HDV on the Big Screen

[Erkki Halkka]

Here's an image - without heads again to protect the innocent -

 

 

On the left, HDCAM footage, on the right, HDV, both scaled to 1920*1080, then cropped. HDCAM was keyed ontop. HDV is a bit softer, but i used much less sharpening than the HDCAM DOP. In my eyes, HDV actually looks better in this case - with some sharpen filtering and levels adjustments, they'd look really similar, IMO.

[David Mullen ASC]

I hope i haven't sounded militant - i wasn't aiming at that at all.

 

No, you're obviously a very intelligent and well-reasoned person with some valid points to make. I don't always agree with Phil Rhodes either but I respect his knowledge and intelligence, just not all of his conclusions.

 

I was referring to Charlie Seper, who seems to have a real chip on his shoulder about this whole thing. We're trying to have this informative discussion on what the true technical strengths and weaknesses of HDV, 35mm, whatever, and he decides we're all idiots and morons because we don't see film as some evil monster that needs slaying.

 

Whether or not film is unreasonably expensive or just plain expensive has nothing to do whether HDV compares well technically with 35mm.

 

I see this hostility all the time from people who feel shut out of the film industry and distribution system and feel that the expense of film technology is somehow to blame. People who think film is the obstacle from them achieving success as filmmakers truly do not understand the motion picture industry. Image quality is not the main reason why some indie films get sold and distributed and some do not, otherwise movies shot in a single-chip DV camera like "The Celebration" would not have been so successful (not to mention "Blair Witch Project".) When everyone has great-looking HDV cameras of their own, they are going to find the SAME walls that have always restricted them in Hollywood, because it's not about technology, it's about marketability. You get Brad Pitt to start in your movie, you can shoot it on the crappiest DV camera you can find and still sell it.

 

I don't know why it's so hard to reationally discuss the technical aspects of a particular piece of technology without it turning into a heated political debate, as if saying that shooting in 4:1:1 is technically worse than shooting in 4:4:4 is somehow a personal insult rather than a simple statement of fact. If someone told me that 65mm was technically better than 35mm, I don't get offended even though I can't afford to shoot in 65mm. Why should I? It's just a technical fact.

 

Shoot the best image with the best technology you can afford to use. If that happens to be Super-8 or DV, that's fine. Just don't try and fool yourself or anyone else that it is actually just as good technically as 35mm because that's just living in denial.

 

HDV can look great, and certainly some 24P DV movies like "November" and "Incident at Loch Ness" have looked OK on big screens, not like 35mm, but not bad-looking at all. And probably HDV would look even better so if that's what you want to shoot, go for it and do the best you can and will probably look decent-enough. You don't have to make claims that it's just as good technically as 35mm because that would not only be silly, but it would be inaccurate and would place the wrong emphasis on your work, which you want to be taken for what it is.

[Trevor Greenfield]

That's a fantastic post, David.

 

And to say that once an independent filmmaker understands what it takes to make a marketable film and does so, and is "discovered" as a hot talent, he/she finds themselves in a situation where 35mm, for all future films (until one flops), is financially covered. A financier or financiers step forward or are more easily located and the money is there to shoot the film on whatever the filmmaker wants to shoot on. Whats that you say? Someday you wont have to fret when you say, "This one I think we'll shoot scope instead of 1.85!"... yes it is true... filmmakers make this decision all the time. Generally speaking they might decide to replace those SD cameras with a Z1 for behind the scenes footage.

 

Hence why there is this invisible wall in the industry, those who are bankable and A-list and those who are not. Those who have budgets guaranteed or close to for the next few films vs. those who are trying to figure out how they can pay off their new HDV or 3CCD 24p SD camera AND con enough people to shell out the dough for their $20k breakout pic. To the first group, HDV is crap... even HD from a viper is crap because why shoot HD when you can shoot film (unless for aesthetic reasons). For the latter, HDV is a BREAKTHROUGH, it means for the cost of a SD camera and a higher end desktop computer, they're stepping into the next level.

 

In the end, what David said is true. Shoot it on f'ing s8 or 35mm if its great they will care. But if its on 35mm with a couple of names attatched it stands to good reason that it will see a cinema run. Thats how the industry works. Everything else in between is an excercise in attempting to attract bees with anything but honey.

[David Mullen ASC]

And I have to admit that consumer HD attracts me a lot. The only camera I own is a Super-8 one, and I haven't used it much in the last few years since I just shoot for others. But if I ever decide to get back into making my own little personal films, I'm really attracted to the idea of using a consumer 24P HD camera and cutting the footage on my home computer, digitally projecting it, etc.

