QUESTION · SATURDAY Q&A

What is your camera and why does your HDMI output appear to be limited to 720p?

ASKED BY · Unknown · 10 OCT 2026 · ▶ 01:00:29

THE PANEL'S ANSWER
Chris SabatoPANELIST

Nikon D500 has separate recording and HDMI output settings; many still cameras output 720p over HDMI; menus enabled on HDMI output can reduce resolution to match back screen at 720p.

Enabling menus on external video output lowers HDMI resolution to match camera back display, often 720p; disabling menus can restore higher output resolution.

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From the transcript.

Machine-transcribed, so it may contain errors. Every timestamp opens the episode at that second.

1:00:29Yeah. Had it all queued up just to do that. Right, Cochran. Old scroll bag. Does my video look any crisper today? I found a setting that I think. Are you in 60 hertz? No, but I found out that I was actually only in 720p for a while. And when I was debugging my SRT app, I was like, Why does it keep telling me it's 720?

1:00:56I have my camera set at 1080. And it turns out there is a different setting for recording and HDMI output on my camera. Oh, yeah. That is a thing. What camera is it? Coming in from the 60s. It's a Nikon D500. Oh, yeah. A lot of still cameras only up to 720 still. Definitely look sharp. Over HDMI. When I first started using this camera, I was like,

1:01:20Like, why does my image just look a little bit softer than everyone else's? Like, I don't understand it. That happens a lot if you have the menus turned on on the HDMI output. It'll lower its resolution to match what's on the back of the camera, which a lot of times is 720p. Wait, say that again, Courtney. A lot of times if you have,

1:01:41sometimes you can enable the menus on the external video out on a...

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