Digital Foundry performed the conversion and encoding for this project, taking the masters in 1080i/50 format from HDCAM tape, ingesting the raw footage directly over HD-SDI into a 25fps 1080p file.
The video was then scaled downwards to 1280x720 - the Xbox Live HD standard - and encoded directly into the appropriate WMV container.
It was a relatively painless operation, but the flat colour/animated nature of the video provided a lot of potential for compression. However, with an eye for quality, Microsoft chose to use the version we encoded at the maximum possible bitrate, providing a virtually flawless rendition of the original file.
Click for full-size 720p images of the Kasabian video, Shoot the Runner, prepared by Digital Foundry for Microsoft and the Xbox Live Marketplace.
