HVX Filmout Report

smelni

smelni

Veteran
Hello all,

We recently conducted a film out test with footage from the HVX. A very special thanks to Postworks New York for their incredible help and expertise. I promised to report back the results so here they are.

Footage:
The footage was all shot in 720P mostly with chroma +3, detail -3, coring +3, master ped -3 and cine-d

OVerall Impressions:
WOW - amazing, truly film like. The footage truly stood up to the blowup. Looked amazing.

Film process:
Postworks was nice enough to print it using a CRT process (cheaper) and a laser process (more expensive). They both looked great. But the laser process

looked much better (and it should for approx 20K more for a feature transfer). THe CRT process was slightly soft and contrasty. At first I was concerned that the filmout was soft. But it turned out the be the process. The laser process was sharper but still soft enough to hide the video edge. It looked really good - and from the ideal distance (something like 2.5 times screen height away) it looked to my eye like film.

NOISE:
Here is the hot issue - and once and for all - IT IS NOT AN ISSUE. The noise was unnoticable - looked like film grain. Major motion pictures I see at theaters have MORE noise then this test did. If you are worrying about noise - stop worrying. If you are overlighting and then bringing down in post - it is unneccesary, a waste of time, and can lead to not having the final look like you expect. There simply is not a noise issue. Everyone in the room agreed including the folks from postworks who see this stuff all the time. The sky shots were clean - shadows were clean. Any noise "grain" looked very uniform. Lets put the noise issue to bed.

Color, Motion:
The colors were rich, sharp but not videoish at all. They looked very close to how we expected. Motion rendition was very filmlike and smooth.

Gamma:
We tested both cine-d and cine-v. Cine-v is very contrasty and pushed the blacks very dark. Cine-d and its wide latitude really helped smooth it over. I liked cine-d much better - and noise was still not an issue even though that is the "noisiest" setting. It was recommended by postworks to not crush blacks in the camera since you will lose info in doing that. They can always crush blacks in post during CC - although if you wont be doing extensive CC then you might want to do it in camera.

Over/undercrank:
Overcranking for slow motion worked wonderfully - very smooth and again - filmlike. Undercranking for fast motion was another story. It was very juddery. We used a 180d shutter for this - prob needed 270 or so shutter for smoother motion.

I was sitting in the viewing looking for issues - looking for reasons to be upset or things I needed to fix. Of course if you look close enough you will find something - but believe me. It looked great. Of course this is all my own opinion and others might differ. But I felt great coming out of the viewing.

let me know if you have any specific questions.
 
Thrilling post and thanks for making this happen Smelni! With this set-up post, there should be little question around what the best film-out settings are.

As a fellow who has literally everything I shoot in broadcast SD and HD, it is still good to know that there is someone out there who has vetted the HVX for filmout.

Great news, please keep it up!

e
 
very happy with the settings - i would use cine_d for wider latitude and smoother shades. I MIGHT drop the master ped a number or two IF it doesnt crush the blacks.
 
Your master ped comments are interesting to me. I've been doing tests for a week now, and I've found that the color is so much better in the HVX (over the DVX) that I don't have to drop the mp at all for the blacks to be nice and rich. Just today I saved over my preset dropping the mp to 0. I realize that this is a "taste" thing and that it may not pertain to a "film-out," but on the DVX, I was usually at -3 to -5 to get the same richness I'm getting at 0 to -2. Has anyone else experienced this?
 
Thank you, Smelni! That are great news. Any plans to do something similar with some 35mm-adapter-adquisition?
 
While we do own an M2 adapter we wont be able to run this test with it anytime soon - this was preparation for our feature film going into production in 8 days which is being shot with the stock lens.
 
Pretty cool post. I've read some articles recently concerning HD vs. Film and, catch me if I'm wrong about this, the main complaint with HD is that it's too clean and there isn't enough noise to hide subtle details/blemishes and that film ultimately is more "noisy" with grain, but in a good way. So, could it be that everyone is expecting the total opposite to what they want to emulate (ie. film)? Where what we want is actually more grain but processed in a similar fashion versus having the less-to-no grain imaging HD can provide? I'm not sure on the technical aspects but I'm just saying what I've gotten from my readings.

So, smelni, when you say the noise issue isn't a problem, isn't it because of this reason?
 
smelni said:
If you are overlighting and then bringing down in post - it is unneccesary, a waste of time, and can lead to not having the final look like you expect.
Click to expand...

That's the most interesting comment of all, and I'm very happy to hear it.
 
Thanks again Smelni for opening it up for outsiders...

I was there, and I have to say that the noise issue is now officially moot in my mind, no matter what anyone says. The footage was clean and looked great.

The guys at postworks mentioned that they were planning in-house testing within the next couple weeks, so here's hoping we hear the results from those test. It is certainly nice to have trailblazers putting us all on the right path.
 
