Uncompressed 4.4.4. HD from DVX100 - demo

escozooz said:
Hmm this stuff looks pretty good.

I would love to see a Varicam, HVX, DVX-ANDROMEDA comparison.

I've heard the reasoning before but how can the DVX get more resolution than the HVX on 720p?
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Yeah, me too. I'm interested to see what the dynamic range (exposure range in fstops) is for the varicam. From the footage I've seen I'd say it's around the 8 to 8.5 mark. HVX is supposedly in the 6.5 to 7 range.

But, even though they are are all kind of the same camera, there are many many workflow differences and performance options for each. I've been thinking... what would they be competing against eachother for?

Re: The resolution thing, that's complex... I'm not even going to try to science that one..
check the reel-stream.com forums for more on that question.
 
Would it be possible for you to test the ability of keying an actress with a fan blowing her hair around?
 
novelt said:
this won't truly matter, but the argument about keying is kinda moot. with todays software you can shoot a straight shot and just rotomatte the area you need and create the "perfect" composite. so no hassle of setting up blue/green screens...no worry about spill...no worry about losing fleshtones...however the argument can be made about shooting through water, fine hair, windows...but then somebody who's good at CG can make you think it's a glass of water, render hair, and fake glass. so really do we need to worry about "keys"...and before anyone responds with "it saves time"...hmmm...seems i keep seeing that somebody appreciates putting in the work. :thumbsup:
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Sorry, but this is all utter rubbish. I've read some pretty ridiculous things on various message boards, but this is way up near the top.

If you gave me stuff like that to work with, it would cost you a fortune, and the second I had the chance I'd be jumping ship to another client who didn't have ridiculous ideas of reality. You're just making a huge amount of extra work for no reason.
 
Slice said:
Would it be possible for you to test the ability of keying an actress with a fan blowing her hair around?
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Ha .. nice ! That's the hardest possible thing to key ...

Remember that a key is only as good as the 1. the shot and 2. the keyer (software and software user combined..)

So, I could go and shoot a blond girl, backlit, with her hair blowing around in a myriad of blurry, spilly strands and have a perfect shot with full RGB information... but still mess up on part 2 of the key due to inability to use the software, analyze the problems, etc.

For a indication of how hard this type of shot is, check "Sin City" the sequence where they introduce "Miho", Devon Aoki's character. In one close portrait shot, her hair is backlit and blowing around. Robert Rodriguez shot the film with a cinealta (or something close) at full 4.4.4. uncompressed straight into some kind of killer RAID array.. top shelf production. And he also has a pretty good team of keyers and compositors working for him.

And ... the final key on that particular shot sucks. really, check it out, the edges look awful, full of weird noise.

So, in answer to your question, 'no way' , there's too many vectors involved. Top marks for knowing the hardest type of shot to key, though!
 
Oh, come on....give it a shot. Whats the worst that can happen.

I'll have to take a look at that shot in Sin City.

If you truly decide that it's not worth the effort, I understand. I am very grateful that you have given us a look into this setup.
 
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dougspice...

seems this right here kinda makes my point...

For a indication of how hard this type of shot is, check "Sin City" the sequence where they introduce "Miho", Devon Aoki's character. In one close portrait shot, her hair is backlit and blowing around. Robert Rodriguez shot the film with a cinealta (or something close) at full 4.4.4. uncompressed straight into some kind of killer RAID array.. top shelf production. And he also has a pretty good team of keyers and compositors working for him.

And ... the final key on that particular shot sucks. really, check it out, the edges look awful, full of weird noise.

So, in answer to your question, 'no way' , there's too many vectors involved. Top marks for knowing the hardest type of shot to key, though!
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and if you think CG is a waste of time or adding more work then so be it, but check out "die another day" when jinks and bond are in the helicopter. there's no front window/glass the FX team added it later. ceck out "shanghai noon" after the big shootout between roy o'bannon and the marshall. when roy holds up his coat you can see the church walls and whatnot through the bullet holes in his coat. that wasn't greenscreen, again CG. there have been plenty of movies where the crew decided it would be easier to shoot and rotomatte then try to do greenscreen. oh wait perfect example...forrest gump...and if you don't know what i'm talking about then good luck at ILM.

matthew...

your opinion...imagine shooting a perfectly lit shot with no spill and using that to rotomatte to make your composite. no greenscreen to set up, just shooting.
 
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I have no idea what you're arguing. Everything you've just mentioned is an example of something where keying is not what you need to do the shot.

As for Matthew's Sin City example... what, you'd recommend doing it all by hand, then? I'm sure if they'd have the budget, they would have done just that. But it certainly wouldn't be easier or faster, and they'd still end up doing in conjunction with the chroma matte, not instead of. I don't recall the shot in question but I'd have to assume that's a case of either not enough budget to get the right setup for the shot, or someone not doing their homework.

Anyway, as someone who sometimes pays his rent doing CG, I certainly don't think it's a waste of time. But your earlier argument was that someone shouldn't shoot greenscreen, because they can just roto it out by hand later? That's a preposterous argument. Sure, it has to be done sometimes. But anyone who would CHOOSE to do it that way (or worse, RECOMMEND IT) has got a whole set of screws loose.

