Joshua Reis

If you have the JVC HDV VTR, editing 720P 23.98, this may be a good option. I know most HDV decks will not record 23.98 frames since it not part of the HDV 1080 spec. Someone else may have a solution.

If you shot 4:3 standard 16mm, then doing a Standard definition Digibeta transfer on a Spirit 2k would probably be your most reasonable solution. If you want a great looking DVD, but sure to a professional 23.98 pregressive encode. You would be surpised at how good your film will look on a progresive scan display, even when it is upresed since it is progressive.

I purchased a Super 16 SRII last summer and it has made a world of a difference getting me work and ultimately allowing me to build my reel at a rapid rate (faster than my peers who don't have cameras.) With all the new HD pro suymer cameras coming out, I was extremely hesitant about investing in a film package, but so far it has been worth it. I wouldn't look at a camera purchase as a pure investment - I have rented my camera a few times and it has made some of my investment back. But more importantly, I'm building a career with it.

Hi, check out the FilmTools online store. they have a handful of options under the Camera Assistant section www.filmtools.com http://store.yahoo.com/cinemasupplies/grayscalandc.html

There are a couple of companies manufacturing color video assists for SR I and SR 2 cameras. Yes, unfortunately Jurgens is all out of SR videotaps, many which consider to be the best (I purchased the last one four months ago). Visual Products in Ohio has their own viteotap unit (www.visualproducts.com. Lee Utterback (http://www.lucamera.com) in San Francisco makes a J-bar design. And in Europe P+S technik has their SR Evolution Video Assist which is very good, but the priciest. http://www.pstechnik.de

Hi, editing in native HDPRO HD for an offline and bumping up to an uncompressed sequence for online finishing is a good idea as you mention. You could use media manager to export the selects and generate the new uncompressed sequence. A G5 running FCP 5 with lets say a Firewire 800 Raid (Lacie 1 TB big disk or similar) is more than capable of playing back uncompressed 720P material in 8 and 10 bit. This is great since 720P doesn't require an expensive SCSI or Fibre Raid like for 1080. The HDPRO HD 720P codec at 24fps is around 4.8 megabytes. 720P at 24 fps uncompressed is under 80 megabytes. An also interesting note, HDCAM transport records 1440x1080 and HDPRO HD is 960x720, so neither formats record at full HD res to begin with. The HDPRO HD codec at 60 frames is 14.8 megabytes (DV100). Its double of DVCPRO 50 (DV50) at 7.2 megabytes. I wish HDPRO HD had a native 720P 24 frame mode, the transport always records at 60 frames wasting so much data.

Hi, you have a lot of choices here. If you will be transfering directly to hard disk,find out what codec the telecine house will be using. There are obvious hardware requirments for editing uncompressed HD footage so once you have everyhting on your drives, I would use the Final Cut Media Manager and create HD offline clones of your foootage using a compressed codec such as HDPRO or photo jpeg. Generating standard Def offline quicktimes in DV is always an option as well. Using one of these compressed codecs will allow you to even edit at HD res on a powerbook or single ATA drive. With HDPRO you will gain additional realtime performance which is a nice bonus. Once you are finished with your offline edit, you can generate an EDL and link back to your uncompressed media to render out a pristine Master Quicktime from which you can go out to tape (HDCAM, D-5) or H264 (HD-DVD) or any other format. While you will be recording directly to hard disk, I always think its a good idea to simultaneously record to tape as well such as HDCAM or D5. If anythign ever goes wrong, drive failure, or just purely for archival, tape is safe. When you are finished with a project, you already have your footage archived. Its worth the extra cost. A 16:9 crop on the Super 16 1.66 frame is very minor. Also, just as a note, just becuase you are going out to HD, doesn't always mean that your footage is 16:9. I have had 4:3 footage transfered to full frame HDCAM resulting in a horizontal stretch which was reversed in post. We wanted to mazimize the tape data rate for visula fx work. So be specific (label your framing chart) when you send your footage to telecine, they could always transfer your footage 1.66 by adding mattes on the left and right of the frame if you didn't want to crop the top and bottom for 1.78.

