GH5 Shooting Resolution vs deliverables rant

StevenBills

StevenBills

Active member
Maybe this will get deleted or something, but I just think it's funny/frustrating.

A few weekends ago I shot a multi-day event with my GH4 and GH5. No sweat. Mostly multi-cam stuff. The cameras did great. Didn't lock-up or give me any grief the entire weekend. Shot in 4K, 29.97 on both cams. Edited together all of the events in a 1080p timeline. The scaled footage looks great. But this is what gets me.

The final deliverable is a DVD.

720x480. Standard definition.

All this talk of, "6K this and that," and "Your cameras don't look professional enough," yadda yadda yadda, and they want a standard definition DVD.

I'm happy to do it, but jeez. Anyone else experience stuff like this?

SB

EDIT: Maybe all this talk of Ks and sensor sizes is getting out of hand when the Common Joe Schmoe just wants to be able to watch it at home on their DVD player.
 
I hear you. The fact is, 1080p will be plenty for a long time. 4k is cool and has its uses. 6k or 8k is for major release cinema or very special use cases. DVD will never die because they got too greedy with Blu-ray and people did not adopt it quick enough before streaming came along. DVD is just easy for folks, but only some folks. Streaming is great for very large entities like Netflix but for smaller folks it is not a great delivery method - because there is no "streaming" for anybody smaller. By streaming I mean a well known place on the internet or app that is easy to use and widely accepted along with established payment methods etc... Instead we have YouTube, Vimeo or some unknown website delivery which mainly works single clients. Fragmented is a good word. Even with streaming, will anybody pay more for a 4k delivery? I wonder.

So think of Dan and G.A.S. when they start pounding the pavement selling 6k and 8k cameras. They are just not needed yet at the sub-true cinema camera level imho.
 
StevenBills;1986806370 [I said:
The final deliverable is a DVD.[/I]

720x480. Standard definition.
Click to expand...

... and unless you look after it very carefully on the down convert to DVD, especially if it is going to be an interlace DVD the conversion will look like crap. The amount of data you are going to ditch is enormous. Even using Main Concept's Total Code Studio with is #31 slowest multi pass with SCD fast and Field based Prediction/DCT processing the results are still not what makes me happy.

In fact these days if I know a production has to go to DVD as well as HD files the final 4K master gets rendered out as a ProRes HD sub master. I then chuck that file on to an Atomos SSD and then run the ProRes HD file SDI out of the Atomos through an HD to SD SDI converter, usually a BM mini converter or via an XDCam studio deck and record an SDI out SD ProRes file or more often now even an SD 50Mbps XDCam 422 file into an old Convergent Design NanoFlash. That file then looks as good anything I would shoot on a PDW or Digi Beta in SD. No aliasing issues, no fine horizontal line twitter just a nice clean very low noise SD master ready for MPEG encoding. I have yet to find any software that can go from 4K to SD DVD MPEG-2 in one down step that really delivers as clean an image as a software 4K to HD then HD to SD hardware down convert.

Chris Young
 
I once was hired with my Helium package to shoot something that was inevitably delivered on DVD in the end.

I wanted to ask questions but instead that was one of those gigs where you just shut up and take the paycheck.
 
This is where you inform your clients that while you can deliver old fashion standard definition DVD's at a higher cost due to the extra labor required to author and burn them, you are also able to deliver modern pristine HD and or 4K video on inexpensive USB flash drives for X amount if they order X many.

Business is Business!
 
All my output is DVD or a few Bluray and I shoot always at 60P on both GH5, GH5S and AX100. the GH5's at UHD and the AX100 HD 60P. Shutter speed 1/60 so all the options are available in edit. The source can be edited in interlace timeline, progressive timeline UHD or HD even at 30P ( 29.97P). Going to DVD or Bluray is straight forward with no problems. IF your output is going to be DVD or Bluray I would suggest also shooting at 60P. You then have all the options available to you even a file at 30P if you like the look of slow frame rate.
 
Almost everything I shoot these days is delivered in 1080p via online streaming or via USB sticks. ( occasionally I will deliver bigger jobs on portable hard-drives )

DVDs are the rotary phone of the video world. ( an ancient relic that nobody uses anymore )
 
Yeah, most of my jobs are for online streaming (YT, Instagram, Twitter, etc...) delivery, and so pumping out a nice HD master is more than enough (just remember, even though you shoot it at 6K on your Red Whatever, people are going to be watching it on their phone in the bathroom with the sound off).

I'm going to do a few tests to see if Handbrake can get me from HD to SD without any aliasing/issues.

SB
 
I edit with EDIUS in 1920x1080 progressive timeline and export a HQX file. Encode for DVD in TMPGenc 2 pass VBR to just about fill disc, just over 90%. Done this for many years. When upscaled on my TV is very good compared to the Bluray of the same file.
 
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Yep, definitely had those.

Though I've often had cases where they want 1080p sources even though 4K would be handy and would barely add to the size footprint, if at all. So it has gone both ways.
 
I truly hate DVD's, can never get them to come out as good as official ones look. Blue-ray looks perfect though, almost lossless.
 
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