Can someone the actual meaning of 780p vs 1080p and how frame rates play into all of this? Are there other factors that play into quality as well?
In: 9
720p and 1080p speak to the pixel density. The number of lines or rows of pixels are in the screen or video horizontally. The higher that number, the clearer and sharper the image. It’s a bit more complicated than that, but this is the basics.
The quality you see is the lower one between the camera it was recorded with, and the screen you display it with. If the camera was recording 720p, even a good screen can’t magically turn it into 1080p. The same way, a 720p monitor can’t show the full quality of a 1080p video.
Newer screens (4k and 8k especially) often have software that slightly improves the quality. So if a 1080p screen had this, a 720p video would look better than 720p, but not quite 1080p.
Frame rates are separate from this. Low frame rates make a video look choppy and unnatural. The higher the refresh rate, the more fluid the video looks.
720p and 1080p speak to the pixel density. The number of lines or rows of pixels are in the screen or video horizontally. The higher that number, the clearer and sharper the image. It’s a bit more complicated than that, but this is the basics.
The quality you see is the lower one between the camera it was recorded with, and the screen you display it with. If the camera was recording 720p, even a good screen can’t magically turn it into 1080p. The same way, a 720p monitor can’t show the full quality of a 1080p video.
Newer screens (4k and 8k especially) often have software that slightly improves the quality. So if a 1080p screen had this, a 720p video would look better than 720p, but not quite 1080p.
Frame rates are separate from this. Low frame rates make a video look choppy and unnatural. The higher the refresh rate, the more fluid the video looks.
720p and 1080p speak to the pixel density. The number of lines or rows of pixels are in the screen or video horizontally. The higher that number, the clearer and sharper the image. It’s a bit more complicated than that, but this is the basics.
The quality you see is the lower one between the camera it was recorded with, and the screen you display it with. If the camera was recording 720p, even a good screen can’t magically turn it into 1080p. The same way, a 720p monitor can’t show the full quality of a 1080p video.
Newer screens (4k and 8k especially) often have software that slightly improves the quality. So if a 1080p screen had this, a 720p video would look better than 720p, but not quite 1080p.
Frame rates are separate from this. Low frame rates make a video look choppy and unnatural. The higher the refresh rate, the more fluid the video looks.
1080p and 720p are resolutions. Basically with 1080p there’s 1920×1080 pixels and 720p is 1280×720 pixels. The quality comes from the fact that the camera is able to capture more data. This is why 2K, 4K and 8K look more realistic as you go up. They’re better able to capture more data.
A good way to think of resolution is the evolution of gaming. When you look at old 8bit games the characters don’t have too much data. As time went on 2D characters were able to hold more data and have more details.
Frame rate is how many times the camera refreshes or takes a picture (frames) in a second. The more FPS, typically less choppy. If you had 1FPS the screen would display each frame 1 second apart, which is pretty noticeable. When you record at a higher FPS the time in-between frames is less and you notice each specific frame less. Technically there is a point where FPS doesn’t matter, you won’t notice any more smoothness.
Another thing that affects quality is bitrate. When streaming you want to have a higher bit rate, especially at higher resolutions. Bit rate is the amount of data processed from the video. If you choose to low bitrate the video appears grainy. There is a flipside too, if you choose too high bitrate, the video will buffer. This is also why sometimes streaming 1080p might look similar or worse than 720p.
On last thing that affects video quality is encoding/decoding or codec. Basically the idea is that you convert and compress from one format to another. Compression is used to make the file size smaller. Some formats lose more data than others, which affects the quality.
1080p and 720p are resolutions. Basically with 1080p there’s 1920×1080 pixels and 720p is 1280×720 pixels. The quality comes from the fact that the camera is able to capture more data. This is why 2K, 4K and 8K look more realistic as you go up. They’re better able to capture more data.
A good way to think of resolution is the evolution of gaming. When you look at old 8bit games the characters don’t have too much data. As time went on 2D characters were able to hold more data and have more details.
Frame rate is how many times the camera refreshes or takes a picture (frames) in a second. The more FPS, typically less choppy. If you had 1FPS the screen would display each frame 1 second apart, which is pretty noticeable. When you record at a higher FPS the time in-between frames is less and you notice each specific frame less. Technically there is a point where FPS doesn’t matter, you won’t notice any more smoothness.
Another thing that affects quality is bitrate. When streaming you want to have a higher bit rate, especially at higher resolutions. Bit rate is the amount of data processed from the video. If you choose to low bitrate the video appears grainy. There is a flipside too, if you choose too high bitrate, the video will buffer. This is also why sometimes streaming 1080p might look similar or worse than 720p.
On last thing that affects video quality is encoding/decoding or codec. Basically the idea is that you convert and compress from one format to another. Compression is used to make the file size smaller. Some formats lose more data than others, which affects the quality.
1080p and 720p are resolutions. Basically with 1080p there’s 1920×1080 pixels and 720p is 1280×720 pixels. The quality comes from the fact that the camera is able to capture more data. This is why 2K, 4K and 8K look more realistic as you go up. They’re better able to capture more data.
A good way to think of resolution is the evolution of gaming. When you look at old 8bit games the characters don’t have too much data. As time went on 2D characters were able to hold more data and have more details.