 

The issue isn't whether these cameras produce attractive images or not, or whether you can or should make features with them. I'm not one of those people who dismiss digital images as somehow being aesthetically unworthy of respect.

 

I just question anyone who either claims that (1) the technical quality is equivalent to 35mm, or that (2) the technical quality is "good enough" to be the standard for cinema in general or that (3) technical quality doesn't matter. Because you don't have to go there just to justify shooting in consumer HDV if that's all you can afford anyway.

 

I'm actually one of those people who thinks George Lucas is a pretty smart guy and his reasons for using HD are understandable though debatable considering his budget. If you noticed, he backed off a lot from his earlier claims of HD being superior technically and now mainly talks about how it fits better into his workflow and directing / editing methods, plus he actually likes the texture of HD images. He even likes the greater depth of field. I respect all of that even though I perhaps would have made different aesthetic and technical choices. And I thought "Revenge of the Sith" looked pretty good even if it didn't look like 35mm photography. Sure, there were some artifacts here and there but even film-shot productions have mistakes in them. I'm looking forward to shooting a movie in 4:4:4 HD someday.

Edited December 10, 2005 by David Mullen

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

I still think HDV looks really, really good for what it is. I wish there were better cameras available, particularly 24p/25p cameras and cameras with a standard lens mount, but I'm sure that even a Z1 would look pretty damn good blown down to a standard def DVD. It looks much better than the numbers suggest.

 

Phil

[Stephen Williams]

No, no, and no. That is simply untrue. HDV has the same amount of DATA,

 

 

Hi,

 

Not wanting to be picky but HDV is a LOWER data rate than MiniDV.

 

Stephen

[Erkki Halkka]

Hi,

 

Not wanting to be picky but HDV is a LOWER data rate than MiniDV.

 

Stephen

 

Sorry, you totally lost me there - both use 25mbits / second. Unless you mean 720P variant, which does use lower data rate...

[Erkki Halkka]

And I have to admit that consumer HD attracts me a lot. The only camera I own is a Super-8 one, and I haven't used it much in the last few years since I just shoot for others. But if I ever decide to get back into making my own little personal films, I'm really attracted to the idea of using a consumer 24P HD camera and cutting the footage on my home computer, digitally projecting it, etc.

 

Me too - i don't own a camera either. Only one i ever had was... Super 8 ;-)

 

I've been thinking about getting my own HVR-Z1. I'd probably get the price back in year or two in rentals. But, it's not exactly a cam you wanna take with you on a holiday. So, i've been checking out that new small one chip Sony. It seems like an excellent "home-cam" - but lacks some crucial manual settings, like real control over f-stop, gain and shutter speed.

 

So, i ended up buying nuthin' ,-)

 

***

 

I did some test chart shooting the last time i had HVR-Z1. As i only wanted to compare some settings for the next day's shoot, i didn't pay much (read: any) attention in framing the test chart correctly, or lighting it for that matter. Anyway, i guess the stuff might be interesting to you dudes too...

 

http://eki.pp.fi/temp/Eki/HDV_resolution/

 

There's two folders, one for full size HD and another for PAL D1 widescreen, square pixels.

 

Both contain same images, i different resolutions. Here's what's there:

 

1. HDV_Chart_Graphic_HD_original.png

This is an image, where i took the original PDF of the test chart, and color matched, scaled and rotated it so that it more or less overlaps the chart i shot iwith HDV. This is the "perfect" goal to aim at. The chart i shot was printed to A4 paper from the same PDF, with a regular inkjet. The test chart print itself wasn't of high enough resolution to resolve the finest lines in the chart. Some thin lines were also a bit thicker printed than in pdf.

 

2. HDV_Chart_Graphic_HDV.png

This is the same as above, saved to .mt2 HDV stream, then stretched back to 1920*1080. This is the best HDV as a format can do - compare it to the previous one to see how much you lose because of the FORMAT.

 

3. HDV_Chart_cineframe_off_det00.png

This is HVR-Z1 in 50i mode, with sharpening at zero. Rather soft to my taste...

 

4. HDV_Chart_cineframe_off_det08.png

The same, but sharpening at "8". This is the setting where the balance between visible sharpening artifacts and overall sharpness is in best balance, IMO. I use settings between 5 and 8, depending on case.

 

5. HDV_Chart_cineframe_off_det08_WARPSHARP.png

The same as above, but sharpened with "warp sharp" - instead of enhancing edge contrast, pixels are subtly warped towards edge areas. My number one sharpening method of choice nowdwys - i process most of my HDV like this.

