HP "ripoff" project with EX1... [Archive] - DVXuser.com -- The online community for filmmaking

Jim Arthurs

03-12-2008, 03:13 PM

Hi all;

Recently finished this project for the RE/MAX International Convention held last week... thought there'd be some interest despite the specialized content because it has some green screen work and of course it's shot entirely with the EX1.

Directed and DOP'ed by the supervising producer and lead director for the CBS show NUMB3R's, camera work and all VFX by me.

http://ftp.datausa.com/imageshoppe/outgoing/HANDS_DOWN/REMAX_365_h264.mov

If you've seen the HP commercials, it's a dag-blamed rip-off... if you haven't, it's fresh and original... ha...

Regards,

matthew77

03-12-2008, 04:07 PM

Must have sucked to blow that tilt at the end!

How many takes?

Excellent work - nicely lit and great CG lighting.

Of course you know it's impossible to do 3D tracking on the EX1, and green screen.

And whatever you do, don't move the camera!

Jim Arthurs

03-12-2008, 07:55 PM

Thanks Matthew... "Last take delete" mapped to button 4 was my best friend.

I think we did twenty or so takes, as the talent hadn't had the chance to practice the moves before hand. I had done some previz earlier that week using myself as talent and it took about that many tries to get the gags into muscle memory.

Yes, no pressure to get that final tilt up right after a minute 40 second take done perfectly by the talent... no pressure at all... and I was on a crappy Bogen 501 head to boot...

Jockomo

03-12-2008, 08:13 PM

Did you actually composite the head on the body at the end? The collar does not seem to react to the movement of the guy speaking.

Great work!

Stevet

03-12-2008, 08:14 PM

Nice work Jim. It looks good man.

Jim Arthurs

03-12-2008, 09:06 PM

Did you actually composite the head on the body at the end? The collar does not seem to react to the movement of the guy speaking.

Great work!

Yes, the founder of RE/MAX could only be with us for an hour total, so we set him up to read the copy against green screen in the same lighting setup as the body double. I then stabilized his head (which had some tracking marks) and tracked it to the body double's neck area.

Then the body double practiced his hand motions to a quick on set cut of the VO I did in Vegas. We were able to take the rest of the morning to finish off the shoot without bothering our main guy again. This all was shot 1080 30p, framed a bit wider than the final to allow some buffer when I do the tilt up to catch the tracking marks before they enter "final" framing, and to provide left and right pan room. The final was a 4:3 SD version, so I had plenty room to pan/scan.

Everyone was happy with the "slimming effect" at the neckline. Given more time it could have been pushed more with some subtle deformations, but for the money and the limited exposure of the public to a single SD 4:3 viewing, it was fine...

basspig

03-13-2008, 12:19 AM

Jim, that was pure genius! Great work! Since I don't watch TV, I'm not familiar with all the commercials that are currently on, so maybe there's better effects out there, but to my eye, your work looked innovative, very creative and made a boring subject entertaining.

Sumfun

03-13-2008, 09:50 AM

Looks great Jim.

Did you decide to hold off on getting a Red camera?

Jim Arthurs

03-13-2008, 10:08 AM

Looks great Jim.

Did you decide to hold off on getting a Red camera?

Yes.

At the moment, the EX1 fits my individual needs better, at a fraction of the 35K plus cost my RED package was moving toward. I have easy access to a rental RED if needed, and I'm very happy with the key quality of the EX1.

I will re-visit that decision down the road when there are 3000+ RED's in the field, but right now I have zero regrets after a half-dozen projects with the fully paid off EX1.

Sumfun

03-13-2008, 10:10 PM

Jim,

I have a Red reservation, but I'm thinking of doing the same thing. I had a chance to play with a Red One in person a few days ago, and I'm not sure it's the best tool for what I do, which is mostly run and gun. But I don't need a new camera right away, so I'll wait til NAB to what Panasonic (and others) have to offer.

tatsuo

03-13-2008, 11:13 PM

Cool spot Jim

Did you shoot HD SDI or to SXS card?

Cheers

Stevet

03-14-2008, 09:14 AM

The RED is an amazing camera, but it surely is not run-and-gun. :)

Man, I could not believe how hefty this thing was with the camera on rails with the battery, drive, and LCD attached. It weighed 25LBs.

I had a chance to check it out last week. It does take good looking footge. That's for sure.

The problem I see is the intense work flow. Also, you can only preview at 720. That surprised me.