Reading this thread and having done some "run and gun" last weekend viewed on a 52" dlp monitor has me convinced that all the ballyhoo about noise and resoluition problems has indeed been much ado about nothing. I am increasingly surprised with how easily and quickly I can be up and shooting amazing looking footage no matter what the conditions. It seems that the focus assist switch is in the perfect place...right next to the focus ring.

I have to say that I ALMOST cancelled my order a few weeks ago when the noise threads were in full swing. I am so glad I didn't. No wonder Jan from Panasonic is stressed by this forum sometimes. Words here can really affect their sales. I work for a major high end microphone manufacturer and have seen the damage that misinformation without proper follow up can cause.

My only regret is that the Apple G4 powerbook that I paid 2 grand for is just not up to the task of playing back the footage from FCP without dropping frames and exhibiting "tearing' artifacts. Played out of the camera it looks great. Perhaps the G4 just is not fast enough for all that DSP. It is currently being tested by Apple to make sure that there is not an actual hardware issue. Anyone else have any luck with this? Should I be able to use the Digital Cinema Preview function to an external monitor without problems?

Anyway. Love the camera. Can't wait to complete my documentary on the mating habits of the duck billed platypus.:2vrolijk_08::2vrolijk_08::2vrolijk_08::2vrolijk_08:
 
Jack_Felis said:
Pretty cool post. I've read some articles recently concerning HD vs. Film and, catch me if I'm wrong about this, the main complaint with HD is that it's too clean and there isn't enough noise to hide subtle details/blemishes and that film ultimately is more "noisy" with grain, but in a good way. So, could it be that everyone is expecting the total opposite to what they want to emulate (ie. film)? Where what we want is actually more grain but processed in a similar fashion versus having the less-to-no grain imaging HD can provide? I'm not sure on the technical aspects but I'm just saying what I've gotten from my readings.

So, smelni, when you say the noise issue isn't a problem, isn't it because of this reason?
Click to expand...


Well, not really.

When shooting HD for film-out purposes, you really don't want any grain or noise, since the grain is already added as you transfer back to film. If you have grain in the HD video and then transfer to film, you will have two grain patterns on top of each other. this is also why when digitally processing a source originated in film (For visual effects or color correction) you will want to remove the grain (noise reduction) before transferring back to film. With video noise it is the same. If you have a noise pattern (as film-like as it may look) when transferring to film you will have both the noise pattern of the video source AND the grain pattern of the film on to which the video is transfered. That is exactly what I saw at the first HVX200Film-out test in LA. This is also why the "overly clean" HD footage of the F900 and other high-end HD cameras looks good in film-out.
 
Sorry Yuval but I disagree based on what I saw. In the results that we saw there was no competing grain from the footage and the film. The final output had a clean even level of grain very akin to film. If anything it was as if we used a film stock with a small grain.
 
Smelni, you wrote that you are preparing for a feature and that you won´t use the M2 adapter you have. Is this

A) because the result of the film out was that convincing that you don´t see any need for an adapter, or

B) the way you are going to tell the story is rather experimental or "run and gun"-like and therefore you won´t need an adapter and shallow DOF?
 
Neither - control over DOF is always a good things. But it comes at a price with an adapter. I feel the image will be softer. But more importantly, the adapter takes time and finessing for each shot. It is another element that needs to be maintained checked and rechecked. That additional time will not be worth it for the particular story we are telling especially when taking into account that we have over 1500 shots on our shot list. Finally, we are working in very small sets - the 8-12 inches additional of adapter and lens will be problematic.

My biggest piece of advice is, before shooting with an adapter for film out on a critical project, run a test and look at it on the big screen. Its the ONLY way to be sure you will be getting what you think you will without sacrificing what you do not want to sacrifice.
 
Nice post.

May I ask what shot you did? Tripod shot? Dolly shot?

I am interested to know the camera on move, what is the result of progressive footage? Any downgrade of the resolution?

TIA

Regards
Leigh
 
we did dolly, handheld, static, panning, tilting - most everything

I have no ides if there was a downgrade. But everything, to my eye, looked fabulous. It never screamed video or "woops - shouldnt have done that". It just looked great
 
Thank you, Smelni. Hope, I will be able to see that feature some day: I´m very interested to see the "language" and the way of storytelling you will use.
 
smelni, Thanks for posting your results. This matches my experience watching HVX footage on the big screen at PlasterCity, though not transferred to 35, it was projected with a Christie 2K, and absolutely looked like film on a big screen. It looked fantastic. I believe the noise issue several people have witnessed was more a result of their monitor, rather than the camera. The footage I saw at Plastercity I also saw at Moviola on a plasma screen, and the shadow areas looked noisy, in the same footage! This indicates to me that the noise was largely a function of the monitor. If it looks great on a big movie screen, I'm happy. :)
 
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