seasonofpassage
Member
On a Feature Shot on DV...(a long post):
1. You know what I'd like to see? Unprocessed footage from "Collateral". Before it was edited, mastered, and telecined--raw footage from the set. I know that a 24p HDCAM outpaces the DVX100 by a distance--but it's all relative, 'cause 35mm film outpaces high-def in the way that 16mm outpaces standard-def. Still--I'd like to see what their dailies looked like.
2. MGM just double-dipped the "Species" DVD, with a feature-laden special edition that was--as the case trumpeted--'Mastered in High Definition!!' I surprised myself that day, 'cause my first reaction was an immediate and nearly unconscious, "Who do they think *they're* fooling?" I read a thread a little while ago here about how if you uprez a project using PhotoZoom or comparable software and then take the resulting HD project down to a DVD, you've invalidated ten days and around two hundred fifty gigs. Someone might want to tell the DVCC. Or whoever MGM contracts for their DVD compression.
3. So yeah. I'm trying to get a DVD burn of a few minutes of footage from the aforementioned feature that looks good. Not great, not incredible, but something more than passable. The closest thing I can use right now for a comparison would be either a DVD of "El Mariachi" or one of the DVDs from the first or second season of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". Probably the first. Because, really--so far I'm getting random crap. I'll describe exactly how in #5. But I just remembered something.
4. By the way, I asked a Best Buy rep about the purpose of advertising an HD master on a standard-def DVD. I was met with a blank stare. Of course, he could have been deaf. Or he may have been a robot, enacting a complex series of equations and formulas in order to burn a hole in my cerebrum so I would forget petty things like what "high-definition" means for a DVD. Either one, really.
5. Okay, so about the only process I haven't gone through yet is the G-Nicer. I'm taking the route of trying to exhaust absolutely every avenue of approach with the hardware and software before I start spending money--'cause if I start spending money, I ain't gonna stop until the finished product makes viewers cry in ecstasy. I'm talking sobbing, religious conversion, and hopefully a sizable grant. Wait, thought of one more thing...
6. Why in the hell would you spend millions on a double-dip of "Species", anyway? It bombed. Really badly.
Okay. So the projected length of this feature is somewhere between 100-110 minutes. I'm using an eMac--if they make dual-processor eMacs, then I'm using it. And I know they don't make 'em, so I'll chalk it up to never having a choice anyway--unless I wanted to spend a couple thousand more. It has 768 MB of RAM, and a combined 240 GB of hard-drive space. I'm working with FCPHD, DVDSP2, and that's pretty much the entire basis, unless you include the minor apps like Compressor.
I learned very quickly that there are certain ways to do things when it comes to DV on an eMac, especially pushing data on a single processor with the latest version of Final Cut. Then again, I've never worked on any other Mac, so they could be universal. For instance:
- Exporting fifteen seconds of footage to the desktop as a simple QT movie and then putting it into Compressor without having FCP running will take, on average, about 25 seconds. Compressing the same footage directly from Final Cut, by comparison, runs about ten or eleven minutes.
- Capturing 24pA footage with pulldown removal and placing it in a 23.98-fps sequence may result in true progressive footage, but it also results in some of the worst jitter I've ever seen on any DV product. The jitter appears on the NTSC monitor next to the computer, and it's there with or without deinterlacing, regardless of field order, and regardless of pulldown cadence. Early on in the editing, this had me wondering if I was epileptic or just crazy, because it was there no matter what I did and--obviously--it looked nothing like a movie did when projected in a theater. Capturing 24pA footage as you would with normal DV footage gets rid of the jitter, but replaces it with interlacing artifacts. Deinterlace it and the picture softens. By the way, the jitter of the pulldown removal also happened to be completely random--certain shots would be smooth, clear, and perfect, while others looked like they were done at 15 fps. There was no pattern there--one handheld shot is perfect, one induces a migraine. One completely static shot has motion blur, one doesn't. That was a feather in the cap for the "crazy" vote.
- Disregarding what the raw footage looked like after pulldown removal, I did it anyway, edited it in a 23.98 timebase, and made a 24p DVD out of the footage. Then I played it on both the computer's DVD player and on the 27" TV in the living room. In both cases, the quality of each frame was peachy. It was the fact that it looked like it was a 15 fps sequence that hurt it. There was *no* motion blur. To a degree, I think this was caused by the shutter being at 1/24 on the camera for these sequences--for some reason, the DVX100 goes directly from 1/24 to 1/60, which brings me to my next and final two points...
- Point 1. The DVX lays to tape at 30i regardless of the F setting; even the 60i setting doesn't yield continuous motion, just a very close approximation of it.
