when to cc in a compression workflow

Hi,

I'm working on a small doc shot on HDV 1080i60. It's already cut and the material is going to analog beta and dvd.

Before that I want to apply both Natress G Film filter and color correct using the standard filters in FCP (cc3way and anything else if necessary).

Some of the compression workflows I'm thinking of doing *for the dvd*, both by rendering timelines and going through Compressor are:

HDV>Uncompressed 10-bits>DV> then either mpeg2 or directly to iDvd
HDV>DVCProHD>DV> ditto above
HDV>DV> ditto above

to see what works best. (Btw, HDV>mpeg2 via Compressor>DVDSP, with several attempts tweaking w/ settings proved a failure)

I'm wondering if there's any sort of principle as to the time of applying the filters I mentioned above. Should I always do this first before compression, or last? If there's a concensus as to any workflow (and I searched a lot without finding it) please let me know.

Thanks.

Every single option you have has you going to DV...why? That defeats everything you gained going to uncompressed or DVCPRO HD.

HDV>Uncompressed 10 bit requires a BIG RAID...5 drive raid capable of 200MB/s or faster. This is a great option for color correcting, but very taxing on the system.

HDV>DVCPRO HD...OK, but better if you did this before you began editing. YOu can do this when you color correct and you'll get better results, and no need for a HUGE raid to play back.

ANYTHING to DV...ick. No...no no no no no. We always tell people to take their footage OUT of DV when adding graphics and color correcting. Upconvert, then color correct, then out to DVD.

10-bit uncompressed or DVCPRO HD directly into compressor, High quality 2 pass VBR.


www.shanerosseditor.com

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Was thinking dv for two reasons:

one, I don't have a card, so viewing 10bit, dvcprohd or hdv is not an option, and doing cc on dv would be an option with a reference (firewire via deck to monitor).

two, I was fed up with the Compressor to DVDSP route, as I mentioned the total failure to achieve anything watchable coming directly from HDV. So a dv material to iDvd would be an easy and time tested solution.

GIVEN anything of the above would be among the best possible solutions.

Will try your suggestions, Shane, though the DVCPRO HD one might already be ruled out as I didn't do this before editing, and I'm already seeing problems on the edit points. I've understood that you recommend applying the filters and cc to the HDV *before* any compression; is that correct?

As for big raids for 10bits, 20 minutes of material translates to around 34GB, so why raids? (of course I'm presuming out of ignorance that the 200MB/s rate won't be necessary since the edit is done, and any heavy processing in cc I'll just have to bear with).

> As for big raids for 10bits, 20 minutes of material translates to around 34GB, so why raids?

Probably because you didn't mention "Uncompressed 10-bit WHAT?". I'm thinking Shane is thinking about Uncompressed 10-bit HD 60i, where 20 minutes would be more like 350GB, because your reference points have been to upres to HD. You're thinking about Uncompressed 10-bit SD. If you don't need a final HD master, this would be viable, especially if you don't have the equipment to do a true HD show.


www.derekmok.com

My bad, already thinking in shortened terms. Uncompressed 10-bit NTSC 48 kHz it is.

And the dvd is SP, not HD. Once again, HDV directly to mpeg2 in Compressor for a SP dvd gave me nothing but headaches, so I'm trying to figure out an intermediate format that gives me the best results for the SP dvd. That's why I'm asking WHEN to apply filters in a material that's being compressed.

Sorry again for not being clearer...

Whatever you do, once you go back to DV then you lose any benefit you had going Uncompressed or DVCPRO HD...all gone. So once you go uncompressed 10-bit SD (firewire 800 can handle that) then just use compressor from there. Or try DV50.


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]

First of all congratulations on the documentary.

I shoot with a Sony Z1 myself and I'm always glad when I find people who successfully shoot movies with HDV. There is so much to learn using this fantastic format, as it's the best quality for the least amount of money format. IMHO :-)

I'm in the last stage of editing on a new feature I did last week and so I'll be dealing with the issues you mentioned. I too will be generating SD DVDs for festivals, etc.