Ted Arabian

03-14-2008, 09:41 AM

Wow. That was very impressive. Great job, Jim!

Jim Arthurs

03-14-2008, 11:10 AM

Thanks everyone!

To answer some questions, I just recorded to SxS card, no HDSDI used, even for the greenscreen. I am thinking about putting a BlackMagic Intensity card in a small PC system for capturing HD-SDI to either PhotoJPG or Cineform down the road for super-critical key work, but that's the only reason I'd do that.

Yes, the RED is a great camera... but when it came time to make the final decision, I looked at the first handful of jobs I had booked and the RED wasn't the best choice for any of them. That was an eye opener...

...One project was a green screen "premiere night" arrival of a limo and tons of flashing strobes. No good for the RED, or the EX1. The next was a series of green screen talking head interviews in a distant city, and I only had the budget for myself and one soundguy/assistant. No good for the RED, plus the client didn't want to deal with the RED post-flow. And on and on.

Since the RED and the EX1 have the same basic "faults" in regards to rolling shutter, neither of them were appropriate for some of the projects... not good if you've got 35K invested in the system, but that's tolerable if you've only got 8K in an EX1.

I do look forward to revisiting the whole RED concept again down the road. In fact, if Adam Wilt doesn't do a direct RED/EX1 green screen shootout test, I'll do that in the next few weeks.

Regards

philip bloom

03-14-2008, 05:09 PM

terrific and the VFX were absolutely superb

Jockomo

03-18-2008, 12:04 PM

Given more time it could have been pushed more with some subtle deformations, but for the money and the limited exposure of the public to a single SD 4:3 viewing, it was fine...

Yea, I don't doubt it could have been tweaked, and really its plenty clean enough.

The only reason I even thought to look for it was because it looked like one take and the guy appeared to be CEOish, and honestly I could just hear it, "can you just paste the CEO's head on an actors body?"... Sure, I'll just paste it right on there.

basilisk

03-18-2008, 02:44 PM

Hey Jim
very nice work, and I am guessing your budget was a tad lower than HP's! Certainly several levels above the production values this sort of job usually has!

I don't wish to hijack your thread, but I have a slightly unrelated question. When you were keying the full-res footage, did you ever see anything that made you wish you were using a less compressed format, or did it satisfy your requirements completely? The reason I ask is that I am in the process of planning what is, for me, quite a large budget project. It involves slow motion footage of soccer players in front of greenscreen. As I have a part share in an EX1, I could just use that and collect a rental fee myself, or there should be the budget to hire pretty much any other camera, if it was going to give a noticeably better result. The advantage of the EX1 is that I understand it better than any other camera; I can just stick it in 720p, and record at 60fps - result nice crisp slow-mo footage, easy workflow, plus I don't need to drain the national grid to get enough light to light it in a big space. Ideally though I would like to capture at 1080p, so that I do the post at 720p and still scale the footage up a bit if I need to - it is always difficult to frame action footage tightly in camera, without losing bits. Given that in the UK, there are not yet a lot of Reds around (or experienced users) would you stick with the EX1, or go for something else (and if so, what?)

Jim Arthurs

03-18-2008, 04:47 PM

Thanks again everyone.

You need to experiment with channel or chroma blur with the EX1, but I've been quite happy with the results as recorded by the SxS media. It's no worse than any material I've used coming from HDCAM 3:1:1.

I've shared this before, but here's 8bit uncompressed 4:2:2 compared to the 35mb/sec XD codec side by side, this was a blue screen.

http://ftp.datausa.com/imageshoppe/outgoing/EX1/EX1_compressed_vrs_uncomp.mov

Having said that, no reason NOT to record better quality when in a controlled environment, so I intend on building some sort of 4:2:2 ingest station... on the mac, a macbook pro in combo with an AJA IO recording to ProRes is very workable, on the PC, perhaps a Blackmagic card in a small case PC recording to either photojpg or CineForm.

As to the 60fps 720p material, I've not yet experimented with keying it. In theory, 720p at 24fps on SxS should be the "least" compressed of all the SxS options, as all recorded formats share the 35mb/sec bandwidth, regardless of time-base or frame size. 720p 60fps should be on par with 1080p 30fps, but I'd wager the 1080p would still look better, as the size of the compression artifacts are smaller in relationship to the overall size of the frame.

Still, the EX1 720p is full raster 720p (1280 by 720) compared to the HVX's (960 by 720)or any DVCPRO 720p flavor... and I've been dissapointed with the key quality of DVCPRO 720p compared to the 1080 variant of DVCPRO... at least on the HVX due to some complicated reasons that have been disscussed on this forum somewhere in the past.

