an idea for Natress

hey man, i was wondering about something and since u are the king of filters here it is.

is it possible to make fcp look at the incomming footage as something other than it is. you see i figure that a camera records what it sees according to how it scans. some cameras give you a choice of scans ( ie. dvx100a ). the thing is it is scanning an image the same image that any other camera point at it would see. now all of these camera could have different ways of gathering the info that it sees but the image doesnt change. so my question is if i am showing a dv image against a screen and i use a film camera to record the screen would'nt the image that the film camera sees still be a 24p quality image. if so why is it not possible to get final cut to veiw the incomming footage as the film cam saw on the sceen that was showing dv footage was showing on. this way i could set fcp to deal with the captured footage as progressive scan 24p and i would have less problems with text and mask. it would be sorta a prefilter i guess.

What do ya think?

I think you want Cinema tools or Digieffect Cinelook.



When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

My Film Effects converts normal video to 24p (with 3:2 pulldown added in so that it works on a NTSC timeline). My Standards Converter converts to 24p and leaves it as such. Either will do a fab 24p effect.

You can't just point cameras at images running at a different frame rate because the frequencies beat with each other. We see a continuous image there, but it's not really continuous, but our brain and visual system believe it so. A camera is not so easily fooled.

Graeme



[www.nattress.com] - Plugins for FCP-X

> my question is if i am showing a dv image against a screen and i use a film
> camera to record the screen would'nt the image that the film camera sees still
> be a 24p quality image

If you shot video at 29.97 fps, that's how many still images are running per second. If you pointed a film camera at that, you would get 24 fps footage...but what's on the screen would be screwed up because you'll end up getting frames where the video footage is between frames, etc.

It's the same theory as shooting a computer or TV screen on film or video. If you don't synchronize the two, the refresh rate of computer screens will jar with the video/film running and you'll get those lines rolling up the screen. Also the same as using a strobe light or gunfire on set -- it's very common for a film camera to miss one flash of a strobe or gunfire, because they can easily fall between two of the 24 frames per second. That's why on features, you often need to animate in gunfire because the camera didn't catch it. I once had to repair footage shot with a strobe light on because each strobe only lasted half a frame, or one video field, and we were putting a red filter on the footage. So I had to copy one video field, dupe it onto its partner, and then put a red filter on the resulting video frame. A 20-second sequence took me about three hours!

EYE SEE SAID THE BLIND MAN

i had not thought of that fps is the same as stills per sec. sorry for overlooking that i guess i feel like my apple can change math lol.

natrress : when that filter converts the footage am i then able to work in fcp set to 24p. see my problem is that i want my text and mask overlays to be cleaner around the edges. i mean i do some opacity and blur tricks now to make them consumer acceptable but i want them to be better. i am fairly new to fcp ( 1.5yrs ) and i am just starting get into the perfectionist stage. i just want it to look sweet.

24p doesn't have anything to do with the quality of masks, overlays and text. Progressive video can make some compositing issues easier, but that doesn't really matter for your issues.

24p can, however, make video look more appealing to some eyes, and the gamma curve effects etc. in Film Effects can be wonderful as a design decision that can improve the look of video.

Graeme



[www.nattress.com] - Plugins for FCP-X

Although it is possible to shoot LCD screens with a movie camera because LCD screens don't flicker--or not enough to matter.

I come from Video Image, one of the leaders and early developers of 24-frame productin and playback for the movies. Anybody remember "Hunt for Red October? We had tons of monitors and 24-frame 3/4 decks on that show. All the Sonar, Radar, and Data screens were video playback. All carefully sinchronized with the movie camera shutter.

Some of it played with these fingers.

Koz