 

6. HDV_Chart_cineframe_off_det15.png

Camera's sharpening at full, setting of "15". Sharp, yes, but i have an allergy for edge ringing ,-)

 

7-10. ****

Same as 3-6, but with "CineFrame 25" mode on in the camera. The result is softer, but i'd say it's usable in many cases, especially if scaled down to SD resolution.

 

 

Overall, HVR-Z1 doesn't really do that bad - it's better than i anticipated, when i first had the camera in my hands... as said, very good for what it is.

[Stephen Williams]

Sorry, you totally lost me there - both use 25mbits / second. Unless you mean 720P variant, which does use lower data rate...

 

Hi,

 

I think you will find HDV is 19mbits / second.

 

Stephen

[Erkki Halkka]

3. HDV_Chart_cineframe_off_det00.png

This is HVR-Z1 in 50i mode, with sharpening at zero. Rather soft to my taste...

This is something i'd really like to know the answer to:

 

On this camera, does a detail/sharpen setting of 0 mean "this is the unprocessed image straight from the CCD's", or does it mean "Here's the image, blurred a bit".

 

If it's the first one, they have a really good sharpening algorithm in the camera, better than most other cameras i've seen, better than unsharp mask -type sharpening i.e. in photoshop.

 

If it's the second one - i'd really like to know what setting gives the unprocessed image...

 

Anyway, in a perfect world, cameras would give supersharp results without any electronic sharpening... with HDV, we're not there yet.

 

I think you will find HDV is 19mbits / second.

 

The 720P variant of HDV is 19 mbits/s, i recall some Panasonic models use this.

 

1080i variant, which is what i.e. Sony HVR-Z1 uses, is 25mbits.

[Erkki Halkka]

1. HDV_Chart_Graphic_HD_original.png

This is an image, where i took the original PDF of the test chart, and color matched, scaled and rotated it so that it more or less overlaps the chart i shot iwith HDV. This is the "perfect" goal to aim at. The chart i shot was printed to A4 paper from the same PDF, with a regular inkjet. The test chart print itself wasn't of high enough resolution to resolve the finest lines in the chart. Some thin lines were also a bit thicker printed than in pdf.

 

...and to show how the printed test chart would look like with a "perfect" HDV camera, i scanned the printed test chart 300dpi, color matched, scaled and rotated it to match.

 

There's now two new images called "HDV_Chart_Graphic_HDV_scanned.png" in the folders. This is more or less the best any camera could have done with this test chart.

 

Edit: I must say, the HDV camera does VERY well here!!

Edited December 10, 2005 by Eki Halkka

[Erkki Halkka]

There's now two new images called "HDV_Chart_Graphic_HDV_scanned.png" in the folders.

 

I added one more - HDV_Chart_cineframe_off_det08_focusmagic3.jpg. It's cineframe off, detail at 8, sharpened with alternative method of deconvolution. Nice, i must say...

 

The problem is, i haven't found deconvolution plugin for i.e. After Effects - i did this with a demo of "Focus Magic", with a setting of 3 in "focus". It's a standalone piece of software, works only with one jpg image at a time. Results are good, but processing footage manually frame by frame... no thanks ;-)

[Trevor Greenfield]

I just shot my most recent short on 16mm 7265 and with an HC-1 side by side. My producer has the tapes from the HC-1 but while I was there at his place making the film we loaded a few clips into his computer... BEAUTIFUL. I won't be able to judge completely until I get all of the tapes and load them in and grade them but I was very impressed. My producer's friend, a guy who has been doing SD stuff for quite awhile professionally, said to him when he saw some of the footage "F****** beautiful".

 

My whole contention all along has been that this new range of definition, although sure the HDV codec has some problems in places, is the next step for indies. It is night and day better to watch, closer to the resolution of a traditional cinema image, than SD is.

 

And while the FX1, Z1, HC1, A1 may stack up ok on res charts, that doesnt mean crap when it comes to overall quality compared to a viper or something. But what it does mean is that overall quality of productions can and should go up in the near future.

 

So you hate 60i and dont want to use dvfilmmaker? OK. You hate HDV and long GOP or anything else with the sony camera? Fine. There will be others. There is now the Pany that takes P2, the Canon, the JVC. There will be more. For me though, The penis (quality) envy thing has to stop somewhere and the production has to begin. I'm GLAD I didn't let more time go by than I did. I've sat listening to "experts" who conveniently own Panasonic, Canon, and JVC cameras and post on their respective forums, tell me since the FX1 came out over a year ago that "its crap, etc. wait for the Pany, canon, and JVC!" Well I'm still waiting, and in the meantime I finally bit the bullet and shot with the HC1. And I dont think Ill regret it in the near future when I have a HDTV projector and can project an HD image and not an SD one.

