WOW! STUNNING Z1 footage!!

Wow,
I guess I need to visit the Sony forum more often.

I'm very impressed in the quality of this work.
The Z1 is one heck of a camera.
 
Well, (I pressed return too quickly)

Fred, your clips have been a reality check for me.

I was beginning to think, after reading threads on this forum, that 25p capture, a 35mm DOF adapter and gamma adjustment were the only way to achieving the albeit highly subjective film look.

Now I think that only the last point is true. Indeed I do not think the shallow depth of field made possible with 35mm adapters is film like at all. (I am not saying that I do not like the effect, I am just saying that for me it is not film like.)

Graeme's plugin would have been on my shopping list if I used FCP, but I rather think the reason your footage looked film like was the way you shot it rather than any magic plug-in.

I will have to have a go at getting 25p from 50i as the results you got from the sony are more than enough form me and the ZI will certainly sit easier on my steadicam merlin than the hvx.
 
It sucks that you have to be a myspace member to view clips, I'm not a member and I don't really wanna join.
 
ecking said:
It sucks that you have to be a myspace member to view clips, I'm not a member and I don't really wanna join.
Click to expand...

I can understand that. The idea of being on Myspace is to demonstrate a fan base to potential distributors and of course get the word out when the film comes out to maximize DVD sales and/or box office ticket sales.

"Fix it", a film that just came out proved the concept by exceeding their ticket sales by a factor of 3 I think, using Myspace as their main marketing push.

The only way we can do this is if visitors become members so we have to give people an incentive: exclusive access to content.

Voila... that's the reason.

I think a community like DVXuser could also give their members about to release a film a huge push forward. We should ask Jarred if he thinks that would be a good idea but something like a vote on who to champion every quarter? I don't know, just thinking out loud.

It's diifferent world, especially in the last couple years... something happened online, this whole social networking (DVXUser, Myspace, etc..) is fascinating and opens up news ways to spread the word on marketing a product for cheap like a film or a real product like RED.

Frederic
 
The film looks great! It might be in here somewhere but, when will the film be out, and can I just get it on the site?

Thanks
 
bfischinger said:
The film looks great! It might be in here somewhere but, when will the film be out, and can I just get it on the site?

Thanks
Click to expand...

Thanks!

No date yet. We are still in the process of speaking to distributors.

Frederic
 
We recently shot 80 hours for a documentary film in Afghanistan on the Z1U at 50i, and are now following Fred's worlflow (PDF) on transforming from 50i to 24p. Overall it looks good but when we take it out to DVD we get a jerky motion rather than fluid. Any thoughts why that might be?

Also, I'm wondering, especially if not going out to film, what the value is of converting the 50i footage to 1920x1080 when it seems the max FCP can do natively is 1440x1080. If we just stayed at 1440x1080 would we lose much in terms of image quality? Is there a possible connection between the high resolution of the source material compressed into SD for the DVD and the jerkiness we're experiencing?

Najeeb
 
Najeeb,

What you are describing could be due to doing 24p vs 23.98.

If you describe your workflow in detail, I can take a crack at identifying where the issue is.

Frederic
 
Thanks for your offer, Frederic. I appreciate the tremendous effort in sharing your workflow and experience from Tomorrow is Today with all of us. Your detailed explanations (including the very useful PDF chart) are a big reason why I chose the Z1U for our Afghanistan shoot.

About the jerky motion problem: I've looked over the clips on different monitors over the past few days and it seems I was not completely correct about the jerky motion. On the timeline we have a mix of HDV 1080i50 plus some earlier clips of DV NTSC, the latter converted to 1080i50 25 fps 1440x1080 via Quicktime Conversion before pulling into the same timeline. It seems that it is the DV clips that are experiencing the jerky motion, not the HDV. Now if I can only do something about the DV material...

Frederic, because we shot in HDV PAL it creates other complications. One is that to have the tapes transcibed and translated (as well as for review by the editor and producer in different cities and offices) we need to make several copies of it playable on NTSC. The two options are tape out to VHS; and, to DVD. The former has the problem of outputting the PAL timeline to NTSC (though I suppose it should be possible after conforming to NTSC 23.98); the latter requires the additional Compressor time and has the limitation of 2 hour DVDs. In either case, avoiding renders would be desireable as it takes forever to render. We have 75 hours of tapes to ready in this manner.