- Point 2. Film runs at an even 24 frames per second. However, a film projector plays it with a 1/48 shutter speed to make it more palatable to the audience. This would indicate that the closest approximation to film playing in a theatre would be 24p or 24pA with a 1/60 shutter speed. That is the only other thing--other than the G-Nicer--that I haven't tried yet: making a 24p DVD out of true progressive footage taken from a recording of 24pA with a 1/60 shutter speed. Will *that* yield something other than an epileptic fit or video that looks like it's auditioning for "Wacky Video Tricks of the 1980s!"?
I should add, as a final point, that I'm not going film-out. Even for a 16mm blow-up, it'd cost something along the lines of twenty-two thousand dollars, and I have enough trouble making a car payment. I want it to go to a master tape (either DigiBeta or the PhotoZoom uprez and then to an HDC100 tape), and to a 24p DVD. The only public or theatrical showing I know it's going to have as of now is the premiere, and that'll be in a local theater with DVD-projection ability. So if I'm going to be projecting a DVD onto a forty-foot-wide screen--and I really, *really* wish someone would hurry up and bring out a dual-layer DVD-R, because compatibility with the current DLs with DVD players is in some question right now--I'd rather the picture be in slightly soft focus than have stepping patterns and artifacting everywhere.
So that's what I'm trying to get. Decent quality. Nothing earth-shattering, because I know that: a) the DVCC doesn't use Compressor and DVD Studio Pro to press a DVD of, say, "The Day After Tomorrow"--and good Christ, that screenplay was absolutely terrible--and b) the movie I shot on MiniDV will never look as good as, say, "The Day After Tomorrow" (but it does have a better screenplay). I know that I'm gonna need a third-party compression program if I want to get something good enough to think about projecting, and the G-Nicer is more a definitive yes than anything else. Anyone projected a feature-length movie on a DLP or LCD projector and had a positive reaction to it? If so, let me know what you used, how you did it, or both. This project is the culmination of about a year and a half of work, and I'll be damned if it ends up looking like a slightly more advanced "Pac-Man" on screen.
P.S. - Okay, so I just looked on IMDB and "Species" wasn't a bomb financially, only qualitatively. They just barely turned a profit.
P.P.S. - Yeah, I'm the guy who posted the "twisted and unholy recipe for success" thing about a month back. The method I used works for certain shots--much like the pulldown removal did initially. That's the thing about methods that are twisted and unholy--they're usually not very consistent. Or reliable.
1. You know what I'd like to see? Unprocessed footage from "Collateral". Before it was edited, mastered, and telecined--raw footage from the set. I know that a 24p HDCAM outpaces the DVX100 by a distance--but it's all relative, 'cause 35mm film outpaces high-def in the way that 16mm outpaces standard-def. Still--I'd like to see what their dailies looked like.
2. MGM just double-dipped the "Species" DVD, with a feature-laden special edition that was--as the case trumpeted--'Mastered in High Definition!!' I surprised myself that day, 'cause my first reaction was an immediate and nearly unconscious, "Who do they think *they're* fooling?" I read a thread a little while ago here about how if you uprez a project using PhotoZoom or comparable software and then take the resulting HD project down to a DVD, you've invalidated ten days and around two hundred fifty gigs. Someone might want to tell the DVCC. Or whoever MGM contracts for their DVD compression.
3. So yeah. I'm trying to get a DVD burn of a few minutes of footage from the aforementioned feature that looks good. Not great, not incredible, but something more than passable. The closest thing I can use right now for a comparison would be either a DVD of "El Mariachi" or one of the DVDs from the first or second season of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". Probably the first. Because, really--so far I'm getting random crap. I'll describe exactly how in #5. But I just remembered something.
4. By the way, I asked a Best Buy rep about the purpose of advertising an HD master on a standard-def DVD. I was met with a blank stare. Of course, he could have been deaf. Or he may have been a robot, enacting a complex series of equations and formulas in order to burn a hole in my cerebrum so I would forget petty things like what "high-definition" means for a DVD. Either one, really.
5. Okay, so about the only process I haven't gone through yet is the G-Nicer. I'm taking the route of trying to exhaust absolutely every avenue of approach with the hardware and software before I start spending money--'cause if I start spending money, I ain't gonna stop until the finished product makes viewers cry in ecstasy. I'm talking sobbing, religious conversion, and hopefully a sizable grant. Wait, thought of one more thing...
6. Why in the hell would you spend millions on a double-dip of "Species", anyway? It bombed. Really badly.
Okay. So the projected length of this feature is somewhere between 100-110 minutes. I'm using an eMac--if they make dual-processor eMacs, then I'm using it. And I know they don't make 'em, so I'll chalk it up to never having a choice anyway--unless I wanted to spend a couple thousand more. It has 768 MB of RAM, and a combined 240 GB of hard-drive space. I'm working with FCPHD, DVDSP2, and that's pretty much the entire basis, unless you include the minor apps like Compressor.