I'd say do a test at 60fps with your EX1 on native media and see how it goes...

Of course now the RED is up to 120fps in 2K...

basilisk

03-18-2008, 06:28 PM

You need to experiment with channel or chroma blur with the EX1, but I've been quite happy with the results as recorded by the SxS media. It's no worse than any material I've used coming from HDCAM 3:1:1. Thats good to know

I've shared this before, but here's 8bit uncompressed 4:2:2 compared to the 35mb/sec XD codec side by side, this was a blue screen.
Thanks - I will study this.

Having said that, no reason NOT to record better quality when in a controlled environment, so I intend on building some sort of 4:2:2 ingest station... on the mac, a macbook pro in combo with an AJA IO recording to ProRes is very workable, on the PC, perhaps a Blackmagic card in a small case PC recording to either photojpg or CineForm. I think that would limit us to 30 fps maximum?

As to the 60fps 720p material, I've not yet experimented with keying it. In theory, 720p at 24fps on SxS should be the "least" compressed of all the SxS options, as all recorded formats share the 35mb/sec bandwidth, regardless of time-base or frame size. 720p 60fps should be on par with 1080p 30fps, but I'd wager the 1080p would still look better, as the size of the compression artifacts are smaller in relationship to the overall size of the frame. If you record on a 720p24 timebase, and set S&Q to 60, don't you end up with full quality 24p footage (unlike recording on a 720p60 timebase, which crams 60 frames into the same 35 mbs stream)?

Still, the EX1 720p is full raster 720p (1280 by 720) compared to the HVX's (960 by 720)or any DVCPRO 720p flavor... and I've been dissapointed with the key quality of DVCPRO 720p compared to the 1080 variant of DVCPRO... at least on the HVX due to some complicated reasons that have been disscussed on this forum somewhere in the past.
I'd say do a test at 60fps with your EX1 on native media and see how it goes...
Of course now the RED is up to 120fps in 2K...
Any UK based shooters with a RED?

matthew77

03-18-2008, 06:52 PM

If RED is up to 120fps, does this mean they've sped up the CMOS "shutter?" beyond 1/75 second scan time?

Stevet

03-18-2008, 09:39 PM

Yes, I heard that they offered the 120fps and a peak type focus assist.
The Red is getting better and better...

Jim Arthurs

03-18-2008, 10:53 PM

I think that would limit us to 30 fps maximum?

If you record on a 720p24 timebase, and set S&Q to 60, don't you end up with full quality 24p footage (unlike recording on a 720p60 timebase, which crams 60 frames into the same 35 mbs stream)?

Any UK based shooters with a RED?

720p 60fps is part of the HD-SDI spec and I confirmed that I can record it from the EX1. However, that is timebase 60fps, not 24fps recording 60fps slow-mo... at least on the capture system I have, which is getting long in the tooth.

I believe you're right about a timebase of 24fps using 60fps slowmo having full quality bandwidth applied to those 24 frames making up a second... but have not personally tested. I should do that when I have a bit of time.

UK RED's are plentiful... check on the REDUSER forum in the "for hire" section, I know Paul Clement has one and he's a good bloke!

I'd sure try out a test with the EX1 and native recording first before looking elsewhere...

As to the RED and the faster shutter... the windowed modes provide a way to allow faster triggering, reducing the rolling shutter skew as a nice side effect, 120fps was always a target, but originally only with 720p... at one point that spec changed, as they moved away from "broadcast" output formats, and the new target was limited to about 96 fps 2K. 120fps 2K is great and a surpise to me...

Regards,

zcream

03-29-2008, 06:09 PM

Hi Jim! you mentioned the Blackmagic Intensity card for capturing HD-SDI. Do you mean the Decklink series instead ?
Intensity only captures HDMI, or component.
Just wondering which card would work with the EX1..Cheers!

Thanks everyone!

To answer some questions, I just recorded to SxS card, no HDSDI used, even for the greenscreen. I am thinking about putting a BlackMagic Intensity card in a small PC system for capturing HD-SDI to either PhotoJPG or Cineform down the road for super-critical key work, but that's the only reason I'd do that.

Yes, the RED is a great camera... but when it came time to make the final decision, I looked at the first handful of jobs I had booked and the RED wasn't the best choice for any of them. That was an eye opener...