Frame rate is how many times the camera refreshes or takes a picture (frames) in a second. The more FPS, typically less choppy. If you had 1FPS the screen would display each frame 1 second apart, which is pretty noticeable. When you record at a higher FPS the time in-between frames is less and you notice each specific frame less. Technically there is a point where FPS doesn’t matter, you won’t notice any more smoothness.
Another thing that affects quality is bitrate. When streaming you want to have a higher bit rate, especially at higher resolutions. Bit rate is the amount of data processed from the video. If you choose to low bitrate the video appears grainy. There is a flipside too, if you choose too high bitrate, the video will buffer. This is also why sometimes streaming 1080p might look similar or worse than 720p.
On last thing that affects video quality is encoding/decoding or codec. Basically the idea is that you convert and compress from one format to another. Compression is used to make the file size smaller. Some formats lose more data than others, which affects the quality.
Think of pixel resolution (720p, 1080p, 4k) as spatial resolution. It is how many pixels are on screen measured by the x-axis.
Think of frame rate as temporal resolution or resolution over time.
1 frame per second is a slide show. 15fps is choppy. 60fps is smooth. You are receiving more images over time so the temporal resolution is higher. This is independent from the amount of pixels on your screen.
Think of pixels as a grid that overlays an image. An image is a whole bunch of colors, but if the pixel grid is 1×1, that single pixel will average all of the colors and become the most averagely colored pixel.
The same applies for an image that is 4k just it is at such a high resolution that each pixel averages a very accurate color. So the smaller the amount of pixels on the pixel grid, the more obvious visible pixels are, and the more they average the color of the image that the grid is “sitting on top of.”
More pixels just means a higher density of pixels. For example, four 1080p grids can fit evenly into a 4k image four times. So assuming everything else about the images is the same, you could zoom 400% into the 4k image and it would look just as sharp as the 1080p image.
I hope that explains something. I feel like I may have gotten a bit rambly and explained like you are not 5 🙃
Think of pixel resolution (720p, 1080p, 4k) as spatial resolution. It is how many pixels are on screen measured by the x-axis.
Think of frame rate as temporal resolution or resolution over time.
1 frame per second is a slide show. 15fps is choppy. 60fps is smooth. You are receiving more images over time so the temporal resolution is higher. This is independent from the amount of pixels on your screen.
Think of pixels as a grid that overlays an image. An image is a whole bunch of colors, but if the pixel grid is 1×1, that single pixel will average all of the colors and become the most averagely colored pixel.
The same applies for an image that is 4k just it is at such a high resolution that each pixel averages a very accurate color. So the smaller the amount of pixels on the pixel grid, the more obvious visible pixels are, and the more they average the color of the image that the grid is “sitting on top of.”
More pixels just means a higher density of pixels. For example, four 1080p grids can fit evenly into a 4k image four times. So assuming everything else about the images is the same, you could zoom 400% into the 4k image and it would look just as sharp as the 1080p image.
I hope that explains something. I feel like I may have gotten a bit rambly and explained like you are not 5 🙃
Think of pixel resolution (720p, 1080p, 4k) as spatial resolution. It is how many pixels are on screen measured by the x-axis.
Think of frame rate as temporal resolution or resolution over time.
1 frame per second is a slide show. 15fps is choppy. 60fps is smooth. You are receiving more images over time so the temporal resolution is higher. This is independent from the amount of pixels on your screen.
Think of pixels as a grid that overlays an image. An image is a whole bunch of colors, but if the pixel grid is 1×1, that single pixel will average all of the colors and become the most averagely colored pixel.
The same applies for an image that is 4k just it is at such a high resolution that each pixel averages a very accurate color. So the smaller the amount of pixels on the pixel grid, the more obvious visible pixels are, and the more they average the color of the image that the grid is “sitting on top of.”
More pixels just means a higher density of pixels. For example, four 1080p grids can fit evenly into a 4k image four times. So assuming everything else about the images is the same, you could zoom 400% into the 4k image and it would look just as sharp as the 1080p image.
I hope that explains something. I feel like I may have gotten a bit rambly and explained like you are not 5 🙃
Digital images are made up of many tiny dots called pixels (short for “picture elements”).
A 1080p image measures 1080 pixels vertically whereas a 720p image measures 720 pixels vertically.
In the context of computer screens and movies, this typically means measurements of 1920×1080 pixels and 1280×720 pixels respectively.
Video is essentially a series of images displayed in rapid succession. The “frame rate” is a measure of how many images are shown per second. The more images, the smoother the motion looks. For most purposes, 60 frames per second looks pretty smooth whereas something like 10 or 15 would look very clunky.
Then, compression is also a factor that affects quality. “Raw” images and video take up a ridiculous amount of storage space, so they’re typically “compressed” to make them take up a more reasonable amount of space. Compression uses complex math and computations to on the image/video to make its filesize smaller. But the more you compress a file, the more detail you lose. The image/video’s *resolution* will still be the same, but some details will get garbled.
I’ve included an image from the TV show House Of The Dragon as an example.
* [**720p** high definition, with mild compression](https://i.imgur.com/bWMeVXP.jpeg)
* [A measly **180p** (not 1080… 180!) version blown back up to 720p. You can see there’s a lot less detail.](https://i.imgur.com/SO14Nga.jpeg)
* [**720p** again, but **with heavy JPEG compression** this time. It’s still “sharp”, but there is a ton of detail that has been garbled by the compression.](https://i.imgur.com/a3Qu34x.jpeg)
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