How did you approach the issue of preparing NTSC review tapes/DVDs of your HDV PAL footage? Any and all suggestions are welcome!

best,
Najeeb
 
Using Kona LH, you can play a 23.98 timeline and output to NTSC SD direct to tape via SDI or Component. That's any NTSC tape deck which accepts SDI or component.

And our master for projection was created by printing to tape from FCP (1080p23.98) to HDCAM 1080p24 via HD-SDI . Keep in mind that you will require a Tri-level sync to output at 24p.

Note: I think the pdf on my site is a bit out of date. I should revvise it.
 
I'm assuming that to get to 23.98 one must use the recommended Natress filters first, which on my Mac take horrendously long to render. Are there any options for outputting to tape without going through the full process, even if it means a hit in quality?
 
Fred Lumiere said:
Here's a good article on the workflow with clips:

http://www.studiodaily.com/filmandvideo/currentissue/6916.html
Click to expand...

Hi Frederic.

Loved the article in Studio Daily, some of the clips looked quite a bit different than the trailer that I downloaded some time back, the post work has added even more texture to what was already high quality images.

I was very interested in your choice of post workflow as I am trying myself to ascertain what is the best way to approach post production for a feature project (to be shot on the HVX).

It said in the article that you converted to DVC Pro Codec (I'm assuming that was the 1080 50i 100mb) for all the colour and post work. Why did you choose that over an uncompressed workflow (or an intermediate, CineForm - DNxHD etc...) for all the final post work if a film out is your (hopefully) anticipated path? There is a lot of talk about the degradation in image quality when you do any multi generational post work using the DVC Pro codec, what are your views on this?

Also will you be posting a colour corrected trailer or some sample clips now that you have them to replace the earlier raw footage?

Any info is much appreciated.

Thanks... Peter.
 
Thanks Peter.


First, you can see 3 new clips on our official website:

http://tomorrowistodaymovie.com

There are a few reasons I chose DVCPROHD 50i.

First, it's the exact same resolution as HDV 50i (1440 X 1080) where the DVCPRO HD 60i isn't (1280 X 1080). Check out the bitrate is also higher
in 50i.

Second, it's the best codec that will give me realtime on modest GRAID drives and not require tons of storage. 98 min is approx 79 GB I think. And that's the finished product.

Third, I tested the heck out of all the codec I could get my hands on and DVCPRO HD was holding up fine, especially in the shadows. One of the scenes available on our website (Julie and her Dad) was my testing scene. Since part of the scene is so dark, it had a tendency to fall apart easily in the conversion. DVCPRO HD had the best results.

Fourth, DVCPRO HD also offered the best realtime color correction performance on my setup (G5, dual Cinema Display, GRAIDS, Kona LH, etc...)

Finally, DVCPRO HD would allow me to do 1080p 23.98 and play the timeline in realtime which is essential for going to HDCAM via the Kona LH card.

That's it. Months of testing and research. Worked like a charm for us.

If any of you get a chance, come to Rhode Island this Sunday and see the final product for yourself. We have a 1,000 seat theater to fill up!

Cheers,

F
 
The Rhode Island International Film Festival was most excellent.

We projected our film in HDCAM 1080p24 and filled the huge screen in 2.35:1. It looked beautiful.

The film was nominated for best feature and best cinematography.

I'm also pleased to say that I won the Directorial Discovery Award!

I really think that affordable digital image acquisition is now viable and can be taken seriously even in a theatrical release scenario.

It was a heck of a world premiere. Now onto Colorado and Montreal.

Frederic
 
Congrats Fred! I wouldn't mind holding that z1u for you if you need me to.lol. Seriously how do you go from 1080 60i hdv to 1080p24 dvcprohd timeline in final cut. Just looking for a simple workflow. Do you think it is possible to shoot a movie like sin city on a hdv cam or XDcam hd? thanks
 
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