Why shoot FX-1 if you can't edit?

The Cinema Display viewed through the decklink and HDlink looks and behaves very differently to being used through the computer video card, and looks much superior.

Indeed, the CRT will smooth out imperfections, and indeed, tends to make the video look a lot better than it really is, although I can't agree that the LCD adds artifacts. I don't see banding here, and I don't see any noise that's not in the original video.

Indeed all LCD's are not equal, but I'm ever-so-very impressed with the HDLink + Cinema Display solution. It's very, very good.

However, resolution is exactly what HD is about, and if the display you're using is barely better than a SD display in terms of resolution, what you're watching is a downconvert, effectively. And most people in the home do not watch HD on a CRT, they use Plasma, LCD, DLP projectors and so on. Sony don't make CRTs any more - and I don't think there's much in the way of other companies making CRTs either.

Even if the CRT did have enough resolution, you'd also have to sit very close to it so that the resolution is visible. I'd hate to sit near to a CRT for that length of time as it will do funny things to my eyes. LCD's don't hurt your eyes like that, they don't flicker, and their contrast range is more than adequate, their colour gammut is very good, their brightness excellent. The only thing they really lack is black level, which can be a touch grey.

I really do believe that watching HDTV on a CRT is like watching it through rose tinted glasses....

Graeme

thanks, brad,
good to know HDV looks good in SD,
but my main question is about the offline/online workflow given an SD delivery.

one reason i'm asking is i've been asked to advise on workflow for a freind's film.
it's a documentary of sorts, but with many different components.

in order or frequency they are:

1. new interview, etc Footage, to be shot with a FX1
2. Flash animation
3. existing interview, etc footage, shot with a PD100
4. Blue screen footage of actors (to be shot)
5. Archival material from SP & Digibeta.

delivery will be on Digibeta, for broadcast

being a documentary there will be a lot of rushes.
even the flash animation.. the director is prolific, and makes new versions of scenes overnight.
so an offline/online path is the way to go.

the filmmakers are a bit worried about the complexity of incorporating the HDV material, and are thinking of simply shoooting 16/9 DV with the FZ1.

sound like that'd be a pitty.

one other Q:
how's HDV for chromakey work?

thanks,
nick

I can answer your question about the Chroma Key and FX1. It works GREAT. I've seen it and its superb. It holds up real well in native HDV and well if you convert to 8bit uncompressed.

Me thinks if your friend want to throw a bunch of formats into same timeline he might be better off with say a Canopus Edius than FCP. Thats as of today, anyway. Otherwise its render city.



mike

Nick Meyers wrote:

> thanks, brad,
> good to know HDV looks good in SD,
> but my main question is about the offline/online workflow given
> an SD delivery.
>
> one reason i'm asking is i've been asked to advise on workflow
> for a freind's film.
> it's a documentary of sorts, but with many different
> components.
>
> in order or frequency they are:
>
> 1. new interview, etc Footage, to be shot with a FX1
> 2. Flash animation
> 3. existing interview, etc footage, shot with a PD100
> 4. Blue screen footage of actors (to be shot)
> 5. Archival material from SP & Digibeta.
>
> delivery will be on Digibeta, for broadcast
>
> being a documentary there will be a lot of rushes.
> even the flash animation.. the director is prolific, and makes
> new versions of scenes overnight.
> so an offline/online path is the way to go.
>
> the filmmakers are a bit worried about the complexity of
> incorporating the HDV material, and are thinking of simply
> shoooting 16/9 DV with the FZ1.
>
> sound like that'd be a pitty.
>
> one other Q:
> how's HDV for chromakey work?
>
> thanks,
> nick

The workflow for shooting HDV versus DV isn't that difficult. HDVxDV makes it pretty simple to capture and convert the video whatever HD codec you want to use. A good way to convince your friend about DV versus HDV is to run a short test with a minute or two of video. Shoot once scene in DV mode and then reshoot it using HDV. Keep it short, so you don't have to do a lot of work.

Use a DV workflow for the DV segment and an HD workflow for the other segment. Create a DV master and an HD master. Export both two Digibeta. See which one your friend likes better. If done correctly, the HD version should blow away the DV footage.

