Workflow advice for Panasonic-HMC150P

I am trying to determine a solid work-flow for an undergraduate college video production class. The students will be shooting with the Panasonic AG-HMC150P and editing with Final Cut Pro. I am confused about whether they should shoot 1080P or 720P. I performed a test of both using 23.98fps, but when I checked the resolution settings in FCP, it said the 1080 footage was interlace instead of progressive. Is this right? My understanding is the camera is supposed to shoot progressive. The 720 footage did say progressive when I checked the settings. The final format will be on Blu-Ray. What I'm trying to avoid is any 'artifacting'. Does FCP change the 1080 footage from progressive to interlace in order to save space or processing power? Will this be an issue when we export the projects and burn to Blu-Ray? Will there be issues with the 720P footage if we 'upres' to 1920x1080? Please advise.

Shoot 1080p. It's progressive, don't worry. Where are you looking at the resolution settings in FCP? Sequence settings or just inspecting the clips in a bin?

720 will be more efficient on disk space.



www.strypesinpost.com

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Will there be issues with the 720P footage if we 'upres' to 1920x1080? Please advise.

Yes the image will be softer than shooting native 1080p



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So there you go. 720 = less space needed to store it. 1080 = sharper image. What's more important to you in this instance? My guess would be space, in a teaching environment. Students always overshoot, double up, lose things and recapture, leave unfinished stuff everywhere. Call everything 'untitled', move it and then can't reconnect it. They use masses of space. It's part of the learning process, really.

And, I've been wanting to make this point for a while, we used to deliver on VHS. VHS! And we thought that was OK. I think people freak out too much about quality in non-critical environments. Unless you really need to see that nerve fibre in ultra high HD, is it really something people should be beaten bloody over? Story is king.

Let the flames commence.

Of course you could also learn to use 1080 from the get go so your students will be thinking more about the HD pitfalls such as the technical aspects, high detail showing flaws and shooting and creating media with the industry HD standard resolution.

We do not deliver 720p masters nor do the broadcasters like too much upconverted material. Also think of the future use for the footage - will it be archived for posterity?

If so shoot 1080.

We used to learn on VHS - that almost put me off editing and all that wonderful story we shot is almost unwatchable now... If only our college had digibeta... (you can see where I'm going with this )



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

> And, I've been wanting to make this point for a while, we used to deliver on VHS. VHS!

Deliver on VHS? We shot on SVHS!

Jude's point is valid. Modern film students get so hung up on image quality, camera capabilities and all the tech toys that they lose the learning process. Even in my last year in film school, we started getting first-year film students who were spending hundreds of dollars on first-year projects. And they didn't learn very much. They overdesigned shots, hired professional crew members, and didn't get their hands dirty.

Personally I don't even see much value in having them upres the 720p to 1080p. It's low on the list of priorities in learning. Directors and shooters can go to a lab or another kind of technician (editor, DIT, etc.) to do the upres. Learning how to do it themselves is overkill -- especially since by the time the students finish their curriculum, chances are the tools for doing this will have advanced one or two generations.

Image quality can be a crutch and an impediment. Students get so ga-ga over image quality that they neglect to hang something worthwhile onto the pretty pictures and shiny equipment. Especially from an editing standpoint -- a pretty picture often leads to students doing 20 takes of the same shot to get perfect lighting, composition and timing, when they could have done five takes of five different shots and actually captured the scene. You can't get much better at lighting and composition (and also budget and equipment) than Akira Kurosawa, but even he ditches about 2/3 of the shots he gets. And he's got Asakazu Nakai at the camera.


www.derekmok.com

Just because you CAN shoot great looking stuff it does not follow that you WILL capture bad content.

But bad image and especially bad sound can will ruin a great story as easily as a monkey with an HD camera can capture the rear end of a baboon. (It's late and my analogies are weird sorry).

Why does everyone always think that these kids should always start at story? Why not also give the technical OCD kids a chance to learn how to make things look amazing? Even badly written and acted stories!



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

> Why does everyone always think that these kids should always start at story? Why not also
> give the technical OCD kids a chance to learn how to make things look amazing? Even badly
> written and acted stories!

The logic is valid, but the problem is, in practical application, everybody falls for the toys first.

So as educators, we tend to have to compensate.

Of course, it also depends on whether you're teaching filmmaking in general, or cinematography, or a photography class. But even in photography, you have to know the "story" aspects. "Story" is just another word for "expression". It's the only standard for judging if a photo, or a composition, or a lighting design is "good". Like Terry Richardson and Nan Goldin's work.

My problem is that with those film kids I was talking about, about 65 per cent of them shoot some kind of "killer" story. They've got nothing to say other than the movies they've already seen. That's also the problem with film students getting younger and younger, and I'm speaking as someone who started film school at age 21, youngest in my class.

Anyway, sorry about the digression. I'm just coming on the side of smaller image, to be able to store more dailies. Who knows if 1080 will even be the HD viewing standard when these guys finish school?


www.derekmok.com

Oh don't get me wrong man I totally agree; but my problem with industry is that people are taught too much "concept" and not enough "practical" or visa versa. I believe when teaching Film & Video there should be a good dose of both with enough practical to be able to apply the concepts. I strongly feel that it should not be a compromise.

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Who knows if 1080 will even be the HD viewing standard when these guys finish school?

Well with YouTube 4K/3D already here 1080p is the lowest you should be looking at shooting



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

> but my problem with industry is that people are taught too much "concept" and not enough
> "practical" or visa versa.