I did the editing in native HDV. I'm using a G5 dual 2.7 gH and FCP 5.04. I don't have any cards or extras on my system.



I just finished color correcting in the HDV format. I had absolutely no trouble.

The 4:2:0 color space didn't pose any problems for me. Frankly I don't know what this means in technical terms, but apparently one can do better color correction with 4:2:2 (which I believe is the DVCPRO HD format).

Therefore, if your movie is still in the HDV format, I'd recommend doing color correction in HDV. This might not be sound advice. You should double check this suggestion for your particular project and judge it from the perspective of what your footage is like.

I don't know anything about editing in DVCPRO HD. But I've seen the results in Shane's work, a documentary that he worked on for the History Channel -- it was very impressive. It looked almost as good as 35mm, certainly better than any DV I've ever seen.

But since your working like me, in the same format, namely HDV 1080i 60i, I'm sharing with you my experience.

As for compression, I think you'll get the best results if you go from an uncompressed SD (as Derek indicated) after you do color correction in HDV (I don't know what doing color correction in uncompressed entails, so this is one advice I'm not qualified to give) --

Make your compression in Compressor 2 and go for the highest quality possible, which is 90 minute Best Encode. You want to keep the final size of the video component to 3.5 GB and use the stereo component AC3 instead of the aiff (that gets to be too big -- you don't need it).

Hopefully you'll report back your results. Good luck.

I'm thinking the field order is getting reversed when changing formats.

First of all, thanks for all the help. This forum is truly great. Not only do I read it daily, and learn tons of things, I can actually ask something and hear from some of the best. Never ceases to amaze me.

So, spent the last few days compressing, waiting, developing my CTS, here's what I learned:

1. Going from hdv to sd dvd:

Just to recap, options were
hdv>compressor>dvd sp
hdv>different sequences (uncompressed 10-bit ntsc; dvcprohd; dv)>compressor>dvd sp

surprisingly, guess what, it does not make any difference which way you go, the results are identical. You can convince me technically they are not, but as far as watching goes... If I put all the variations of compressions on a single track, you'd think I was showing you a looped clip. I even asked a DP to look at it and tell me if he saw any difference. He didn't, and I don't think anyone could. I did mention that going from hdv to compressor to dvd sp gave me headaches, but that didn't happen anymore, which takes me to the second thing I learned:

2. getting a film look in your hdv material:

The best tip is right here on the lafcpug faq, it's from Joel Peregrine (many thanks), and it involves sort of a double de-interlacing. That not only gives less of a video look, it fixes every video artifact hdv produces when compressed to a sd dvd, which is, as I now presume, caused by the interlacing. And perhaps combining this with Jude's suggestion on the same faq might get even better results.

Unfortunately, and to my great distress, Nattress G Film filter did not work at all. After a day of frustrated attempts (and I tried every single set up possible) I had the simple idea of trying it on a DVCAM material I had on another project, just to rule out the variables. It didn't work there either. It just adds a terrible strobe-like effect when set to 24P. When set to 30P it's ok, though it doesn't add any real improvements, and takes out some sharpness/definition. So either I'm missing something, in which case please let me know what it is; or I'm not, and then I'm curious why it's even recommended.


Now the material is going to analog beta, in which case I'll try to go directly from the camera/deck to the analog beta deck, see if that works; anyone tried this before? (perhaps this is a new post...)

OT P.S.1 Thanks for the input, Shane. I'm actually reading your blog almost daily. I'll be setting up a system for the soon to be acquired Color, and your Matrox/Apple Display idea is top of the list; I'll probably be asking more questions to you soon

OT P.S.2 Just like to know if this is only happening to me, but searching for the term "hdv" on the lafcpug engine gets me zero results, which is, of course, impossible, since there are hundreds of posts with this term.