For speed, I've heard the Black Magic Decklink HD will be supporting native 1440x1080i. This can save you a lot of work, because you can avoid resizing the video which take a long time and reduces quality. It also save hard drive space when you use uncompressed HD. I'm puting together a system for uncompressed HD using a $200 8 channel Sata raid card and 300 gigabyte drives. This should yield about 3 to 4 hours of uncompressed 10 bit HD for under $2000. Oh course, this is hand built.

For interviews, I, also, recommend capturing live with HDVxDV while your recording to tape, as a backup to the tape. This way you'll have a copy of video on tape and a copy on your hard drive.

I don't have any experience with chroma key shooting, but how could it worse than DV? Effectively, 1440x1080i's chroma information is 720x540. That means, if you scale down the luma information to 720x540 without changing the chroma you get 4:4:4 video. What's better than 4:4:4 for chroma keying?

My advice is to always test the workflow and output. This way you can save hours and hours of work later.

"I don't have any experience with chroma key shooting, but how could it worse than DV?"

lol, cant argue with that

thanks brad and mike for the chroma-key advice.

Eidus could be interesing, and i'll have a look, but my freind already has a large investent in macs (he runs a protools facility) and has FCP, and is familar with it.

there';s no real problem for us working in DV as an offline format.
we've got a workflow for the flash,
and i;ve cut DV offline from SP beta rushes and on-lined in 10bit Uncompressed no worries.

just havent done the same yet with HDV.
as they're getting the camera within a week, we'll definitley be testing.

but what IS the scoop on offline/on-lining?

if i use HDVxDV to convert to an offline format,
what do i do when it comes time to on-line?

it might be a moot point, as FCP5 may well be out by the time they start shooting on this.

thanks,
nick

I shot some stuff with the camera the other day. I shot some things in the DV mode and loved the image. It was a studio shoot and I brought it along for the heck of it. Anyhow...I was shooting a recent playmate (fully clothed) with a chimera and the usual assortments of hair lights, eyelights, back lights and negative fill. I loved the native 16:9 image...I had to use one of G's film filters to soften her pores... the image was that clean even in DV mode.

The thing I've been pondering is final distribution of the HDV images. A large percentage of my clients desire a final output to DVD. To think they would invest in yet another format asking a bit much. I simply want to get the best image possible on screen. Hopefully this new format will allow it. I haven't seen any DVD players boasting HD quality playback...and adoption by consumers of HD, while growing, is still a bit down the road.

You can encode to Windows Media 9HD using Flip4Mac. They just started shipping set top boxes.

Thats about the only choice right now. That will change of course once these Blu-ray and HD-DVD boxes hit the market.

All is still very new

Mike

Nick Meyers wrote:

> "I don't have any experience with chroma key shooting, but how
> could it worse than DV?"
>
> lol, cant argue with that
>
> thanks brad and mike for the chroma-key advice.
>
> Eidus could be interesing, and i'll have a look, but my freind
> already has a large investent in macs (he runs a protools
> facility) and has FCP, and is familar with it.
>
> there';s no real problem for us working in DV as an offline
> format.
> we've got a workflow for the flash,
> and i;ve cut DV offline from SP beta rushes and on-lined in
> 10bit Uncompressed no worries.
>
> just havent done the same yet with HDV.
> as they're getting the camera within a week, we'll definitley
> be testing.
>
> but what IS the scoop on offline/on-lining?
>
> if i use HDVxDV to convert to an offline format,
> what do i do when it comes time to on-line?
>

HDVxDV will convert the file to DVC Pro and scale it down to 720x480 perserving time code. When you need to online it convert the same file to your online editing format.
> it might be a moot point, as FCP5 may well be out by the time
> they start shooting on this.
>
One of the things that Final Cut 5 won't solve is the expense of capturing from multiple computers for a large shoot. Having Final Cut Pro licenses on each computer you want to capture from at $1000 each license gets pretty expensive. HDVxDV is only $80 per license. That's a savings of $920 per machine. In addition, Final Cut 5 may require Tiger which is an addition $120 per machine plus whatever work is involved upgrading those machines.

Using HDVxDV, you can spread the capture and conversion process through multiple machines. Thus, large shoots can be done more quickly and cost effectively.