[Guest Charlie Seper]

Jesus, are you always such a prick? Is it because you're a sound guy trying to argue with a bunch of film and video professionals? Generally, civil arguments are better looked upon than insulting an entire forum full of professionals.

 

Do you really think that making money from something so you can hang the "professionsal" tag on your door means anything? Well, being a music guy who's played, amateurly, semi-professionaly, and professionaly for 30 or so years let me tell you that the vast majority of people making a full-time living playing/writing music are terrible at what they do. Good gosh man, do you not own a radio? Have you never read a book from the "best sellers list"? The best sellers are ALWAYS the worst books in any bookstore. And the VAST MAJORITY of great films were made well before my father was ten years of age. Saying I'm supposed to respect crap because some idiot made their living making it is simply rediculous and the type of argument I'd expect from a grade-school kid. Think a little bit before you bother replying to me in the future kiddo. I don't have time for nonsense. And if that's an insult, its a well-earned one.

 

If I'm reading you correctly, you are saying HDV is as good as film and this is simply not true.

 

You aren't reading me correctly. I said 35mm was a nutty over-priced medium which is totally unnecessary. And I said nothing about HDV looking as good as film because I haven't even seen it projected yet. I said that "Novemer" looked really good and that HDV might have pushed it to "terrific". I think a Viper is every bit as good as 35mm on a 20' screen. Maybe not a 30' screen, but even HDV ought to be close enough that no one would think twice about it. I heard a lot of people talking about "November" walking out of the theatre; not one of them said a word about it looking bad, or not looking like film, or even thought twice about how it looked. All any of them talked about was the ending and whether or not they liked it. Most thought it was strange. So did I. However, I think that any form of HD looks exactly like 35mm film on a TV set, including hi-def and a home theatre system of any size, which is where most people are seeing movies now and that trend will continue in the futre. The fact is that television is already switching over to HD in the droves. There are a lot of dramas being shot in HD for TV. I always point to "Joan of Arcadia" as being a great example. No one would have ever thought it WASN"T shot on film. So, the bottom of all this is the following:

 

(1) Nobody ever comes out of a movie theatre wondering if what they just saw was shot on film or video except for people who make movies themselves, which is almost nobody.

 

(2) HD (and I would guess HDV) looks quite good enough on even a 30' screen. Good enough that film is simply wasteful and something best left to incredibly selfish film people who would rather think about themselves than put that money to better use helping those who could use it.

 

(3) Depth of field blurring is not only overused but not needed. I couldn't care less if a lot of hi-def cams can achieve it without a mini35 adapter--I wouldn't get caught dead using one. If someone else wants to that's fine, the mini35 will get them there with no problem.

 

(4) The vast majority of all that extra color info that 35mm film has will never be seen by any human eye unless Superman really exists somewhere. As I tried to show with my test above, no one can even tell 4:2:2 from 4:1:1 or from a 4:1:1 that's been compressed by 75%. NO ONE! If they can't see any difference on the lower end of the spectrum they sure aren't going to see it on the upper end, as in 4:4:4. Now it may be true about being able to see a difference with blue/green screen effects. I don't know. But few films (except for mostly action junk aimed at kids) will ever need to use those effects. Science documentaries make use of them quite often as anyone who ever watched NOVA will tell you, but green screen stuff even on standard def will look quite good enough for TV Docs. I'm still scripting a film on Mysticism, mostly based on the Catholic Mystics, and I can't imagine a reason to think twice about blurring effects or green screen effects.

 

(5) I must say that, the way DOF is abused today it truely makes me wonder why anyone would spend all that money on film, only to blur the daylights out of half the frames, or why anyone would spend the same money only to bleach a ton of frames.

 

(6) Film-making today (dramatic films) is simply terrible. Not just the stories but they way they look and the way they're directed. One quick cut after another, one close-up after another, one far field blur after another, horid music scores. People need to stand back and take a good look at the great day of films and see why they were so good. More often than not nearly every frame was shot from a tripod and at a mid range where you could see the acter/s from at least the waste up. The film-maker would just stand back and allow the acters to act. Now, film-makers want to do the acting for them by closing in on every movement. Great films are not about close-framing, they're about acting out a story. Close-ups make physical gestures impossible. Everything is about facial gestures now. Its purely retarded film making. Unless people learn to make good films again it sure as hell won't matter what you shoot on. As the saying goes, "Anybody can make crap." Putting that crap on HD won't make it any more or less crap. Making a great movie on HD won't make it any less great either. No one will leave the theatre caring what it was shot on one way or the other.

