Professional Film Forum?

[Cody_Jordan]

hey guys... wondering if there's any pro film forums out there... The only forums I've ever been on are all the indie dv forums... Not downing dxvuser of course. I just feel like there has to be more knowledge out there. I'd like to know what the pro's are doing... And how they do it.

For instance, I posted on here a while back asking for the best possible way to capture my super 16 film to the computer for editing.. and the best answer I got was to put it on Digital BETA then capture from there... Well after looking at the footage on the computer I knew there had to be something better... (probably alot more expensive) So out of curiousity, what does the film industry use for this step? My guess would be directly scanning it into the computer somehow to get some really high res footage. With my digibeta transfer i was still locked into the 720x480 resolution.... theres gotta be a better way, am i wrong?

[Loki]

Why not go the crazy expensive route and have it scanned by an Arri laser scanner at a 2k resolution.

[J.R. Hudson]

My stab is either Digibeta or HDCAM/SR (and then dub to DV for actual editing) I would think both would work for your needs. I've never done it so I'll let a more experienced user answer this one.

I do not know exactly but I believe even the pro use those options. The preferred being HDCAM SR

Try http://www.cinematography.net (http://www.cinematography.net/) for some professional film topics

and

http://www.theasc.com/index.html

[Barry_Green]

You're not wrong -- look into a 2k scan (search on Cineon)... also, the new "poor man's" 2K is to just have it transferred to high-def HDCAM.

[ropbo]

You might also wanna check this out:

http://www.bonolabs.com/tapeless.htm

I've read some good comments about this option on cinematographer.com.

(just out of curiosity, Darren Aronofsky used this lab on his first feature "Pi")

Got this from their website:

"For hi def MAC users (HFS) we offer 10-bit uncompressed 1080/24p (23.98sF) MAC QuickTime.MOV files. This is an uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2 YUV HD-SDI single link signal. We provide two "compressed options." Choose either DVCPro HD QuickTime 1920x1080/24p or HDV files direct to hard drive.

For hi def PC users (NTFS) we offer 10-bit uncompressed 1080/24p (23.98sF) .AVI files direct to hard drive. This is an uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2 YUV HD-SDI single link signal."

[Cody_Jordan]

i love you guys... i have to admit, one should never give up on dvxuser... you can find nearly all the answers to life's troubles. how about a counseling session? how do i get off my butt and become sucessful like some of you? :)

[mmm]

A lot of post-houses now will scan straight to hard disk. I highly recommend it unless you fancy paying thousands to hire a HDCAM SR or DVCPROHD deck.

I think they each use different proceedures, but I guess you could take in you camera negative and a firewire hard drive and have everything scanned to that. DVCPRO HD 1080 would be a good option and is easy to edit in FCP. DVCPROHD isn't the best quality codec in the world though...still very good, but not the best.

How much footage do you have? Maybe see if they can do it uncompressed HD, but be warned, it will take up a lot of storage space. THey may be able to capture to a RAID array and then dump it to your firewire drive at less than realtime. In order to edit, you would need a NLE linked to a decent RAID system though. A 2K uncompressed transfer will be very, very, very high quality. Probably overkill for S16.

[tomthemacman]

If ya want a pro film board, Cinematography.com is the only way to go. Super 8, 16mm, High Def, 35mm, DV, and everything in between.

[Cody_Jordan]

thanks guys... well the music video is done and I went with the digiBETA transfer. The footage looks great when its compressed, but at full resolution you notice some high grain.. and you see it especially when you burn it to a dvd. Here's the video if you guys are interested:

http://www.floodgaterecords.com/encounter

(yes i know film has grain, but regardless i didnt want any)

[Luis Caffesse]

Nice job Cody!!
Looks great.

Love the quick zoom on the van driver as he stops and yells.
And the ending is great... I didn't think you were going to take it all the way, figured it was about to cut to black. Nice little suprise there.

By the way, did you really drive the van over the camera or what?

[Cody_Jordan]

thanks luis... yes i drove over the camera... It was actually pretty fun. We carefully rolled over the camera to test it.. and we had like a good 2 feet of room. The only thing to really worry about was the wheels smashing it.

[thisiswells]

Cody-

I listened to a number of Floodgate bands when I was growing up in HS (late nineties). I remember seeing your video on here a while back and don't think I ever said, "nice work" or "cool video, man" but am saying it now. That's really cool you're directing music videos for a living!

Sfa video formats, DigiBeta is the absolute best choice in compressed standard definition tape systems because of its' mild 2:1 compression ratio. The only thing better than this would be uncompressed D5, which is a Panasonic format. It could be called a 1:1 ratio.

In the HD world, all tape formats are compressed more heavily than SD. So, even though they are higher resolution, they may be more prone to compression artifacts, such as mosquito noise, after multiple generations. The "typical" compression ratio for HD is between 5:1 and 6.7:1.

With compression ratios, the lower the number, the better. Hence, DigiBeta is quite lovely overall.
Hope this helps and good luck with your music video career! I hear that's a tough business.

-Brian

[J.R. Hudson]

I said the first time; great video; great song. Well done.

[Cody_Jordan]

thanks again john!

thisiswells.. yea floodgate is a very good label. They're probably one of the few indie labels out there that treats the bands really good. You should buy forever changed's album, its totally worth the money!