Hi, yes you can do an anamorphic transfer for DVD and in post create a letterbox Master in Avid or Final Cut Pro. Also, if you framed for 1.78, you can always do a full frame 1.33 transfer in telecine and matte/letterbox your film in post. This will give you some vertical Pan and Scan if you have to slightly reframe a shot in post as opposeed to coming locked with 1.78 letterboxed right out of telecine. Also, if you plan on going directly to DVD, I highly suggest that you edit at 23.98 so that you can have a 23.98 Progressive encode. This way, when you output to digital betacam (or any tape format) the 3:2 pull down cadence will be continuous and can be pulled up back to 23.98 frames without flash interlace frames at cuts. Best of Luck

Hi, it sounds like you have your HDV post workflow figured. It may be a good idea to have your transfer record to HDCAM or D5 in addition to going directly to HDV drive. Since you are paying for the telecine transfer, it would be a good idea to record to a higher quality format to allow for more flexiblity in the future. I always find myself reaching for my HDCAM copies from archival. Best of luck

I always try to do this type of work on After Effects or Shake, but based on what you have, give this a try. Create a custom "Action" in Photoshop based on a test frame. Then, convert your movie or quicktime clip to a TIFF, PICT, or PSD image sequence (any lossless format, quicktime pro can do this). Then, In Photoshop you can run a batch of your custom action on the image sequence (select the folder that contains the image sequence files. This should be a good start, but once you get this going I'm sure you will develope your own workflow that meets your needs. Best of luck.

Also, at the head and tail of a roll you will typicaly see more dust on the film. Especialy with short ends. Yes, be sure to mark in the camera report "save tails or "critical tails" to give the lab notice as to not cut too much off the end of the roll. When prepping for telecine, a short amount is also lost when the camera rolls are assembled. This may also increase the amount of dust and film handling at the ends (scratches) depending on the quality of the lab.

Hi, I built a Hand Crank Arri M a few months back and have used it on a hanful of shoots with great results. The Arri M is great becuase its small, lightweight, its low cost, and is great for short ends with the 200 foot mags. Camera accepts 2R and 1 R film. I have attached a link to two quicktime clips and a photo of the camera. One of the clips is 7285 cross processed. http://joshuareis.com/16mm/

I would defintely hold back from purchasing any HD equipment unless you absolutly need is immediate since Panasonic just releast new P2 equipment and Sony just came our with the F900R and XDCAM HD series. Best to let things settle a little and see how things perform in the the field.

How about shooting 35mm 3 perf, then telecine to D5 or HDCAM SR? This will also give you the possibility of doing a 2k or 4k D.I. if necessary. Kodak 5217 and 5212 are great stocks. I've also shot a few green screen commercials super 16 (for standard def only) on Fuji 250T 8652 with great results. Super 16 for NTSC, PAL and 720P is fine, but for a 1080P master, its a bit of a stretch. Best of luck

It allmost makes more sense to purchase a Sony JH3 HDCAM player for in house post work/edit. Then rent an F900 and be able to shoot 23.98, 60, 60i or whatever you need per job. Seems like a better investment to buy the deck rather than an HDV camera and not have to deal with VTR rentals. This is assuming that HDCAM will meet your acquisition and post requirements.

Hi, yes Sorenson is a good codec. be sure to enable "compressed header" or "fast start" when encoding your clips. This way the quicktimes can begin playing once enough data has been buffered and before they have completely loaded.

Hi, there are a number of things that you can do or have done to produce a high quality DVD. First, I am assuming that this is a NTSC project, not PAL. What tape format did you transfer to..Digital Betcam, DVCPRO50, DVCAM, DV? If you want a 16x9 (widescreen without letterbox) you will have needed to performed an Anamorphic telecine transfer. Remember that Super 16 is 1.66, not 1.78(16:9) so some cropping of the frame or mattign will be necessary, but its minor. Most, if not a all retail feature DVDs are anamoprphic and have been encoded at 23.98 frames per second. Thus the movie can be played back in progressive on a computer or properly set progressive scan player + display combo. All set top DVD players will do a 3:2 pull up to display 23.98 material at 29.97 interlaced for standard NTSC television. Now here are the important steps, if you want a 23.98 encode, you must have made your edit in FCP at 23.98 frames. Its my guess that you will be encoding with Compressor. When you compress your 23.98 movie, the encode must be flagged as 16:9, and progressive. if the file isn't flgged progressive, a progressive scan player or the computer will deinterlace the M2V while playign the DVD, which will result in a loss of resolution. Remember to build all your DVD menus artwork 16:9 720x480, but use a 1.2 pixel aspect ratio which can be set in Photoshop. You can also build your artwork at 864x486 with square pixels and resize to 720x480 and get the appropriate proportions. if You edited to this point at 29.97, and have your project matered to tape, there are hardware encoders outt here that will do inverse telecine and give you a 23.98 encode even if the cadence (3:2 pull down) is not consistent betwen cuts.