 

(7) The well-lived life is one that's in service to others. Not one in which you waste your money on catering to selfishness, and petty selfishness at that. You're the ONLY person who will think twice about whether your movie was shot on film.

 

And those reasons don't even bring up the fact that the thousands of theaters around the world use film projectors and aren't going to switch to video projectors anytime soon.

 

And every one of them would switch tomorrow if they could afford it. And as the price of projectors comes down they ALL will. And its not about just the movie theatres anymore. Do you realize that in America nearly half the Protestant Churches have projectors and at least 10' screens. That's where one of my businesses was based on, so I know a little about this. I used to sell ripping software to churches along with my own flash based tutorials on ripping short segments from DVD's to use in sermon illustrations and the like. The church pays a small fee to the http://www.cvli.org/cvli/LicenseFees.cfm?Country=US and they can play all the clips they want. They can also play entire movies to youth groups.

 

I don't know why it's so hard to reationally discuss the technical aspects of a particular piece of technology without it turning into a heated political debate, as if saying that shooting in 4:1:1 is technically worse than shooting in 4:4:4 is somehow a personal insult rather than a simple statement of fact. If someone told me that 65mm was technically better than 35mm, I don't get offended even though I can't afford to shoot in 65mm. Why should I? It's just a technical fact.

 

Its a useless fact 99% of the time (maybe green screen effects are an ecpetion if what Eki says is true). If you can't see it, it may as well not be there. I'm sure that technically, 24-trakcs of analog audio recorded on tape ten miles wide would be superior to audio recorded on 2" tape too. But its a useless fact if no one could hear the difference.

 

You don't have to make claims that it's just as good technically as 35mm because that would not only be silly, but it would be inaccurate and would place the wrong emphasis on your work, which you want to be taken for what it is.

 

No one's claiming that its as good. I'm claiming that HD and probably even HDV is so good that film doesn't matter anymore and most of the time no one would be able to tell which is which. Being "technically" better and being better in a way that can be seen, or that anyone would or SHOULD care about is a different thing altogether.

 

I just question anyone who either claims that (1) the technical quality is equivalent to 35mm, or that (2) the technical quality is "good enough" to be the standard for cinema in general or that (3) technical quality doesn't matter. Because you don't have to go there just to justify shooting in consumer HDV if that's all you can afford anyway.

 

I'm saying that HD is quite good enough. HDV--I don't know yet. More importantly, I'm saying that its not only the epitome of sillyness to "care" about shooting on film anymore, but more importantly, its a tremendous waste of resourses that could and SHOULD be used to house the homeless, feed the poor, and a long list of other selfless acts that ALL GOOD PEOPLE focus their lifes on. Focusing on whether or not your next movie is shot on film is simply a selfish way to live your life based on something incredibly petty. if you feel otherwise then we've nothing left to say to one another.

 

I think you will find HDV is 19mbits / second.

 

Its between 19 and 25 depending on some varibles.

[David Mullen ASC]

What nonsense to imply that money spent shooting features on film might get shifted towards the homeless if Hollywood only switched to shooting in HD...

 

Next time I shoot a feature that is budgeted to shoot in 35mm and instead suggest they switch to shooting in HD, I can guarantee that there will be practically no savings if they have to go out to film, and if they didn't go out to film, the savings wouldn't go to feeding the poor! It wouldn't even go to paying the crew more salary! It would just go elsewhere in the system, to the actors probably.

 

Which brings up another point, which is that the amount of money spent in Hollywood to shoot in 35mm is microscopic to the amount of money they spend on their lead actors, so to rail against a feature production spending $200,000 to shoot on 35mm instead of $100,000 to shoot on HD, yet ignore the fact that they may be paying a single actor ten million dollars...

 

So the whole argument against film as being somehow morally wasteful because that money could be used on social problems in the country is ridiculous, nonsensical, and a little bit deranged. It is certainly misplaced hostility. We spend 100 million dollars or more on some features and its the cost of their FILM STOCK that is pissing you off???

 

I can guarantee one thing: if Hollywood tomorrow completely junked 35mm for HD instead, movies would still cost the same amount of money to make. The average cost of a studio film would still be over 40 million.

 

I will also remind you that this is a CINEMATOGRAPHY forum, so it's just nuts to come here and rail against people who, for some reason that you can't fathom, ACTUALLY CARE DEEPLY ABOUT PHOTOGRAPHIC IMAGE QUALITY.

