CLOWn short film

[macgregor]

This weekend i worked in a new short film.

It was going to be shot with the sony HDV camera and if i could find some decent nikon lenses also with the G35.
At the end i asked fot a Sony HDCAM F750P, because in the end, the film will be transferd to 35mm and i did not wanted to risk anything (also i was not paying...lol).

So we shot things like this:

http://personales.ya.com/autodrome/hdcam.mov

(HD camera captured in minidv combo)

which looks fine, excellent resolution, very good latitud and those things. Still looks like any other good video footage once it is at PAL resolution.


But the last day i had some time to set my camera (FX1E) with the G35 and nikon 50mm f1.4 close to the Sony HDCAM so both got the same shot. At that moment i was very dissapointed. The image in the HDV camera look like a crap. Very poor detail, high contrast, bad colors...

Well, i had being working the past 4 days with the best equipment (real HD camera, HD monitors...), but that did not make me happy with the result i had with the HDV.

Today i downloaded the video clip. And after some level adjusts i could finally get a great and decent image! I am very happy. I don´t have the HDCAM footage with me yet so i will have to wait for the comparison.

Anyway this is the HDV footage:

http://personales.ya.com/autodrome/payasoweb.mov

Sorry for this long post.
Bye

[Yas Kassana]

Like i said mate - you make it look easy. Great image.

[gabriel]

I don't think I understood everything :-)

so the clip from the first link is shot with a hdcam but transferred to a minidv tape then captured and compressed.

and the second one is your fx1 + guerilla + nikon lense ?????

is that right??

I like both clips but you sense the difference.
But I also feel that you have done everything to make the two clips match as much as possible...

well both are lit and shot very well. seems like there is some money in this project :-)

[macgregor]

Yes gabriel. You understood it right.

The first clip has almost no CC.

The second clip, shot with fx1 was underexposed and with incorrect WB, so it needed some time to get the right image.

[Anhar Miah]

macgregor the only thing I would like to add is that when you downconvert to SD what is your target? DVD?

if so, i've found in my experiance that if your first convert the HDV (with CC and a sharping filter, otherwise the image becomes too soft) file to uncompressed OR lightly compressed format such as MJPEG SD file AND then your render that file to DVD you get a superior image quality.

Anyway try it, so in closing I think your signature should say

"Sony HDV + DVX100E + Guerilla35 + Nikon lenses + COLOUR CORRECTING = better than George Lucas "

[macgregor]

Thanks Anhar!

What is MJPEG codec (similar to quicktime photoJPEG)? And why do you think this works better?

[J.R. Hudson]

macgregor

you can dp one of my films anyday. both of those clips looked nice. smooth operator.

[Anhar Miah]

I dont know why it works better, unfortunately I don't completely understand the theory but apparently you end up with 4:4:4 colour information in the "intermediate" SD file (prior to MPEG encode) from the HDV source therefore you should get better SD MPEG's out of it.

Anyway all I know is that it works, I mean before I just use to go direct from HDV to MPEG but the quality was Sub par (by a long shot) extremley disapointing, then I tried HDV to DV to MPEG this was little better but not that much, then finally this method is best result i've obtained to date.

The only reason I use MJPEG is that it takes up less space on my tiny hardrive space Vs Quality, I wish I had the space to work uncompressed but I just dont have that kinda space.

And also yes MJPEG seems to be available to both Quicktime and AVI wrappers (for my system anyway)

hope that helps

Anhar Hussain Miah

[Beat Takeshi]

the clips gave me an error- not a movie file in quicktime

[macgregor]

They work for me...

[Beat Takeshi]

i have QT 7 too..
/me scratches his head