Dark detail lost!!! Please help!!!!!

J

jake stutheit

Active member
Ok, catastrophe just struck. I shot a 10 minute horror short over the weekend, and in the seminal shot of the movie, our lead victim turns a corner to be confronted by the killer, who is masked in shadow but visible. We took our time lighting it right, and I checked and re-checked exposure, making sure the killer was in shadow but still very visible. After the shot I checked it and it looked great on the hvx LCD, the viewfinder, and the IKAN HD monitor.
During the shoot, I was dumping 2 8gb cards to a macbook pro using the duel systems adapter, but at the very end, I filled the hard drive space when the shoot was almost over, so I finished and dumped the remaining footage to my G5 tower straight from the HVX via firewire into FCP.
To my horror, when I looked at the shot, all detail in the shadowed area is gone, and the killer is totally invisible. The shot is still on the P2 card, and when I look at the shot on the HVX LCD now it looks great! WTF!!!! I tried increasing luminance and gamma to no avail, as the blacks appear to be crushed when viewing in FCP.
Has anyone else had this problem? I'll try to post some pics, but getting the correct shot from the hvx might be hard. BTW im still using FCP 5.1.4. Thanks!
 
just viewing on a 20" apple monitor. Also, loaded it into my laptop as well and all detail is still lost. have a 15" macbook pro. Neither are calibrated. Could that really make such a drastic difference in shadowed areas? When viewed on the hvx lcd the killer is really visible. Thanks for the reply!
 
Wow, those replies came fast! thanks everyone! what import settings could make such a difference in shadowed areas? I didn't think you could affect luminance or gamma at all upon import. Barry, thanks for the reply, its also doing it on my laptop. The footage looks the same on both monitors. Ive never had a problem like this before. AAAAARRRRGGGH!!!!!
 
You don't have a "problem", your footage is just fine. The HVX can't "invent" detail that isn't in the shot, so therefore you know that the detail *is* in the shot.

Computer monitors are not the same as video monitors. Plug your HVX into a properly-calibrated HDTV and look at the footage; it'll be fine.
 
try rendering it out as is to a DVD , Mpeg, or WMVHD/H264 and view it on a PC/TV/ HDTV/Projector.... anythign but the computer monitor. i bet it will look great. My laptop monitor (HP Zd8000) all footage looks really dark. on a TV/HDTV it looks amazing. Fret not.
 
I had this sort of thing happen to me once.

I was filming at a local skatepark at night. The place is well lit.

When I was filming, it all looked great on the HVX screen, but on ANY other screen, it looks like junk. Anything even remotely dark is crushed to flat black. It's like this with P2 Viewer, Premiere (Raylight), SDTV via composite, etc...

Turns out what happened was this:

A few days before this, I had been fiddling around with my third Scene File, trying to make a 'day into night' one. I saved my finished SF as F3. I then went back to F2, which is my standard night skating Scene File.
Apparently, before I began filming, I accidentally switched it back to F3.
That explains it completely, but still, on the HVX, it looked fine... not as good as it could have, but fine nonetheless. Just not once I transfered to another screen. I went back to film another night, this time actually paying attention to such things... and it turned out fine.

Examples:

Bad: http://www.dallasareavideo.com/bad01.jpg
http://www.dallasareavideo.com/bad02.jpg
http://www.dallasareavideo.com/bad03.jpg

Good: http://www.dallasareavideo.com/good01.jpg
http://www.dallasareavideo.com/good02.jpg
http://www.dallasareavideo.com/good03.jpg
 
Thanks a lot everyone. I compressed to a dvd using compressor, played it on my dlp mitsubishi, and footage looked exact same. It has looked exactly the same on 3 different displays now. Could this be a problem with my hvx? Is it possible for it to transfer footage out at a lower luminance level? I'm about at the end of my options here except to re-shoot it, or shoot a cut-away. Ohhh, but that's money out of my pocket. I may just have to take this to someone better equipped than me. Anyone in the portland area who's a P2 master?
 
The black detail can get lost if your IRE setup is wrong, or if the software you use doesn't convert between ITU 709 (HD) and ITU 601 (Interlaced SD).

If the camera displays the material correctly when connected to a TV, the shadow detail was recorded and you should be able to preserve it given the right workflow.
 
Ah. Once again, FCP. If I'm not mistaken there's an issue with FCP converting 0-255 footage to 16-235, is there not? If so, that would be the problem.

Your footage is fine. The HVX is not "inventing" detail. Your workflow appears to be the issue. Ask in the FCP forum why it's crushing blacks and you might get the answer. But first, make sure it's FCP that's doing it. Import footage to FCP, then immediately print it back out to video and see if it looks the same on your HVX's screen once it's been through the FCP grinder.
 
Thanks Barry and Thoff. It must be FCP. For another curveball however, when i play it back through the camera into my mitsu DLP HDTV, the scene still has detail loss in the shadow where the killer is, but not quite as much as in fcp. The only way I can view all the detail is through the hvx viewfinder. I will check the fcp forums and see if i can fix the problem that way. Thanks again everyone! I'll keep posting progress.
 
You're going to have to properly calibrate your monitor via color bars for brightness and contrast before you can judge. It may turn out that the footage is dark and needs to be adjusted in post. But the point is, the detail is there, and you *could* adjust it in post. Whereas if the detail wasn't there at all, then there's nothing you could do.

But step one is to make sure you're viewing your footage on a properly calibrated video monitor.
 
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