Glossary
Product types
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Products bearing this icon are on-demand DVDs. The DVDs are made within 24 hours of your order and are shipped in shrink-wrapped keep cases (Amaray style).
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Online videos are marked with this icon and are rented using tickets. After renting a video, you may watch it at the Harpodeon Online Silent Cinema as many times as you like during your rental period. The rental period is for 24 hours, but it does not start directly after checkout. The rental period starts when you play the film for the first time.
The normal online video player requires Adobe Flash Player 10.1. If you are using a computer, this is the player you will see.
If you are accessing this website through a Nintendo Wii, an alternate video player is used that is less featured but compatible with the 2009 version of the Internet Channel.
Most smartphones are able to use the normal video player, but if you are using an Apple iPhone, neither the normal player nor the Wii-compatible player will work. The video will attempt to play using HTML5 and a video format the iPhone understands, but as HTML5 is still in the developmental stage, it is not guaranteed how well it will function.
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Downloadable videos may be downloaded and played locally on your computer using your own video player. After purchase, you will have 48 hours to download the video, the 48 hours starting as soon as you begin the download. During this time, you have unlimited attempts to complete the download should your Internet connection fail and you lose your progress.
Downloaded videos are MP4s. The format of the video component is H.264 and the audio component format is AAC. This is fairly standard for web video, but it is possible you may need to install codecs for both before you can play downloaded videos. All Harpodeon videos are DRM free.
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For products with this icon, both online videos and downloadable videos are available.
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This icon denotes a Super 8mm digest. This is not a video, it is a condensed version of the movie on Super 8mm film. The film is silent and is shipped with sheet music marked with synchronization cues from the picture so that you may provide your own live accompaniment.
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For all other products, please refer to the product description.
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Ribbons
Harpodeon videos come in three varieties, each assigned a different colored ribbon to quickly distinguish what kind of release it is:
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The featured content of every Blue Ribbon Release has been scanned frame by frame from its film source and the image has been fully digitally restored. All Blue Ribbon Releases have one or more original, scene-specific musical scores.
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Red Ribbon Releases are simple film transfers with minimal restoration done, but they do feature original, scene-specific musical scores and — for DVDs — individualized box and menu art.
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Yellow Ribbon Releases, also called Budget Editions, are focused on being inexpensive. They are straight film transfers and do not have scene-specific scores. Instead, each includes three non-repeating, genre-appropriate generic scores that may been switched between during playback.
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Image quality scale
The quality of every video is dependent upon the condition of the film it was sourced from. This is usually variable, with some parts of the film in better shape than others. The image quality scale, found on the product page, attempts to illustrate the range in image quality of the video.
     ![==]](/siteimages/scale_top.png) 
The left side of the scale, marked "poor", denotes poor image quality. What that means is that picture may have blurry focus, muddy contrast, or significant pre-print damage.
The right side of the scale, marked "good", is just the opposite — good image quality — such as sharp focus, excellent contrast, and little to no pre-print damage.
The center of the scale is average quality. The focus may be slightly soft, some highlights may be blown out or some shadows lost, or the pre-print may exhibit a moderate level of wear.
When reading the image quality scale for a video, there are two things to look for: the range in quality, which is shown as dark gray; and the overall quality, shown by the black indicator.
The range shows the extremes of the video: what the very best scenes look like as well as what the very worst scenes look like. The overall is the average quality of the video — what the majority of the film looks like.
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