Tell me about it...but this is also why they should be taught to shoot more coverage. Even if they have to capture at DV quality to save on room. People's sense of editing can be quite wrongheaded, they don't budget enough time, they don't do simple things (like slating and camera reports) that costs very little in production time but can save huge amounts of time in post. Jude already named a good number of them:

> Students always overshoot, double up, lose things and recapture, leave unfinished stuff
> everywhere. Call everything 'untitled', move it and then can't reconnect it. They use masses
> of space.

Film institutions need to think more long-term and teach their students properly. For example, how to manage their project, and how to manage their project long-term. In fact, I think a good editing curriculum needs to include the students editing other people's material, and then having the editors switch projects around midway through. That's when they'll learn how to manage files so that other people can understand them. I had one head editor who forced me to do five hours of useless work just because he didn't know how to Match Frame.


www.derekmok.com

For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

I was thinking along the lines where if the students had yo spend less on drives, they could spend more on set design or props, but it really depends on what the curriculum is about. If it's cinematography and making prettier pictures, clarity is better. If it's about content and managing resources, 720 is pretty fine.



www.strypesinpost.com

I agree that there should be a balance of technical and theory. I *really* agree. But these are undergrads. And remember that first years often don't even know what timecode is, can't see black flashes they have made, don't understand crossing the line, or colour temperature, or what a grab is, or how you can have more than one channel of audio, or almost anything about production. Getting them to work in complicated workflows that will probably be obsolete in a few years seems so counterproductive.

I say get to a point where you can tell the difference and THEN get the bigger better toys. And in my opinion, that probably goes for a lot of people not doing high end broadcast or film. Probably a lot of the longer term users here could look at footage and take a guess at what it was shot on, but most people are just tying themselves up in knots over stuff they have read in a forum or a tutorial that is technically perfect but real-world overkill.

It's like the guys who get oxygen-free, high-purity copper cables for their stereo at immense cost. I'm not an audiophile and I really can't tell the difference, so for me, running music out of my itunes on my TDK speakers is just fine. It's the music that matters.

You might be overlooking the fact that most cameras that advertise 1080 are not 1080P @ 60 frames progressive. They shoot 1080 interlaced at 60 frames per second.
It's usually 1080p @ 30 progressive at best. Not the case with 720p. U can usually shoot 720p @ 6o frames, none interlaced.

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JUDE
But these are undergrads. And remember that first years often don't even know what timecode is, can't see black flashes they have made, don't understand crossing the line, or colour temperature, or what a grab is, or how you can have more than one channel of audio, or almost anything about production. Getting them to work in complicated workflows that will probably be obsolete in a few years seems so counterproductive.

IMHO...

I think the recognition of the anomalies are more important than the res. I was looking at some stuff from 2004 shot DV. Back then i thought it was great looking but now not so good at all.

If you cant recognize problems on 720p then you can really recognize the problems on any codec. I would rather use a smaller res and tech the stuff that causes problems. Maybe if you shoot the best availible you are kinda cheating the student out of running into these occurrences.

720p is good on the HMC150 a bit more grain with the default settings than i like but very nice footage none the less. SAVE Space they are gonna create unnecessary media anyway.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

I went to the movies the other day with my son at the $3 theater the seats were OK and the projection was quite bad and as a shooter and editor I was watching all the bad look of the movie for a while until I fell into the story and the visuals or sound (which was good) didn't matter at all any more.

------------------------
Dean

"When I see you floating down the gutter I'll give you a bottle of wine."
Captain Beefheart, Trout Mask Replica.

Avatar if I recall was done in 1080 due to the tech constraints of working in 3d at the time of production. Not 4k or 2k. But did anyone notice the lack of resolution on the big screen? Few of us did.

Between 1080 and 720, they use largely the same workflow, but one lets you save on storage (720 @ 24fps), while the other is better if you want the clarity- When you light for hd, you need to be more careful with things like focus because your subjects can look really soft when your focus is off especially when you're shooting dim enough to let the iris fully open up. And these are things you need to know in production especially in a lighting class. less so when your emphasis is on story.



www.strypesinpost.com

No matter what class in the first year on film school, we had very strict rules for shooting. For a 5 minutes fictional shortfilm we were allowed to shoot 50 minutes of footage. Later in s16mm we were only allowed to copy 60% of that footage. Maybe this is old fashioned, but for us it was a good practice!
We immediately started thinking of how to use our limited resources, made storyboards, planned well before shoot etc...

I have went from crappy equipment to relatively nice equipment. I remember all the tricks and hiding i did to create better quality 1/6th chip, slightly off focus, badly lit scenes edited with imovie, while saving all files to the same 250gig stock drive.

I have never been in a production class that lasted more than 3months. But i think thru all of the crap i kept saying " if i can make it look good with this crappy footage when i get the next upgrade i will be better than the guys who started with the fancy toys.

Some people here get nostalgic remembering the pain of linear editing. I think starting from a point where you don't have the best stuff makes a person more knowledgable if they have passion. they will do the best than can and use every stunt to make it look better that it really is, meaning overdone crap.
It gives you knowledge and teaches you not to panic like you use to when something goes wrong. People who have linear edited seem to have a better understanding of frame rate and cut points. Thats priceless. That understanding may not have happened if they had started with digital media.

IMHO, students should start with something less than the best. Maybe DV at start of the semester or year and 720 by the end. They need to see as many pre-production mistakes , TC breaks and strange blocky looking thingys as possible.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"