First ever HVX 35mm Film-out Screening!
- Thread starter Emanuel
- Start date
Luis Caffesse
Admin
Hmmm sounds cool.
What was the footage of by the way?
Was this footage in any of the samples that we saw online?
What was the footage of by the way?
Was this footage in any of the samples that we saw online?
Emanuel
Cross-Examiner
Real cool, indeed!...but it's not footage online seen around here. It is something for Moviola booth at DVExpo (seen last week there), Luis.
Illya Friedman is dvxuser.com member, too. I seen only one (nice) post from her to Barry. Maybe our guru or Jarred can be present and report to all our community this happening. It would be real nice! We hope so! I'm so far away from yours and I'm sure that dvxuser.com community should be there. Maybe, evinsky can be! (Who knows?) Or any other of us. Is there anyone interested?
Illya Friedman is dvxuser.com member, too. I seen only one (nice) post from her to Barry. Maybe our guru or Jarred can be present and report to all our community this happening. It would be real nice! We hope so! I'm so far away from yours and I'm sure that dvxuser.com community should be there. Maybe, evinsky can be! (Who knows?) Or any other of us. Is there anyone interested?
Illya Friedman
Well-known member
Hello everyone,
The 35mm transfer was done by Laser Pacific today. The famous Bill Weisman is my very knowledgeable rep who deserves a lot of credit for helping to make the transfer happen.
Tonight’s screening was just a first pass. Since no one has ever output HVX to 35mm before it was a learning experience for everyone. That being said, LP did a great job with the transfer!
I remember years ago when I did a whole series of film-out work with CFI (well before the SDX900 release) there was initially some trial and error with each of nine 1/3" and 2/3" SD/HD cameras to get the best look. Even though Laser Pacific's brilliant engineer had to guestimate some of the output settings for this first pass, it made for some very, very promising images. I have no doubt that Indy filmmakers will be really happy with the film out from the HVX.
Even with the room full of people watching the footage with hypercritical eyes, it really wasn't bad. Rather, it was a very watchable image! No major artifacting that would distract an average viewer, and completely pull them out of a story.
There was of course some compression and noise, but it wasn't horrible. It certainly looked outstanding considering the price of the camera and considering that no one had ever done an HVX transfer before! LP in the coming weeks will perfect the process and have a true representation of the best our footage can look on 35mm.
Plaster City did an outstanding job creating our digital master. I can't say enough good stuff about these guys. They have an excellent relationship with Laser Pacific and I'm told that they will be outputting another master of our footage on D5 in the near future. It the coming weeks LP will test the footage further and determine their optimal settings for HVX -> 35mm film out. This is good news for everybody! :thumbsup:
I.
Illya Friedman
The 35mm transfer was done by Laser Pacific today. The famous Bill Weisman is my very knowledgeable rep who deserves a lot of credit for helping to make the transfer happen.
Tonight’s screening was just a first pass. Since no one has ever output HVX to 35mm before it was a learning experience for everyone. That being said, LP did a great job with the transfer!
I remember years ago when I did a whole series of film-out work with CFI (well before the SDX900 release) there was initially some trial and error with each of nine 1/3" and 2/3" SD/HD cameras to get the best look. Even though Laser Pacific's brilliant engineer had to guestimate some of the output settings for this first pass, it made for some very, very promising images. I have no doubt that Indy filmmakers will be really happy with the film out from the HVX.
Even with the room full of people watching the footage with hypercritical eyes, it really wasn't bad. Rather, it was a very watchable image! No major artifacting that would distract an average viewer, and completely pull them out of a story.
There was of course some compression and noise, but it wasn't horrible. It certainly looked outstanding considering the price of the camera and considering that no one had ever done an HVX transfer before! LP in the coming weeks will perfect the process and have a true representation of the best our footage can look on 35mm.
Plaster City did an outstanding job creating our digital master. I can't say enough good stuff about these guys. They have an excellent relationship with Laser Pacific and I'm told that they will be outputting another master of our footage on D5 in the near future. It the coming weeks LP will test the footage further and determine their optimal settings for HVX -> 35mm film out. This is good news for everybody! :thumbsup:
I.