 

Also, my own personal belief is that we should strive to make better images, not figure out what is the minimal quality level we can get away with. I want 35mm to get better, I want HD to get better. Personally, with some movies costing 100 million dollars, I don't see why more of them can't be shot in 65mm. I wish 70mm release prints came back. I want to go to a movie and be impressed visually by what I see on the screen. I want to see the occasional "2001" and "Lawrence of Arabia" still made. I don't want filmmakers to dream small, I don't want what we get in a movie theater to be barely any better than what we can get at home.

 

I'm all for variety in the marketplace, and I think all the digital AND film formats should be used, big and little. We're at a stage where digital technology may make it possible to improve the viewing experience in a theater, but it won't happen if we decide to stop improving and make current HD the standard quality level, because in a few years we will regret it. In a few years, it may be possible to shoot and project movies in 4K digital -- but if you believe that 35mm is overkill, then you'd also have to believe that 4K digital cinema is also unnecessary. So I don't get the attitude that on the one hand, gets interested in HDV because it's an improvement over DV, but also believes that there is a quality level where we should just stop at, that thinks 4K or 35mm is TOO good, 2K is borderline too good, current HD is just right, etc.

 

It makes no sense to me to be interested in an improving technology but also believe that what most people are currently using is TOO MUCH quality (i.e. 35mm) and that most filmmakers and cinematographers care TOO MUCH about the quality of the images they create.

Edited December 11, 2005 by David Mullen

[David Mullen ASC]

I will add that the problem with high compression and high color subsampling, low bit depth, etc. comes when you try and manipulate those images in post.

 

Anyone who has color-corrected a feature shot in 8-bit, 3:1:1 HDCAM knows what I'm talking about... You find yourself working within a very narrow range of possible corrections, outside of which you end up with a lot of VERY VISIBLE artifacts. This can have creative consequences.

[Jaan Shenberger]

>> Hi,

 

>>I think you will find HDV is 19mbits / second.

 

>>Stephen

 

 

not to cause any sort of agitation, but even though it is true that hdv has a smaller datarate than dv25, that really is no way to judge the image quality. the majority of compression algorithms become more efficient in compacting data as the number of pixels increase. and dv25 is an intraframe compression, while hdv uses interframe meaning it's efficiently sharing data amongst numerous frames (15 i believe). the datarate issue can only objectively prove that hdv is a much more efficient codec than dv25.

 

i'm not a big fan of hdv myself, but it's great to have an option between sd dv and hd dv100.

[Max Jacoby]

As I tried to show with my test above, no one can even tell 4:2:2 from 4:1:1 or from a 4:1:1 that's been compressed by 75%. NO ONE! If they can't see any difference on the lower end of the spectrum they sure aren't going to see it on the upper end, as in 4:4:4.

The initial point of your discussion, if I may remind you, is not 4:2:2 vs 4:1:1, but 35mm vs HDV. So why don't you go ahead and shoot this test again: same outside scene in sunlight, once shot on 35mm and once shot on a HDV camera of your choice. You post it here and see if people can tell a difference.

 

Now is that a deal or what? If you feel bad about paying for the purchase and processing of the film, I will donate the equivalent of what you had to spend to a charity for homeless people. But really, since it's just a short test, you should be able to get everything for free, as long as you don't start insulting the fiilmstock/lab-person you're talking to on the phone like you are insulting us here.

[Brian Drysdale]

Economics are going to drive the conversion of the cinemas to digital projection. There are committees discussing the standards and these won't be as cheap as running 35mm film projectors (with the odd sound upgrade). If people are paying they'll want a standard a lot higher that they can experience in their own homes. Good enough is the wow factor at any given time. The saving comes in not having to transport the film prints.

 

The issue is what the image looks like on a 30ft or 40ft screen. 16mm looks good projected onto a 10ft screen, not so hot on a 30ft wide screen.

 

There is an aesthetic to this. Why do musicians still use valves in their guitar amps? Answer is gives a warmer sound. Film looks different to HD or video formats, so you use can use the different "looks" as required. I had a conversation with a manager in BBC drama who said they were concerned about the cleaner look that HD gives compared to Super16.

 

In PAL you can tell the difference between 4.1.1 and 4.2.2, the colours tend to be more blocky with the former and not as smooth. When you shoot the master material, you use the best quality format that you can afford (it'll degrade as you go down the distribution chain) and gives the overall aesthetic look you want. I know people who sometimes shoot on Super 8; they also have cut it into 35mm because that's the way they want to tell their story.

 

As regards the funding homeless etc., there are debates to be had on the question if governments should be spending so much on arms etc. Shooting film on 35mm as against HD is petty cash at these levels and doesn't raise the same moral issues. On a large Hollywod studio feature film the film stock is one of the cheaper items. Perhaps you ask why the stars get paid so much.

