MiniDV transfer to 35mm Questions

Anthony Fernandez · December 15, 2004

Hello,

I'm new to the forum here so whatever hazing ritual is necessary in making me

one of your own, then by all means ridicule away.

I'm hoping someone can give a full answer or any sort of insight in to the

MiniDV to film transfer process as far as what is lost in image quality and how to

possibly avoid losing it.

Also, just out of curiosity, would anyone know what would result in say reducing your

MiniDV's shutter to 30, shooting it in that setting, then doing a film transfer?

Would it just be a mess of pixelation and strobing? I'd imagine so but I can't really be sure.

I've been researching it for a while but haven't had the funds to really experiment with it myself.

Hopefully my questions aren't so vauge and general in terms of conditions provided

that no one can answer it. But if you need a more specific scenario I'd be happy to come up with one. Or if you'd even have a shooting/lighting scenario to make an example of, please do.

Thanks-Anthony

David Mullen ASC · December 15, 2004

You have to specify whether you are talking about shooting standard 50i or 60i DV versus 24P, 25P, and 30P for a film transfer.

In a 60i-only camera (no progressive-scan option), any shutter speeds longer than the capture rate (60 times per second), means that the capture rate is dropping below normal but somehow the image is still be recorded as 60i. So at 1/30th of a second, the camera can't be taking 60 fields per second anymore yet the final image has to be normal motion, not sped-up looking. The question is how it solves that problem. If it's not a progressive-scan camera, it's not suddenly shooting 30P at 1/30th and storing each frame as two fields, it's effectively 30i but somehow writing each field twice to get back to 60i. I believe, but could be wrong, that this causes a loss of vertical resolution because you are working with less information (fewer fields being repeated.)

But if you are shooting in 30P mode on something like the DVX100, then 1/30th just means that you are employing no shutter and exposing the CCD for the maximum amount of time, 30 times per second.

The other issue, of course, is that you are getting more motion blur at 1/30th instead of 1/60th, but how bad that looks depends on how much motion is in the frame or how much the camera is moving.

Anthony Fernandez · December 15, 2004

Thanks for the response David.

My apologies for being so vauge.

I should've mentioned the camera I've been experimenting on is the Sony PD-150.

And I suppose we could narrow it down to what shooting at 1/30 shutter speed would end up looking like once transferred to film as far as loss of quality and motion.

Although I think even on little or no movement shooting at 1/30th just looks awful anyway. But this is strictly about experiment.

Would the actual flow and movement be changed at all in a film transfer under these settings?

And concerning loss of quality/color in blowing up the digital image to film,

does that actually happen in the transfer? If not, what does happen?

How do you avoid any of the inevitable flaws that come with the transfer?

I have to ask this question in the most general sense because I'm assuming some dv's would end up looking a lot better in a transfer than others.

Thanks again-Anthony

David Mullen ASC · December 16, 2004

Whether you shoot with a 1/30th or 1/60th or 1/2000th shutter speed, that just affects the amount of blur in the frame, and perhaps resolution (with 1/30th) but has no affect on your ability to transfer the 60i recording to 24 fps film.

Most of the "loss" in the transfer (assuming it's a good transfer process like a laser recorder) is not so much loss but lack of quality in the 4:1:1 highly-compressed original made more obvious by the film's higher resolution and color capability. You can compensate somewhat for any dulling down of contrast and saturation by printing onto Vision Premier, which is more satuarted and contrasty.