Then again, maybe I'm just misunderstanding you. Maybe you're not completely nuts... I don't know.
 
well for one example a company had to shoot a group of people and couldn't use green or blue because that would've wiped out some of the people's wardrobe. so they shot, rotomatted, and made their composite.

so why do you find it hard to accept that you can setup a shot without worrying about wardrobe, hair, flesh...all the things that matter inside the shot...roto it and be fine? however you are not disagreeing with me i got what i said from here...

All of the effort we make to create blue or green matte areas is often much ado about nothing. With today's software based compositing tools, it's often much simpler to create a matte in post (by rotoscoping) than to try and pull a less-than-perfect green or blue matte and clean up the resulting spill areas. Particularly when the object being matted is static and there are usable tracking points in the shot (which there almost always are on any decently dressed set). Often the green or blue material is simply treated as a visual guide by the compositor for creating rotoed mattes.
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and that's from another cinematographer, but he must be nuts too. then there's john copeland one of the fx artists on babylon5 who said basically the same thing. doesn't matter though you think i'm crazy...oh well...however i bet i could've done that sin city shot...rotoscoped and cg...and you wouldn't have known.
 
Everything you're saying is self-contradictory. OF COURSE there are times when you can't pull a good enough key using just the chroma. And there's plenty of times when wardrobe is a problem. Did you think I was suggesting that you just throw every shot through the default chroma key filter in Premiere and call it a day? Obviously that's why we have garbage mattes and motion tracking tools: because they help a key to do its job under different circumstances. Can't use blue OR green? And can't fix whatever isolated problem might exist with a garbage matte? Well, that situation should be incredibly rare, but okay. Set up for a luma key instead. It's all right here in your own post, really:

Often the green or blue material is simply treated as a visual guide by the compositor for creating rotoed mattes.
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Sure, great. But he's also saying that you START WITH A STAGED CHROMA SHOT. You don't go run-and-gun in the streets and then hand it over, saying "fix it in post"... which is what you've more or less been suggesting, it seems. That's what I think is ridiculous... not the idea that there are no tools beyond keying. Seriously.
 
um no what i'm saying is if someone wants to take the time to pull off a clean roto then they don't have to worry about setting up screens and extra lights. it's a choice. you're taking this like i'm telling you to be a vegetarian. it's a choice. oh wait matrix "the problem is choice..."

great you're reading one line out of the whole quote, but this is what sets it off...

it's often much simpler to create a matte in post (by rotoscoping) than to try and pull a less-than-perfect green or blue matte and clean up the resulting spill areas.
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so if someone wants to spend the time and track matte, garbage matte, roto, whatever...they can if they WANT TO. however doing real complicated CG where you need tracking points/markers is a totally different scenario.

finally i never said run-n-gun...everything takes planning. no matter which route you take you've got to plan your shot. if it calls for a screen, so be it, but if it doesn't then don't hesitate. a great artist can make great art with a pencil and a piece of paper...it's not the tool, it's the artist.
 
i am speechless. The seacond they make thier software for the PC, i will purchase it INSTANTLY.
Im trying to figure out if you need something constantly connected to the added USB 2.0 port? Is that the only way the modifacation can be used?
 
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t-h-e-w-h-o said:
Im trying to figure out if you need something constantly connected to the added USB 2.0 port? Is that the only way the modifacation can be used?
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The USB port streams the uncompressed video to your recording device (a laptop, macmini, compatible PC, whatever will write 28mb per second)
So yeah, you have to keep it attached all the time. You are always tethered to a computer.
 
Matthew Bennett said:
The USB port streams the uncompressed video to your recording device (a laptop, macmini, compatible PC, whatever will write 28mb per second)
So yeah, you have to keep it attached all the time. You are always tethered to a computer.
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hrmmm, in my eyes, thats one major con of the product.
 
Okay, novelt. I think maybe we're still not understanding each other. Fair enough. However you can get good results, good for you, I guess!
 
t-h-e-w-h-o said:
hrmmm, in my eyes, thats one major con of the product.
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To use this product you have to mentally prepare yourself to journey back to the days of old when shooting a moving image was a pain in the ass. So yeah, get ready to be tethered to some sort of computer setup (this could actually be more minimal than you think, but that's besides my point)

If you want the image quality, it is worth it. Just take a deep breath, relax, concentrate on your setup, and shoot a great shot. Slow down a bit. Personally I'm tired of run and gun shooting, I've done every kind of fast-cheap-off the hip setup imaginable.

I look forward to the larger amount of time it takes to make an Andromeda shot. It adds value to the process in my mind.
 
Gordon JL said:
How does this compare to the HVX and the other 3 HD prosumer cameras in terms of resolution?
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There's a resolution chart somewhere on the andromeda forums, just look for it.

The Andromeda was better, by about 200 lines on each axis I think.
 
Yea andromeda is amazingly sharp. Actually, remarkably sharp considering it has no chroma abbrasion... The DVX lens is really up to snuff on this one. IT surprises me that the HVX lens has chroma abbrasion, and the DVX lens has far less. yet, it seems the DVX lens is capable of HD resolutions as well.
 
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