The guys at work have been running around shooting and editing a video that showcases our work and culture. It's a way to show people what we do and what we are all about. So they hit the streets, the office, and some places in between to shoot some new HD video.
When I was younger, the first video capable device that I got was a VHS Camcorder. My mother got it for my birthday one year. I always wanted one, mostly to film videos of my life and send them to a few different people I was chatting with online. That was SD, what would roughly translate to 640 x 480 today.
Back then, I wouldn't even consider emailing something like video. I sent a cassette tape to my friends.
The next step was a digital camera that recorded video. The first one of use that I remember was a Canon Powershot S1 IS. It recorded very sharp 640 x 480 video. It was more of an added bonus, as I didn't spend much time shooting video. By this time I was married, and you just don't send friends online videos of yourself when your married. Ha!
My next camera, same thing. HD video came about within the past 10 years, and only this past year have I been able to afford my own HD camera. The birth of my daughter, Ralena, all those moments filmed in the old 640 x 480 format.
So I have been spending a much idle time as I can filming her as she grows up. Usually I do it in 720p, but also 1080p at times. Which leads to the question of this whole blog post: When will it all go obsolete?
The guys at work wanted to include some of their old video work into their new HD footage. The problem was, it was all super small and looks ugly when played on today's HD TV's and computer monitors. This got me thinking, when will the HD footage we shoot today go obsolete? 10 years? Five? Twenty?
When people were shooting their lives with camcorders, they thought that it was going to be viable forever. But technology keeps growing in leaps and bounds, and the new becomes the old. Will my daughter watch the videos I shot of her, and scour at the low quality videos I shot? Will TV advance that far?
I'm not really sure. All I can do it keep shooting and saving. It's a shame though that we can't record life in video in the best way possible. We are always shooting in a format that will one day be unusable. Could you imagine a 1080p HD video pan of a scene from the revolutionary war? From ancient Rome? Those would be priceless for the historians that try to understand their culture through carvings, writings and other artifacts.
-Clint