I learned very quickly that there are certain ways to do things when it comes to DV on an eMac, especially pushing data on a single processor with the latest version of Final Cut. Then again, I've never worked on any other Mac, so they could be universal. For instance:
- Exporting fifteen seconds of footage to the desktop as a simple QT movie and then putting it into Compressor without having FCP running will take, on average, about 25 seconds. Compressing the same footage directly from Final Cut, by comparison, runs about ten or eleven minutes.
- Capturing 24pA footage with pulldown removal and placing it in a 23.98-fps sequence may result in true progressive footage, but it also results in some of the worst jitter I've ever seen on any DV product. The jitter appears on the NTSC monitor next to the computer, and it's there with or without deinterlacing, regardless of field order, and regardless of pulldown cadence. Early on in the editing, this had me wondering if I was epileptic or just crazy, because it was there no matter what I did and--obviously--it looked nothing like a movie did when projected in a theater. Capturing 24pA footage as you would with normal DV footage gets rid of the jitter, but replaces it with interlacing artifacts. Deinterlace it and the picture softens. By the way, the jitter of the pulldown removal also happened to be completely random--certain shots would be smooth, clear, and perfect, while others looked like they were done at 15 fps. There was no pattern there--one handheld shot is perfect, one induces a migraine. One completely static shot has motion blur, one doesn't. That was a feather in the cap for the "crazy" vote.
- Disregarding what the raw footage looked like after pulldown removal, I did it anyway, edited it in a 23.98 timebase, and made a 24p DVD out of the footage. Then I played it on both the computer's DVD player and on the 27" TV in the living room. In both cases, the quality of each frame was peachy. It was the fact that it looked like it was a 15 fps sequence that hurt it. There was *no* motion blur. To a degree, I think this was caused by the shutter being at 1/24 on the camera for these sequences--for some reason, the DVX100 goes directly from 1/24 to 1/60, which brings me to my next and final two points...
- Point 1. The DVX lays to tape at 30i regardless of the F setting; even the 60i setting doesn't yield continuous motion, just a very close approximation of it.
- Point 2. Film runs at an even 24 frames per second. However, a film projector plays it with a 1/48 shutter speed to make it more palatable to the audience. This would indicate that the closest approximation to film playing in a theatre would be 24p or 24pA with a 1/60 shutter speed. That is the only other thing--other than the G-Nicer--that I haven't tried yet: making a 24p DVD out of true progressive footage taken from a recording of 24pA with a 1/60 shutter speed. Will *that* yield something other than an epileptic fit or video that looks like it's auditioning for "Wacky Video Tricks of the 1980s!"?
I should add, as a final point, that I'm not going film-out. Even for a 16mm blow-up, it'd cost something along the lines of twenty-two thousand dollars, and I have enough trouble making a car payment. I want it to go to a master tape (either DigiBeta or the PhotoZoom uprez and then to an HDC100 tape), and to a 24p DVD. The only public or theatrical showing I know it's going to have as of now is the premiere, and that'll be in a local theater with DVD-projection ability. So if I'm going to be projecting a DVD onto a forty-foot-wide screen--and I really, *really* wish someone would hurry up and bring out a dual-layer DVD-R, because compatibility with the current DLs with DVD players is in some question right now--I'd rather the picture be in slightly soft focus than have stepping patterns and artifacting everywhere.
So that's what I'm trying to get. Decent quality. Nothing earth-shattering, because I know that: a) the DVCC doesn't use Compressor and DVD Studio Pro to press a DVD of, say, "The Day After Tomorrow"--and good Christ, that screenplay was absolutely terrible--and b) the movie I shot on MiniDV will never look as good as, say, "The Day After Tomorrow" (but it does have a better screenplay). I know that I'm gonna need a third-party compression program if I want to get something good enough to think about projecting, and the G-Nicer is more a definitive yes than anything else. Anyone projected a feature-length movie on a DLP or LCD projector and had a positive reaction to it? If so, let me know what you used, how you did it, or both. This project is the culmination of about a year and a half of work, and I'll be damned if it ends up looking like a slightly more advanced "Pac-Man" on screen.
P.S. - Okay, so I just looked on IMDB and "Species" wasn't a bomb financially, only qualitatively. They just barely turned a profit.
P.P.S. - Yeah, I'm the guy who posted the "twisted and unholy recipe for success" thing about a month back. The method I used works for certain shots--much like the pulldown removal did initially. That's the thing about methods that are twisted and unholy--they're usually not very consistent. Or reliable.