As you all know, MyToons is dedicated to providing our members and guests with the highest quality animation experience anywhere. So, we're taking it up a notch by becoming the first global animation community to offer you the ability to upload and view your animations in High Definition! Now you can upload your work and have it seen just as you intended it - in crisp, clear, glorious high definition... And all for FREE. Here's more information on why we're going HD, and how it benefits you.

• What is HD?
  

High-Definition is the top of the line, all digital format for broadcasting, streaming and viewing of video. With HD, you see images at a higher resolution than ever before on MyToons.com. This clarity is streamed to the viewer in a crystal clear, widescreen 1280 x 720 pixel high definition format, with CD quality sound. HD is the future, and it's available today at MyToons.com.

Click here for more information about High Definition.

• Why should I make my animations in HD?
  

The transition from Standard Definition to High Definition has been compared to the transition of black and white to color: HD is the new standard. The Federal Government (through the Federal Communications Commission) mandated that all TV signals will be delivered in HD by the year 2009 when the analog spectrum will be turned off (the actual date is currently set for 2/17/2009). All recent model televisions and monitors are wide aspect and support HD natively. Get with the times! Create in HD.

• What is HD resolution?
  

There are actually several HD formats. We've chosen the 720 progressive streaming (1280 X 720) due to its superior color, resolution, sharpness and detail over Standard Definition - with more than twice the color and image quality. Almost all HD is in 16:9 "widescreen" aspect ratio. 720 is short for the 1280x720 pixel dimensions of this HD format. MyToons chose 720 progressive streaming HD because it provides the best user experience over the web with current technologies. By using streaming HD instead of progressive, you don't need to wait for everything to download - just push play.

• Will my HD animation lag?
  

There are many aspects that affect HD viewing, such as: bandwidth, processor, memory, and video card. Our highly skilled team of engineers have done everything possible to optimize the things that we can control. By writing all of our own application code, we can provide an outstanding user experience for most people with decent bandwidth and a fairly modern computer.

• What is the max HD file size that can be uploaded to MyToons?
  

MyToons HD uploader is designed to work with up to 2GB files. The reason for the limit is simple - current browsers do not support uploads larger than 2GB over the internet.

MyToons encourages you to format your animations using the information below to improve your experience. It will significantly shorten your upload times, provide high quality output, and eliminate worries about the 2GB file size limit.

• How do I format my animation at the highest quality, but so that the file won't be too large?
  

There are several things you can do to help out:

Frame Rate - 30fps

This is the most versatile frame rate to provide for various distribution methods.

Audio - AAC - Stereo Audio 44100khz at 160kbps

Great visuals are accentuated by great audio - this is definitely the way to go.

Encoding Format - Video at 8480kbps H.264, optimized for streaming.

Convert your content to QuickTime H.264 for the best combination of quality, file size, and upload time.

• Multi-pass (2 pass encoding)

• Deinterlace

Here is a good example:

More Info on High Definition:

SD (Standard Definition) refers to the "legacy" old video viewing, storage, and transmission systems represented by NTSC, PAL and SECAM when color TV was introduced in the 1950s. When DV (Digital Video) was introduced, these legacy systems were represented by a pixel (PIcture(X) ELement) grid digitizing the video content. Tied closely with their legacy, they are limited by the refresh and frame rates of NTSC and PAL (29.97 fps and 25fps respectively) as well as the low bandwidth (amount of information per unit of time) of 4-6MHz and limited number of scan lines allocated (525 and 625 respectively). Due to limitations from the 1950s and 1960s, not all these scan lines actually carry visual information, and a trick called "Interlacing" was done to allow more visual detail to be sent in the limited bandwidth. Interlaced video means that instead of using a whole frame of visual information (and presenting these stills in rapid succession to simulate movement), a frame is actually updated in parts over two slices of time. The first slice draws the odd numbered scan lines, and then the next draws the evens. When displayed, we see both the even and odd lines at once and don't realize that one set is slightly delayed (by one slice of time) from the other. Rather than view whole entire frames at a lower rate of presentation which would flicker and have jerky motion, we can create the illusion of a smoother and sharper image by interlacing half frames. Even today with more bandwidth available and higher refresh rates (to draw information), not all interlacing is bad and can certainly be used to provide benefits in many situations. DV NTSC then is represented by a grid of 720x480 pixels at 29.97 frames per second for NTSC and 720x576 at 25 fps for PAL. These are interlaces, so actually there are near 60 half frames per second for NTSC and 50 for PAL. We commonly denote DV NTSC as 480i or 480/60i to indicate the 480 pixels vertically (480 scan lines which actually carry visual information of NTSC's 525 total lines) and interlaced at 60 fields or half-frames per second. These digital specifications are used for MiniDV, Digital8, and DVD recording camcorders, as well as for DVD-video players of today.

All the above discussion concerns the 4:3 aspect ratio of "normal TV" (legacy of the last 40+ years). The aspect ratio tells us how wide versus how high. A common old TV screen is 4 parts wide to 3 parts high, or 1.33 to 1, but commonly just written 4:3. Widescreen refers to a screen that is wider than normal - usually 16:9 or 2.35:1 although there have been many various aspect ratios used. Widescreen SD DV is the implementation today of 16:9 video in MiniDV, Digital8, and DVD recording camcorders. This is somewhat of a trick, but what is done is to simply use a WIDER pixel in the grid! For NTSC, there STILL are 720x480 pixels in a frame, but those 720 pixels across the screen are not "square" (not as high as wide) but very wide. Putting them side by side fills out a wide screen... to 16:9 overall ratio of the width to the height. This is how DVD-videos and DV camcorders of today utilize "Widescreen". HD (High Definition) is the new enhanced video standard. There have actually been several formats, but the standard is settling down to two: 1080i and 720p. Both of these are far superior in color and resolution (sharpness and detail) over SD. Almost all HD is in the 16:9 "widescreen" aspect ratio natively. The interlaced 1080i provides for a grid of up to 1920x1080 pixels! Some implementations use 1440 "wide" pixels (1440x1080) which still looks far better than SD widescreen. Because processing of video information is better today (and cheaper with digital electronics), it is not necessary to always interleave or interlace the video. This gives us full frames for each frame, called "progressive" since each scan line is progressively scanned in each frame. 720p refers to the 1280x720 pixel grid of HD in progressive mode. The resolution itself is a bit lower than 1080i, but there are benefits to using full frames instead of interlaced half frames in situations recording high speed motion where you may want to view the recording in slow motion or take still snapshots of frames. HD refresh rates vary, but for 720p are commonly 24p (which is very film-like), 25p, 30p, 50p, and 60p for progressive (full frame at a time) video. The interlaced HD refresh rates are 25i, 30i, 50i, and 60i for 1080i. HD (High Definition) in any form is much better than the legacy systems. The emerging standards for HDV (High Definition Video) is to put the higher resolution HD video stored at a 25Mbps bitrate onto existing MiniDV tapes using MPEG2 compression. Several manufactures have committed to this HDV standard and everyone will benefit from home HD recordings over the limited SD DV common today.

by Kerr Cook - Sony HD V info