 

The only way to see how HDV performs projected on 35mm is to shoot a test. You'll soon see where is works and where is falls apart. I suspect it may be like Super 16 in some aspects, better at closer shots and not so good at landscapes. The smaller number of CCD pixels in the HDV cameras are always going to limit their resolution compared to the high end HD cameras with better optics.

[Erkki Halkka]

The initial point of your discussion, if I may remind you, is not 4:2:2 vs 4:1:1, but 35mm vs HDV.

 

Well, this thread has evolved to something much more... not sure if "more" is always better ;-)

 

But back to Charlie's claim, I don't think anyone disagrees, that IN SOME CASES it's very hard or impossible to tell 4:4:4 from 4:1:1. That's part of my reasoning why HDV could pass as 35mm in theaters, IN SOME CASES.

 

The thing is, in other cases, the difference is obvious. The result CAN be fixed to some extent in post, but it's not a miracle or something, you don't magically get that missing information from thin air - you can just make the errors harder to notice.

 

Edit: fixed the above sentence, it was missing half of the words ,-)

 

Here's a grab from MiniDV vid i shot on holiday at Madeira (Nice place, BTW). In most areas of the frame, low color sampling produces rather acceptable results, it would probably be hard to see the difference to 4:4:4 at 100% size. But then there's some tourists that have bought matching bright red caps...

 

http://eki.pp.fi/temp/Eki/ColorSampling/Madeira_411.png

 

It doesn't take Superman vision to see the errors.

 

So why don't you go ahead and shoot this test again: same outside scene in sunlight, once shot on 35mm and once shot on a HDV camera of your choice. You post it here and see if people can tell a difference.

 

I've been trying to get to shoot some side by side shots with video and film lately. But, shooting film for SD is getting really rare here (i've been involved in maybe 2-3 film originated projects in the last year or so, compared to dozens a year just a few years back). And on those 2-3, i've only participated in post.

 

We did do some side by side tests earlier, 35mm VS DVCPro50, i'll try to find something from those - but the thing is, i don't work at that company anymore. Even in those tests, the video portion of the shoot was an ugly duckling... as the shoots are usually a bit hectic anyway ;-)

 

Me to talent: "Hey, don't run off just yet, i'll take one more shot" - then i take the vidcam, handheld, and shoot something for a few seconds, with the settings that happened to be in the camera. "Thank you!". Not exactly a fair comparision.

Edited December 11, 2005 by Eki Halkka

[Erkki Halkka]

I had a conversation with a manager in BBC drama who said they were concerned about the cleaner look that HD gives compared to Super16.

 

To me, as a person who spends more than half of the time doing post production, "cleaner" is always a good thing. "Flat" and "neutral" is also a good thing.

 

Why?? Simply because you can always degrade the techical quality, by adding grain/noise, increasing contrast, blurring etc. Removing grain, de-blurring, or trying to rescue details from crushed blacks is much harder...

 

Simply put, neutral, grainless, low contrast image can be manipulated to look like pretty much anything - but it's an one way street. Think of the law of entropia ;-)

[Max Jacoby]

But back to Charlie's claim, I don't think anyone disagrees, that IN SOME CASES it's very hard or impossible to tell 4:4:4 from 4:1:1. That's part of my reasoning why HDV could pass as 35mm in theaters, IN SOME CASES.

 

I do not see how you can go from comparing 4:4;4 to 4:1:1 to comparing 35mm to HDV, since the differences are much greater. 35mm has much more colordepth than HDV.

 

I just got back from the screening of a film that I worked on which was shot on HDCAM with Panavision Lenses. The sharpness wasn't terrific (it was okay for close-ups but wide shots suffered) and certainly not 35mm quality. But my main problem was the limited color depth and the poor handling of highlights. Especially fleshtones didn't look good, skin never looked natural. And any part of the frame that was more than a couple of stops overexposed just lacked any detail and blocked up. There were lots of flames in shot and they never looked right.

[David Mullen ASC]

But back to Charlie's claim, I don't think anyone disagrees, that IN SOME CASES it's very hard or impossible to tell 4:4:4 from 4:1:1. That's part of my reasoning why HDV could pass as 35mm in theaters, IN SOME CASES.

The thing is, in other cases, the difference is obvious.

 

Well, that's the same problem with compression. Some types of shots challenge the compression scheme and color-subsampling and some don't. Trouble is that the average feature can have 1000 shots or more, so at some point, you're going to be bit on the a--.