Illya Friedman
Well, not me, but fooling around with resampling and 2k and 4k film scans makes me think the hvx is not significantly inferior to 2k if we take into account the loss in print/projection. Not as good as Sony F900 or Arri D-20. Slightly better than DVX100/Andromeda. I think the quality is good enough.
PappasArts
Veteran
The Illya Friedman project was excellent. Kudos to Illya Friedman, Matt Compton who produced it. Ben Rock the Director and Mark Atkins the Cinematographer on their excellent work under such a tight dead line. It was nice to have met you guys and everyone else.
A thanks goes out to Doug Leighton too!
I was glad to have seen this film test tonight. I am writing a small report about it now with some pics. I will say this, the distraction factor is pretty much gone that SD cameras had on film outs. It looked like super 16 of mid to late 80's. Now todays Kodak Vision S16 bump up to 35mm would thrash the hvx200 any day. The HVX200 is a very good tool that will give you an image that will hold on the big screen and not go to mush.
As to how it compares to maybe the Canon XLH1. Well, I look at it like this:
I think it comes down to Benz vs BMW, Pick the one you like , buy it, and go drive it.
Michael Pappas
http://www.pbase.com/arrfilms
A thanks goes out to Doug Leighton too!
I was glad to have seen this film test tonight. I am writing a small report about it now with some pics. I will say this, the distraction factor is pretty much gone that SD cameras had on film outs. It looked like super 16 of mid to late 80's. Now todays Kodak Vision S16 bump up to 35mm would thrash the hvx200 any day. The HVX200 is a very good tool that will give you an image that will hold on the big screen and not go to mush.
As to how it compares to maybe the Canon XLH1. Well, I look at it like this:
I think it comes down to Benz vs BMW, Pick the one you like , buy it, and go drive it.
Michael Pappas
http://www.pbase.com/arrfilms
Doug is a fantastic guy. He helped me with my first VariCam purchase, and has been a good friend ever since. The one thing that never ceases to amaze me about Panasonic vs. the other guys is their willingness to work and assist their end users directly.
Kind of veering off topic a little, but when I first set out to purchase an HD camera package, I contacted Sony numerous times (and 4 or 5 years later have still never heard back from them). After becoming quite frustrated with Sony's treatment of a customer looking to spend between $100K & $200K for a camera package, I wandered into the Panasonic offices. That's when I first met Doug. I walked in a 20ish year old dressed like a total bum (t-shirt, wacky pants, and a baseball cap) so I can't imagine my first impression went over too well. None the less, Doug treated me with complete respect and he made me feel right at home with Panasonic.
I've never been treated as well by another company.
Now, back on topic:
Would it be at all possible to get some details on the actual process Laser Pacific used for the HVX film-out?
Thanks.
Kind of veering off topic a little, but when I first set out to purchase an HD camera package, I contacted Sony numerous times (and 4 or 5 years later have still never heard back from them). After becoming quite frustrated with Sony's treatment of a customer looking to spend between $100K & $200K for a camera package, I wandered into the Panasonic offices. That's when I first met Doug. I walked in a 20ish year old dressed like a total bum (t-shirt, wacky pants, and a baseball cap) so I can't imagine my first impression went over too well. None the less, Doug treated me with complete respect and he made me feel right at home with Panasonic.
I've never been treated as well by another company.
Now, back on topic:
Would it be at all possible to get some details on the actual process Laser Pacific used for the HVX film-out?
Thanks.
PappasArts
Veteran
I'm working on getting that exact info tomorrow. They said at the screening, but I want to make sure it's accurate....
<<Would it be at all possible to get some details on the actual process Laser Pacific used for the HVX film-out?>>>
<<Would it be at all possible to get some details on the actual process Laser Pacific used for the HVX film-out?>>>
Wish i could be there but cant make it.
I think we are gonna start seeing alot of very interesting stuff from moviola soon.
I think we are gonna start seeing alot of very interesting stuff from moviola soon.
BLUESPIDER
DVXuser Ninja
Illya Friedman said:
You sure about that? :laugh:
Yuval Shrem
Active member
Hello all,
I was at the screening tonight, and can share my thoughts with you.
So, first of all, all footage shown there was originated in 720PN mode. (No 1080 footage). Then it was edited on final-cut pro and then, (and that's the biggest problem of this test), it was up-scaled and recompressed into HD-CAM 1080 format.
from that it was transferred to film.
So how did it look?