...One project was a green screen "premiere night" arrival of a limo and tons of flashing strobes. No good for the RED, or the EX1. The next was a series of green screen talking head interviews in a distant city, and I only had the budget for myself and one soundguy/assistant. No good for the RED, plus the client didn't want to deal with the RED post-flow. And on and on.

Since the RED and the EX1 have the same basic "faults" in regards to rolling shutter, neither of them were appropriate for some of the projects... not good if you've got 35K invested in the system, but that's tolerable if you've only got 8K in an EX1.

I do look forward to revisiting the whole RED concept again down the road. In fact, if Adam Wilt doesn't do a direct RED/EX1 green screen shootout test, I'll do that in the next few weeks.

Regards

Jim Arthurs

03-29-2008, 07:29 PM

Hi Jim! you mentioned the Blackmagic Intensity card for capturing HD-SDI. Do you mean the Decklink series instead ?
Intensity only captures HDMI, or component.
Just wondering which card would work with the EX1..Cheers!

Well, the Intensity card in combo with an HD-SDI to HDMI converter would work... probably the Blackmagic converter is the best bet, as it's the only 10bit minature converter that I'm currently aware off.

In addition, you could capture analog component from the EX1 via the Intensity Pro's component connector, I believe... and as far as I know, the analog component is before even the conversion to HD-SDI internally. So many possible options.

Of course with these HDMI solutions you're doing external routing things to get audio and timecode, as far as I can tell. Different HD-SDI to HDMI converters handle audio differently. Some mix the signal into the HDMI stream, others (like the Blackmagic one) feed it out to RCA connectors.

But yes, you're right, the Decklink series would be more "ideal" for HD-SDI capture from the EX1, since you would have audio and timecode and stay 10bit for the capture. However, if you own one of the HD-SDI to HDMI converters, then you could explore the Intensity and Intensity Pro options for a budget solution. And how important 10bit processing is to you is dependent on what you're ultimately going to... for instance, PhotoJPG is 8bit, while ProRes and CineForm would benefit from a nice 10bit processing chain...

I know I'll be spending some time at NAB snooping out the details for a nice solution and will share what I find out in regards to these options...

zcream

03-29-2008, 07:47 PM

Awesome.. Forgot about Component capture. I have an Intensity Pro lying around here anyway.
So I have my Intensity capture station and my Intensity Pro card which can record via component. I am about to buy NeoHD anyway - that does it well I reckon..
If the analog component is before the conversion to HD-SDI - is that better or worse ?
I guess another way of asking is - is the A/D conversion better in Blackmagic or the EX1 ?

Well, the Intensity card in combo with an HD-SDI to HDMI converter would work... probably the Blackmagic converter is the best bet, as it's the only 10bit minature converter that I'm currently aware off.

In addition, you could capture analog component from the EX1 via the Intensity Pro's component connector, I believe... and as far as I know, the analog component is before even the conversion to HD-SDI internally. So many possible options.

Of course with these HDMI solutions you're doing external routing things to get audio and timecode, as far as I can tell. Different HD-SDI to HDMI converters handle audio differently. Some mix the signal into the HDMI stream, others (like the Blackmagic one) feed it out to RCA connectors.

But yes, you're right, the Decklink series would be more "ideal" for HD-SDI capture from the EX1, since you would have audio and timecode and stay 10bit for the capture. However, if you own one of the HD-SDI to HDMI converters, then you could explore the Intensity and Intensity Pro options for a budget solution. And how important 10bit processing is to you is dependent on what you're ultimately going to... for instance, PhotoJPG is 8bit, while ProRes and CineForm would benefit from a nice 10bit processing chain...

I know I'll be spending some time at NAB snooping out the details for a nice solution and will share what I find out in regards to these options...

Jim Arthurs

03-29-2008, 11:32 PM

If the analog component is before the conversion to HD-SDI - is that better or worse ?
I guess another way of asking is - is the A/D conversion better in Blackmagic or the EX1 ?

I would imagine it is better via the Blackmagic card. I've seen various posts from the Blackmagic folks indicating that all aspects of their line of cards from the cheapest Intensity to the Eclipse that are shared between them are of equal quality (i.e. A/D conversion, scaling, etc.).

The analog signal from the EX1 can be "sampled" at any bit depth, the value of that sampling of course has finite limits, but it's safe to assume that you'll get your 10bits worth out of it. Of course the analog connector is fragile and the signal can be interrupted compared to the HD-SDI out, there's no timecode in the component signal, etc... still, all in all a worthy experiment to try.