Better understanding digital intermediates?

Blackout

Blackout

Veteran
I started talking about this on another camera thread and felt it would be better to have it's own thread. Can someone truly explain to me how going to a digital intermediate first if you are doing only cuts could possibly be better than just editing the native AVCHD if you have the computing power?

Everyone in the pro world says to transcode to cineform first and I still don't quite understand it... was watching the dslr shootout movies and philip Bloom repeated over and over again to always go to a digital intermediate and even he says it seems counter intuitive but do it.

How can going to another codec first possibly be better if you are only doing mostly cuts and perhaps a few dissolves and not a lot of color grading or effects work?

To me, I see some degradation of the quality of the footage EVEN when going to cineform's highest quality digital intermediate codec via neoscene on Win 7 64 bit going out to a huge 1080p monitor. It is slight.. but there are little things there that I am not seeing when playing the original avchd footage direct to same monitor.

People say it improves all the color because it brings it to a 4:2:2 color space which I understand but still it's bringing the original 4:2:0 to that space so if you are not doing color correction work I don't see the need... how can it possibly do anything but degrade just a tad more by adding an extra step? . On a movie, with FX or color correction I can totally understand the reasoning, but for small straight cut projects is there any real need? Does it do some 'magical' thing that I am not understanding to improve the quality of the footage?

Thanks,

- Blackout (Michael Biggins)
 
You're right, it doesn't make sense...just because you're editing a compressed clip doesn't mean it's being processed in that compression...it gets decoded and is processed in whatever color space the NLE is working in.
 
Exactly which is what I thought... so if I am doing a project in Sony Vegas, now that the hack gives very high quality 24p native avchd or mjpeg... I don't understand why to go to cineform unless I am doing a fairly complex movie project or something that needs lots of color matching, grading, or green screen.

also... Vegas starts off in 8 bit pixel format mode by default on all settings, does anyone know if it is better to switch it to 32 bit video levels or 32 bit full range or does this not matter? I was a little confused by this selection box and if it is referring to color space or not when it applies things like dissolves and titles...

I am running Vegas Pro 64 bit version 9d on Win 7 64 bit. Quad core 3.2 I7 12 gigs ram, and have no issues editing the native avchd now that 24p option is available in the tester13 hack.

Prior to this I was removing pulldown via converting to cineform and editing in premier cs4.

Also... now that the GH1 spits out native 24p very high quality AVCHD, I am very excited to give Edius Neo 2 Booster a try as it edited avchd like pure butter even on a far weaker machine than my main editing system, but it had issues with the GH1 1080p because of the 60i wrapper and generally screwed it all up. Gotta give that another run through now.
 
Last edited:
The entire DI process gets terribly confusing for people coming from these hyper compressed formats with low color space. Everything is backwards and so things that should be absolutely obvious suddenly make no sense.

In ye olden days, work was captured to uncompressed. Good old fashioned ~6GB per minute format. The DI was devised as way to make that editable for those who couldn't tote around a RAID array. In film, the DI was designed to take the film scans (2K, 4K, 8K) and also several GB per minute down to something that could be worked with and manipulated.

If you guys were starting in the same place, you'd be singing the praises of how you don't need 3TB to store your work from Saturday's shoot. But since you are shooting cameras that store an hour or more on a little card, the DI is not as beneficial to you. It is now only a matter of whether a transcode will improve your cutting experience.

If you want to edit in AVCHD, have at it. If you can't see a purpose in going to an editing codec, don't bother. In the workflow you are describing, it's likely not going to do anything for you until Vegas starts crashing (which it will) because it detests long GOP on the timeline. But you'll get to that pain point down the road, and you'll have a more legit reason to use a DI workflow.

As for using the 32bit mode, if you don't see the difference don't worry about it. I do all my cutting in 8-bit. But before I change anything about the look of that footage (white balance, contrast, gain, lift, gamma, etc.) I change to 32bit full. That's just me, and that's my workflow. Your uses and needs may be different so test what you are doing from ingest to export and see what gives you the best results.
 
Thanks Perrone.. this is in line with what I was thinking but just not quite sure of. It seems that it is only apple users who are saying 'always always go to cineform or prores' because final cut does not like avchd at all. So far, in editing together under 10 minute pieces and some commercials, I haven't had Vegas 9d fail on me. Even did one rather long 1 hour project in 720p and it handles it fine. I always change to 32 bit full just in case I am going to apply any sort of color effect but I wasn't sure if it mattered at all or not.

I think I like edius a bit more and it certainly seemed to flow slightly better so now with the hacked GH1, I may give that a try again... and I'll keep cineform around only if I am doing an indie film or something that needs lots of color work.

Also, are you using the GH1 with the hack? You can change the GOP but I have not messed with it, only applied the 'C' hack and I am in love with the new footage.
 