Well, the footage was very well shut. Very visually diverse. Had a lot of slow-motion shots, and included both interior and exterior, night and day, high-contrast and dimly lit scenes etc.
There were compression artifacts in mid-tones, (especially in scenes that were shut in low-light conditions and under exposed and then were brightened in post).
The image was quite sharp and I couldn't notice any pixilation (which was very impressive), and it surely looked very filmic indeed!
There was some visible video noise, especially in blue areas.
Some of the artifacts and loss of color information seemed to be caused by the double compression (DVC-Pro HD and then HD-CAM).
On top of that, the film-out proccess was done onto a film which has its own substantial film grain, and that was layered with the video noise and compression artifacts and created something that is hard to describe....
Apparently, this was the very first pass of a film-out proccess to any footage originated with this camera, and the next time will look much better, using the original native codec (DVC-Pro-HD) instead of recompressing to HD-CAM, and using a less grainy film-stock will surly help...
It seems to me that one practical lesson from this screening would be to be careful when shooting not to under-expose the image, because brightening the image up in post will increase compression artifacts to an unacceptable level. (at least with the extreme example shown in one particular shot of a young woman climbing stairs, which was so under-exposed, that in post they aggressively pulled up the levels).
The camera itself seems to do a wonderful job.
The lens is very impressive as well!
Also, even shots that were shot with no external monitor were well focused (using the focus assist feature if the camera and only on the camera's LCD monitor).
It will be interesting to see a film-out from a 1080P footage, done directly from the native codec (without the recompression to HD-CAM) and to a less grainy film stock, but as a very first test, I must say it looked great!
If any of you have any additional questions about the screening I'll be happy to answer (if I know the answers...)
Yuval.
I was at the screening tonight, and can share my thoughts with you.
So, first of all, all footage shown there was originated in 720PN mode. (No 1080 footage). Then it was edited on final-cut pro and then, (and that's the biggest problem of this test), it was up-scaled and recompressed into HD-CAM 1080 format.
from that it was transferred to film.
So how did it look?
Well, the footage was very well shut. Very visually diverse. Had a lot of slow-motion shots, and included both interior and exterior, night and day, high-contrast and dimly lit scenes etc.
There were compression artifacts in mid-tones, (especially in scenes that were shut in low-light conditions and under exposed and then were brightened in post).
The image was quite sharp and I couldn't notice any pixilation (which was very impressive), and it surely looked very filmic indeed!
There was some visible video noise, especially in blue areas.
Some of the artifacts and loss of color information seemed to be caused by the double compression (DVC-Pro HD and then HD-CAM).
On top of that, the film-out proccess was done onto a film which has its own substantial film grain, and that was layered with the video noise and compression artifacts and created something that is hard to describe....
Apparently, this was the very first pass of a film-out proccess to any footage originated with this camera, and the next time will look much better, using the original native codec (DVC-Pro-HD) instead of recompressing to HD-CAM, and using a less grainy film-stock will surly help...
It seems to me that one practical lesson from this screening would be to be careful when shooting not to under-expose the image, because brightening the image up in post will increase compression artifacts to an unacceptable level. (at least with the extreme example shown in one particular shot of a young woman climbing stairs, which was so under-exposed, that in post they aggressively pulled up the levels).
The camera itself seems to do a wonderful job.
The lens is very impressive as well!
Also, even shots that were shot with no external monitor were well focused (using the focus assist feature if the camera and only on the camera's LCD monitor).
It will be interesting to see a film-out from a 1080P footage, done directly from the native codec (without the recompression to HD-CAM) and to a less grainy film stock, but as a very first test, I must say it looked great!
If any of you have any additional questions about the screening I'll be happy to answer (if I know the answers...)
Yuval.
Charles Scalfani
Member
Film the interim format
Film the interim format
Seems to me that it is important to see how the images project but that film is only an interim format. In the next 5 to 7 years, most projected content will be digital.
Projection of the HVX images with DLP compared to film would be an equally interesting endeavor.
Does anyone have any plans to do such a test?
Film the interim format
Seems to me that it is important to see how the images project but that film is only an interim format. In the next 5 to 7 years, most projected content will be digital.
Projection of the HVX images with DLP compared to film would be an equally interesting endeavor.
Does anyone have any plans to do such a test?