpness of it, it mostly refers to resolution by
monitors and printers.
Bitmap images are composed of pixels. Image resolution is simply the number of Pixels Per Inch
(PPI) in the bitmap grid.
There are two aspects to every bitmap image - its size (width and height in inches) and resolution
(the number of pixels per inch).
These two factors alone determine the total number of pixels in an image.
The more pixels there are in an image, the more detail the image can be displayed with.
The fewer pixels there are in an image, the less detail the image can be displayed with. There are
two ways to display an image - on screen and in print.
Screen Ratio
The aspect ratio of a screen or image describes the proportional relationship between its width and
its height.

3. Frame Rate
The human eye and its brain interface, the human visual system, can process 10 to 12 separate
images per second, perceiving them individually. Early silent films had a frame rate from 14 to 24 FPS
which was enough for the sense of motion, but it was perceived as jerky motion.
Frame Rate tells you how many frames per second there are when recording or playing video.
Video cameras in Europe use 25 frames per second (fps). In USA & Japan 29.97fps or 30fps is used.
Animation works by recording each frame individually (e.g. with a stills camera) and then playing
them back at a frame rate.
Animators often work with a lower frame rate (e.g. 12fps) so less frames are needed for the same
length video clip.
If you change the frame rate of a 12fps video clip to 25fps, e.g. by adding it to a 25fps editing project,
each frame will be repeated to keep the clip the same duration.
Video Format
Tape-based formats such as DV and HDV can be transferred to a computer for editing via Firewire.
A video format defines the way in which video is recorded and stored. It normally specifies:
Codec/compressor
Frame rate
Frame size
Frame aspect ratio
Pixel aspect ratio
Scanning method (interlaced or progressive)

4. Compression
Codec is short for coder-decoder and describes the method in which video data is encoded into a file
and decoded when the file is played back.
Most video is compressed during encoding, and so the terms codec and compressor are often used
interchangeably.
Transcoding is the process of converting from one codec to another.
Codecs can be Lossless, which means that they do not throw away any data, or Lossy, which means
that data is lost during encoding.
Lossless codecs are higher quality than lossy codecs, but produce larger file sizes.
In a video workflow, you should avoid transcoding to a lossy codec until final output.
Codec
DV-PAL
Lossiess
No
Recommed Use
Capture/edit/output of DV-PAL
video from the camera; archive
DV-PAL video
Capture/edit/output of HDV
video from camera; archive
HDV video
Transcode video for web &
computer playback (not
suitable for editing)
HDV
No
H.264
No
MPEG-2
No
Transcode video for DVD
Animation
Yes
Output/archive video (mainly
motion graphics, animation,
etc) from After Effects,
Photoshop
Apple Intermediate Codec
Yes
Transcode AVCHD/H.264 video
for editing; output/archive
video
Apple ProRes422 (Proxy)
Yes
Transcode AVCHD/H.264 video
for editing; output/archive
video
Apple ProRes 422 (LT)
Yes
Transcode AVCHD/H.264 video
for editing; output/archive
video