Also.. when doing a movie to enter into a festival, what are you mastering your final work to?
I am in NYC and here, the digital cinema is really catching on and most festivals are now accepting blu-rays and projecting them 1920 1080p finally which makes a big difference from projecting a regular DVD. Some people are bringing their laptops and playing from some high end codec but I can't imagine festivals having the time to deal with that? Hi, here's my film on this hard drive!?
 
Blackout said:
I think I like edius a bit more and it certainly seemed to flow slightly better so now with the hacked GH1, I may give that a try again... and I'll keep cineform around only if I am doing an indie film or something that needs lots of color work.
Click to expand...

Edius has some rather significant advantages over Vegas, but Vegas is still better for Audio, and Edius is still only an 8-bit codec application. Color work is going to be vastly superior in Vegas. Also, Cineform is nice, but there are other intermediates out there as well.

Blackout said:
Also, are you using the GH1 with the hack? You can change the GOP but I have not messed with it, only applied the 'C' hack and I am in love with the new footage.
Click to expand...

I am not using the GH1 at all. I've worked with some GH1 footage, though none post-hack. I am thinking of buying a DSLR for Christmas and the hack bring the GH1 into contention, but I have yet to understand why I'd want one over a 7D. Just doesn't seem to fit for how I will be working.
 
Blackout said:
Also.. when doing a movie to enter into a festival, what are you mastering your final work to?
I am in NYC and here, the digital cinema is really catching on and most festivals are now accepting blu-rays and projecting them 1920 1080p finally which makes a big difference from projecting a regular DVD. Some people are bringing their laptops and playing from some high end codec but I can't imagine festivals having the time to deal with that? Hi, here's my film on this hard drive!?
Click to expand...

I am mastering to whatever is asked for. For our short last year, I have mastered to BluRay for some festivals, to DVD for others, and I've made a PAL DVD for one festival in Italy that wanted it. A first ever for me!

I wish they'd standardize on Jpeg2k like real digital cinema and accept either a data BluRay or memory card / thumb drive. That would make my life a LOT easier.
 
Yeah the thumb drive would be sweet. They are getting cheaper and they are easy to carry around. I plan on using them as a marketing tool. Throw a trailer on and hand out free thumb drives to people at festivals.
 
Interesting. I'm a windows user and not really an apple guy and it seems that when working pro gigs the idea is if you're not editing on apple final cut prores you must be a joke. To me, I really don't give a crap what I am editing on if it works for me and the story comes out how I want it to at the quality level I want. I'm an actor/writer/director and a sound mixer so I've been on both the talent and tech sides and find it fascinating how serious and caught up people will get with certain brand names like they are designer shoes. I honestly believe indie directors focus so much on the visuals and forget about sound and it's the biggest give away... audiences will talk about beautiful visuals and the story and acting and all that... true... they won't talk about how great or clear the sound was because they just EXPECT it to be there like the foundation of a house, no one talks about the foundation but it holds the pretty house up!
If the sound is bad,, your film is dead. Audiences don't know visual codecs and can't detect the most subtle color changes that insane color timer experts see and crazy DPs see... but they pretty much can detect blurry or clear, and if the audio is bad it doesn't matter how fantastic your visuals are or if you shot on IMAX...they are done with your film because they can't hear the actors.

I do freelance pro audio work for a lot of indie films to support my acting addiction so I know my audio far more than I know my video, but I have been gearing up to get ready and shoot my first real HD short for festivals and when I say real, I mean prior to this I have just done a few freelance gigs with the GH1 here and there, or some shorts that I toyed around with, where as with this one I want to have an actual crew and not do everything myself or with me and one buddy, and I'm actually putting a little money into it. About 4K to cover a small crew and food and some needed stuff for about a 10 min short. I don't know if I am going to edit it or not or hand it over to an editor but I wanted to get a firmer grip on this work flow and digital intermediate thing. I think I am going to mostly be using the hacked GH1 except for a few scenes where there is some massive hand held whip craziness that the GH1 1080p isn't going to like so I either need some sort of skew correction, or I might shoot those few scenes on a HPX170 and I think I'll be fine as they seem to cut together well enough.

Thanks again for your help and info.
 
Last edited:
BrianBrook said:
I like the thumb drive idea but what about the trailer AND the film together!
Click to expand...

Well I wouldn't want to just give away the film on an easily downloadable format in the marketing stage of things. I'm sure investors wouldn't like to have the film just given away. But if I was trying to sell the film then it would be a different story. Although I would much rather be at the screening personally with potential buyers.
 
I agreed with you 100%-5 years ago! It's a new age and if your film is good enough to sell you can give it away as well, Do you think the fact that you can watch Toy Story 3 online for free is affecting the Box Office gross? anyway way of topic here but just realize that your film can be pirated just as easy these days as any other Hollywood blockbuster.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top