> thanks,
> nick

Chet Simmons wrote:

>
> I shot some stuff with the camera the other day. I shot some
> things in the DV mode and loved the image. It was a studio
> shoot and I brought it along for the heck of it. Anyhow...I
> was shooting a recent playmate (fully clothed) with a chimera
> and the usual assortments of hair lights, eyelights, back
> lights and negative fill. I loved the native 16:9 image...I
> had to use one of G's film filters to soften her pores... the
> image was that clean even in DV mode.
>
> The thing I've been pondering is final distribution of the HDV
> images. A large percentage of my clients desire a final output
> to DVD. To think they would invest in yet another format
> asking a bit much. I simply want to get the best image
> possible on screen. Hopefully this new format will allow it.
> I haven't seen any DVD players boasting HD quality
> playback...and adoption by consumers of HD, while growing, is
> still a bit down the road.

Using an HD master you can make standard definition DVDs that really look good. It's fairly common to master in HD and then convert to a standard definition DVD. From tests that I've done, I think this is the only way to go. To me, the images are amazing when you master in HD and convert to standard defintion DVDs. It's not like I haven't tried to get good results out of standard definition masters, but using HDVxDV to create a DVC Pro HD conversion gave me much better results.

Try it for yourself, take some footage from your HDV camcorder shot in HDV. Capture in DV and convert the DV to DVD with DVD Studio Pro 3.
Then go back and use HDVxDV to convert the same footage to DVC Pro HD. Put both masters on the same DVD and see what you think.

When I did this I saw that the a lot of the halo, mosquito noise, and macro block artifacts were greatly reduced by using an HD master from HDV material. See if you get the same results.

"HDVxDV will convert the file to DVC Pro and scale it down to 720x480 perserving time code. When you need to online it convert the same file to your online editing format."

i see on your site, brad, that the HDV file is "at least 14gigs per hour"
which is about the same as DV. that's prety good, considering the quality
so if we have 20 hours of rushes we'd capture AND ARCHIVE 280gigs of HDV,
convert to DV, (aprox 280gigs)
then when it's time to online, convert the archived HDV to 10bit Uncompressed.
but if we've used a shot from every tape, we'll need 2 terabytes for that!
yoiks!

i notice in HDVxDV you can place multiple in/outs on an HDV file for batch export.
is it possible to save the in/outs as some form of batch list for each files?

nick

I know when I shoot 35mm and telecine to digibeta and DV, I often used to on-line in DV. Clients loved the look and my budgets loved the savings. It's nice to know that the FX-1 will allow me some of the same benefits. Now of course to see how it handles food shots!

Chet Simmons
Las Vegas

i supose we could rent 2 TB for a couple of days, do the convert, reconect, and media manage.
it could be a pretty economical approach.

you've got a point there, chet, and i'm sure we'll figure it all out in time.
as for food, well, more detail in the image will require more attention to detail in the lighting/shooting, i imagine.
being able to see everythng isnt always such a boon...
look at those enormouse close ups of news readers on giant TVs!

nick

Nick Meyers wrote:

> "HDVxDV will convert the file to DVC Pro and scale it down to
> 720x480 perserving time code. When you need to online it
> convert the same file to your online editing format."
>
> i see on your site, brad, that the HDV file is "at least 14gigs
> per hour"
> which is about the same as DV. that's prety good, considering
> the quality
> so if we have 20 hours of rushes we'd capture AND ARCHIVE
> 280gigs of HDV,
> convert to DV, (aprox 280gigs)
> then when it's time to online, convert the archived HDV to
> 10bit Uncompressed.
> but if we've used a shot from every tape, we'll need 2
> terabytes for that!
> yoiks!
>
> i notice in HDVxDV you can place multiple in/outs on an HDV
> file for batch export.
> is it possible to save the in/outs as some form of batch list
> for each files?
>
> nick

HDVxDV isn't able to handle batch lists at this time, but it really looks like an important feature that needs to be added. There's no doubt that HDV requires a whole new paradigm in workflow, when it comes to really large projects.

Storage isn't nearly as expensive as you think. 8 channel SATA raid cards can be purchased for around $200. 300 gigabyte drives for around $169. Throw in 2 four drive SATA external cases, and the whole mess comes in around $2000.

$2000 for 2.4 terabytes isn't bad. 3.2 Terabytes should be around $3000. Better yet, 16 channel SATA raid cards are starting to appear on the market. This would double the capacity to a maximum of 6.4 terabytes for around $6000.