The Majesty of High Definition, 1920 by 1080 pixels

Here above is a 3-minute excerpted sample of the first lecture in this series, A Pure and Remote View, presented in full high definition with 2 1/2 times the pixel resolution of the full lecture material on this site.  This is the native resolution in which this series was produced, and the resolution available for your use, whether delivered on BluRay high definition disks or in another digital format of value or particular use to you.  Our hope is to the see widest possible adoption of this material at a reasonable cost to recover only distribution expenses.  Distribution of the source imagery behind the production of this series and at original scan resolutions of up to 15 megapixels is also under consideration.

At a compressed data rate* of 5 megabits per second, this 3-minute sample is 118 MegaBytes in size, which equates to over 22 GigaBytes per hour of material.  This is too large for standard web streaming delivery to most internet users at this time (2011), and equally important, it may be too wide for most computer monitors in broad use.

Please note that if your computer monitor resolution is not at least 1920 by 1080 pixels, you will not be able to watch this clip in full at its proper resolution.  However, you may be able to size your bowser window to stretch beyond the edges of your screen and thus be able to observe portions of the video at its native resolution.  The added image clarity may be of value to your educational mission, and this will help you to evaluate the choice. 

Please contact Managing Editor of Publications Kate Chouta at the University of California at Berkeley’s Institute of East Asian Studies, Professor James Cahill, or Chatterbox Productions to find out how to obtain 1080P progressive High Definition (1920 by 1080 pixel) versions of these lectures on Blu-Ray Disks or in any other electronic video file format of use to you or your institution.  All materials are being released at cost and under Creative Commons licenses.  They are intended in no way for any commercial purpose, nor to represent or take the place of a university course in the subject.   All intellectual property exhibited in these lectures belongs to Professor James Cahill or falls under the US legal principle of Fair Use for non-commercial educational purposes only.  Please see this page for additional details regarding your legal rights and duties vis-a-vis materials on this site.

1. *This Quicktime movie file was compressed using the codec H264 using Compressor’s high quality multi-pass setting for the video and  44.1 kHz AAC variable bit rate audio encoded to a target of 64 kbps. 
   The total bit rate of the video and audio is 5160 kbps.  At this point in time and given the compression and decompression technology in wide use and freely-available on the internet as an open standard,
   this is the most efficient means known to deliver this content at an acceptable quality.  It does require significant processor speed at the receiver’s end, however, and we apologize if this does not play smoothly
   on your system.  The same video is also available in a flash video container from YouTube servers here.