Hi, Fuji has a Free DVD with samples of their stocks. In some cases they even compare 35mm and Super 16 footage (NTSC). It can be ordered from their web-site. Here is the link. http://www.fujifilm.com/JSP/fuji/epartners/MPDemoReel.jsp

Hi, ran a couple of cross processing tests last month with 7285. I have a quictime posted at the following link. http://joshuareis.com/16mm/HankCrank_1-_So...Large-23.98.mov

Hi, I don't have any standard 16mm captured in HD at the momment, but I do have a bunch of Super 16 still frames that you can view at the link bellow. They are all 8bit tiff and jpg clones at 1920x1080 res. HD stills http://www.joshuareis.com/super16 As a tech note, all the footage was shot with an Arri SR 2, Zeiss 12-120 zoom. Transfer was done on a Spirit 2k and recorded onto 24P HDCAM. All the footage was captureed single link 10 bit 4:2:2 uncompressed and extracted as 8 bit tiff files that are 1920x1080. All the Rome footage is 7205, Lake Tahoe is 7245, LA footage is 7218. For Super 16, I have been impressed with the results. I have also been invloved with some Blu Ray HD testing, and have a sample 1920x1080 H264 quicktime file. Its very interesting to note, how the H264 codec really softens / reduces the Super 16 grain. I'm not sure if this has to do with the codec itself or is mainly caused by this particular encoder. To the eyes, the H264 codec looks cleaner (less contrasty grain) and is more pleasing to view than the uncompressed master file. Here is the link, requires Quicktime 7 or newer to view. HD H264 1920x1080 and 1280x720 Quicktime samples http://jrlab.us/super16/quicktime/

Hi, Based on your situation, I would recommend transfering to digital betacam without windows (timecode overlays). I would also have the telecine has transfer to DVCAM (clones), but with windowburns. Yes, this may cost a little more upront, but you will save money becuase you will be abl to edit and capture all your footage renting a cheap DVCAM deck and not having to pay for the digital betacam hourly capture rate, which is expensive. One you are finished editing offline from the DVCAM, you can produce an EDL or batchlist from your cut, then go capture your selectrs from the digi tapes at 1:1 (uncompressed). Working uncompressed will give you more leverage in your color correction. Plus, having the window burns will help greatly in post if you run into an timecode or keycode errors (if you have to cut a future negative). In the long run, the DVCAM clones will save you money. I don't know how long your piece is, or if there is sync or mos dailies, but this workflow is a safe and typicaly way of going. Best of luck

Hi, recommend transfering your Telecine footage Anamorphic. Once you are finished with your edit in Final Cut, you will render out an Anamorphic Master Quicktime. Then reimportant the anamorphic master in a non anamorphic sequence and you can produce a letterbox version as well. This way you will have both versions for DVD, broadcast, or for whatever your delivery requirements may be.

I used to have an Scoopic, its easy to use, requires low maintenance, has a wonderful still frame feature, but the image quality that it put out was so so. I swaped mine for an Arri M with a set of Cookes and 200 foot mags. Using the Arr M, I especialy like the convenience of goign down to the short ends shop rather than dealing with daylight loads.

For that kind of money I agree with TimCarroll. The LTR 7 has a low top speed of 32fps. I would encourage you to upgrade to at least a LTR 54. Also, in the at price range, I would only invest in a PL mount system. I used to have an LTR 7 shooting as a B cam alongside my SR and being able run 54 frames or faster with the SR is one of the greatest aspects of shooting film over video.

Hi,I had a similar situation. I think tobin cinema systems already makes what you need. I purchased a pigtail from them and now I am able to use 12v 4 pin XLR batteries with my Arri M cameras. http://www.tobincinemasystems.com/page3.html