smelni
Veteran
Hello all,
We recently conducted a film out test with footage from the HVX. A very special thanks to Postworks New York for their incredible help and expertise. I promised to report back the results so here they are.
Footage:
The footage was all shot in 720P mostly with chroma +3, detail -3, coring +3, master ped -3 and cine-d
OVerall Impressions:
WOW - amazing, truly film like. The footage truly stood up to the blowup. Looked amazing.
Film process:
Postworks was nice enough to print it using a CRT process (cheaper) and a laser process (more expensive). They both looked great. But the laser process
looked much better (and it should for approx 20K more for a feature transfer). THe CRT process was slightly soft and contrasty. At first I was concerned that the filmout was soft. But it turned out the be the process. The laser process was sharper but still soft enough to hide the video edge. It looked really good - and from the ideal distance (something like 2.5 times screen height away) it looked to my eye like film.
NOISE:
Here is the hot issue - and once and for all - IT IS NOT AN ISSUE. The noise was unnoticable - looked like film grain. Major motion pictures I see at theaters have MORE noise then this test did. If you are worrying about noise - stop worrying. If you are overlighting and then bringing down in post - it is unneccesary, a waste of time, and can lead to not having the final look like you expect. There simply is not a noise issue. Everyone in the room agreed including the folks from postworks who see this stuff all the time. The sky shots were clean - shadows were clean. Any noise "grain" looked very uniform. Lets put the noise issue to bed.
Color, Motion:
The colors were rich, sharp but not videoish at all. They looked very close to how we expected. Motion rendition was very filmlike and smooth.
Gamma:
We tested both cine-d and cine-v. Cine-v is very contrasty and pushed the blacks very dark. Cine-d and its wide latitude really helped smooth it over. I liked cine-d much better - and noise was still not an issue even though that is the "noisiest" setting. It was recommended by postworks to not crush blacks in the camera since you will lose info in doing that. They can always crush blacks in post during CC - although if you wont be doing extensive CC then you might want to do it in camera.
Over/undercrank:
Overcranking for slow motion worked wonderfully - very smooth and again - filmlike. Undercranking for fast motion was another story. It was very juddery. We used a 180d shutter for this - prob needed 270 or so shutter for smoother motion.
I was sitting in the viewing looking for issues - looking for reasons to be upset or things I needed to fix. Of course if you look close enough you will find something - but believe me. It looked great. Of course this is all my own opinion and others might differ. But I felt great coming out of the viewing.
let me know if you have any specific questions.
We recently conducted a film out test with footage from the HVX. A very special thanks to Postworks New York for their incredible help and expertise. I promised to report back the results so here they are.
Footage:
The footage was all shot in 720P mostly with chroma +3, detail -3, coring +3, master ped -3 and cine-d
OVerall Impressions:
WOW - amazing, truly film like. The footage truly stood up to the blowup. Looked amazing.
Film process:
Postworks was nice enough to print it using a CRT process (cheaper) and a laser process (more expensive). They both looked great. But the laser process
looked much better (and it should for approx 20K more for a feature transfer). THe CRT process was slightly soft and contrasty. At first I was concerned that the filmout was soft. But it turned out the be the process. The laser process was sharper but still soft enough to hide the video edge. It looked really good - and from the ideal distance (something like 2.5 times screen height away) it looked to my eye like film.
NOISE:
Here is the hot issue - and once and for all - IT IS NOT AN ISSUE. The noise was unnoticable - looked like film grain. Major motion pictures I see at theaters have MORE noise then this test did. If you are worrying about noise - stop worrying. If you are overlighting and then bringing down in post - it is unneccesary, a waste of time, and can lead to not having the final look like you expect. There simply is not a noise issue. Everyone in the room agreed including the folks from postworks who see this stuff all the time. The sky shots were clean - shadows were clean. Any noise "grain" looked very uniform. Lets put the noise issue to bed.
Color, Motion:
The colors were rich, sharp but not videoish at all. They looked very close to how we expected. Motion rendition was very filmlike and smooth.
Gamma:
We tested both cine-d and cine-v. Cine-v is very contrasty and pushed the blacks very dark. Cine-d and its wide latitude really helped smooth it over. I liked cine-d much better - and noise was still not an issue even though that is the "noisiest" setting. It was recommended by postworks to not crush blacks in the camera since you will lose info in doing that. They can always crush blacks in post during CC - although if you wont be doing extensive CC then you might want to do it in camera.
Over/undercrank:
Overcranking for slow motion worked wonderfully - very smooth and again - filmlike. Undercranking for fast motion was another story. It was very juddery. We used a 180d shutter for this - prob needed 270 or so shutter for smoother motion.
I was sitting in the viewing looking for issues - looking for reasons to be upset or things I needed to fix. Of course if you look close enough you will find something - but believe me. It looked great. Of course this is all my own opinion and others might differ. But I felt great coming out of the viewing.
let me know if you have any specific questions.