 

Also, as Max points out, most of these systems are judged in two opposite ways: how they handle wide shots (i.e. is there enough resolution) and how they handle fleshtones in close-ups (where color, bit-depth limitations may be more visible). I would add a third factor, which is how they handle movement, which is one area where compression problems can become more visible.

 

The issue isn't whether you can shoot a movie in DV, HDV, whatever. It's being done all the time. I just saw a reel of Paul Reiser's new movie "The Thing About My Folks", projected onto a large screen, and considering it was shot on the SDX900 (480/24P) it looked pretty good. Of course, it had technical problems like clipping, chroma bleed, whatever, but most viewers would get used to the look pretty quickly just as they do when they see a Super-16 blow-up. I'm sure HDV will also blow-up to 35mm with nice results if shot well. That really isn't the question here. We were talking about the technical difficiencies of various HD systems and how they need to be improved IF they wish to match 35mm.

 

As for the argument that pro HD matches 35mm in the theater, well, if you believe that 35mm is overkill in the quality department for theatrical projection (highly debatable), then by that logic, HD is also quality overkill!

[Brian Drysdale]

To me, as a person who spends more than half of the time doing post production, "cleaner" is always a good thing. "Flat" and "neutral" is also a good thing.

 

Why?? Simply because you can always degrade the techical quality, by adding grain/noise, increasing contrast, blurring etc. Removing grain, de-blurring, or trying to rescue details from crushed blacks is much harder...

 

Simply put, neutral, grainless, low contrast image can be manipulated to look like pretty much anything - but it's an one way street. Think of the law of entropia ;-)

 

If you're going a gritty drama you may not want clean. The BBC person's concern was that they'd lose that sense of a rough world. HD can look extremely clean; it's how to develop a new look for these dramas using the new format that he was concerned about. BBC drama has always had a different look to the 35mm American dramas. Also, grain is good for some subjects.

[Erkki Halkka]

I do not see how you can go from comparing 4:4;4 to 4:1:1 to comparing 35mm to HDV, since the differences are much greater. 35mm has much more colordepth than HDV.

 

Color sampling is just one part of the HDV vs. Film equation. I only meant that in some shots, the color sampling errors are not visible.

 

I just got back from the screening of a film that I worked on which was shot on HDCAM with Panavision Lenses. The sharpness wasn't terrific (it was okay for close-ups but wide shots suffered) and certainly not 35mm quality. But my main problem was the limited color depth and the poor handling of highlights. Especially fleshtones didn't look good, skin never looked natural. And any part of the frame that was more than a couple of stops overexposed just lacked any detail and blocked up. There were lots of flames in shot and they never looked right.

 

 

Don't get me wrong, it's not perfect, but i think it's better than you suppose.

 

You shouldn't overexpose video. At all, if possible. You should expose for highlights, and adjust gamma to get correct exposure in midtones and darks. The aim is to make sure none of the color channels gets oversaturated in areas where you need to keep information (i.e. a bare lightbulb is usually ok to be blown out).

 

Of course, there are occasions where this is not enough to capture the full dynamic range of the scene (your flame scene was probably one of these), but it *should* get you quite a bit of the way there. This adjustment is best done in-camera to as big a degree as possible, before compression / bit depth reduction.

 

You can push up the gamma like this untill you feel the darks are getting too noisy or you see visible color banding. If the goal is to match film, you can adjust untill the amoint of noise in shadows matches the film's grain amount. You'll then just need to add grain only to the midtones and highlings, matching the film.

 

See this example (i happened to have a MiniDV here at home right now)

 

 

From this example, you can see a few things:

 

First of all video cameras, at default settings, have a rather linear gamma. This means, simply adusting levels in post is more or less exactly the same as adjusting exposure, or gain in camera.

 

The top right image is overexposed video (Orig2), the bottom right video is underexposed video (Orig1) adjusted with simply cranking up levels. The result is almost exactly the same - only big difference is that the adjusted image has more noise.

 

The image on the bottom left was also color timed from the underexposed top left video clip - but this time by adjusting the gamma curve. As you can see, the shadow areas look rather similar to the overexposed clip, but the highlights are NOT blown out.

 

As far as the color range goes, it's quite rare to run into subjects that fall outside the hue/saturation range of video cameras. More or less all things in nature fall within the range, including human skin. It's just a matter of color timing them properly.

 

The biggest difference to film is just how far things can be pushed. If you don't need to push far, you can get very similar results - the differences start to show in extreme situations.

 

This is especially true when digital intermediate is used - even though the imagery is high bitdepth most of the way, film printers tend to be 8 bit / channel (the same as i.e. MiniDV), AFAIK.