Tenolian Bell

I wasn't trying to deride HDCAM, just matter of factly stating that it is 3:1:1. To add some context to the quote from Geoff, this was from a few years back. This statement was from a time when Sony's literature was saying HDCAM was just like shooting 35mm. So Geoff's reaction was, its not like 35mm and this is why.

"So, instead of making a personal controlled decision of how to compromise the full range of a picture a set of chips will alter the color response, matrix, sharpen your picture, detail, and then chuck a whole load of it away with compression or just chopping some of it away. I'm sure that the F900 actually produces a great picture but they then throw away 25% of the luminance picture 75% of the color picture and then compress what's left 4 times!" Which ends up being 3:1:1 A quote from Geoff Boyle after his first experiences with the F900.

Looks like from the brochure the full 4X3 image is in data mode which they say is 2260 resolution. Geez is that counting the bayer filter?

HDCAM is actually 3:1:1 a long way from 4:4:4

Well you will need at lot of storage either way. FCP HD does only work natively with DVC-Pro HD. Here is a card you can look at http://www.blackmagic-design.com/site/decklinkhdpro.htm Black magic software is known to make it easier to deal with Quicktime and HDCAM.

If you are talking about the early years of "Sex and The City" or the early years of "Buffy The Vampire Slayer". Yeah the DVD transfers of those shows are really griany, that was dealing with older film stocks, and back before the optical enlargment for 16mm transfer was as good as it is now. Now most of the kinks in the system have been worked out and it looks great.

Looking at the original point to this thread. A multi Emmy wining power house like West Wing switching to Super 16 certainly validates it's viability for television.

Ah the XTR, I love it.

Actually its not that difficult for S16 to have all of the same attributes of 35mm, it may take a little more effort than if you were shooting 35mm in the first place, but it's not rocket science. You just have to add value at every stage. First and foremost they are both film. They both have the exact same chemistry, sensitometry, gama curve, color reproduction. It would be best to shoot with the slowest speed stock you possibly can. Shooting 7217, even pushed a stop will render a sharper image than shooting 7279 at proper exposure. Shoot with the sharpest lens available, modern Ultra Primes will render a sharper image than shooting older Zeiss super speeds. Shooting slightly longer lens will make up for the increased depth of field. I imagine a show like the West Wing will be shooting with Panavision S16 still using Primo's. A slightly larger lighting package may be needed to make up for the slower speed stock, and it would be best to give shadow areas a good exposure, contrast can always be increased in post. Telecine with a high quality machine to the highest quality tape format which at this point would be HDCAM SR. Through these efforts it would be extremely difficult to impossible to tell 35mm from S16mm on current broadcast television. Especially digital cable, because it especially sucks.

This is what gets you in trouble. You have such broad statments but have never even used the stuff. Which is what makes experience important.

When I saw OUTIM in the movie theater. I wasn't impressed at all. Maybe I was just the unlucky one with the bad print. I saw it with a friend who doesn't know anything about this stuff, and was asking me why did it look like that. What we saw were artifacts all over the place. Bad skin tones. From shot to shot the skin tones would go from pinkish orange to orange to sun burn from hell. I remember a scene in a restaurant where Jonny Depp is in the foreground, looked nice and warm, the background was outside the resaurant, it was blue and looked as though it had been shot on beta. It wasn't scratches, or gate weave, or any physical problems with the print it was just really inconsistent. Flash fire from guns took on a fourescent hue. But I've seen fire on HD look like this in other films too. I was curious to see it again to see if a different print would look better, but the bad story didn't really motivate me to return for a second viewing. I applaud Michael Mann in his efforts to venture out and explore the limits of electronic cinematography. Grain or noise are not necissarily a bad thing. The video noise added a grittiness rawness to the LA night time. In real life LA is not all that gritty or raw, its actually rather bland. So I think it was a good choice.

Film won't forever be an originating format for television. To a great degree most television show's don't need to be shot on 35mm, HD is a perfect and logical choice. If anyone abhor's HD so much that they don't want to watch it at all, are going to have to give up watching television altogether. As show's that were previoiusly shot on SD as well as film are switching to the format.

No need to shed tears for Ed Lachman, and friend of mine is working on a commercial next week that Ed is shooting, his career rolls on. But of the fired director......

It seems like its well time video assist became a wireless affair, whether shooting film or video. A good way to go about it would be to use a standardized format, such as 802.11 (WiFi). A WiFi transmitter attached or built into the camera?s video assist. Sending out the general signal for all to receive. WiFi is now up to 54Mbps and coming soon a new standard of it will be 100Mbps. And as much as 50 connection can be made from one transmitter. The signal can have 128 bit encryption which would render the signal useless to anyone with out the encryption key. The 802.11 also was made to fluctuate constantly so it does not receive interference from other radio transmitters or receivers. Pretty much all new computers come with WiFi capability built into them so any computer on set will be able to receive a video feed directly from the camera. The editor or visual effects supervisor can sit on set with a Power Book taking picture feed from the camera and using it right away. It would be very easy to fashion a receiver for CRT or flat screen monitors. Since the video village is going flat screen because of its form and weight, then their can be a direct digital to digital interface.

When I spoke to the Panavision guys about the Genesis they also said the same. For Genesis they weren't planning any menu set ups, you just shoot. They said this was actually the best way to go.

I was just reading an article about internet movie piracy. Hollywood really has no idea how many films are being downloaded on the internet, but does know its a lot and is growing. They estimate about 60 million people in the US alone download content from the internet. So its not a niche market, those are mainstream numbers. They are coming around to face the fact as the music industry has kicking and screaming that they will have to build a business model from movie downloading before it explodes and runs away from their control. Next year will be a good year for them to start with the introduction of H.264 audio/video codec, which is essentially MPEG 4. Which scales perfectly from HD to cell phone movies. The article said the studios are actively looking at business models to stem the inevitable tide. They are interested in setting up an internet sales channel such as Apple's iTunes store. They are thinking of ways of enticing consumers to pay $3 - $5 dollars to download a movie instead of going to a peer to peer service and downloading it for free. The fledgling HD market is one place described in the article as a way to pull consumers in. Offering online HD content. HD monitors for computers is emerging as just as big a market as HD television sets. HD monitors such as Apple?s HD Cinema display can bring HD presentation into the home faster than terrestrial HD broadcast. With the use of H.264 (MPEG 4) streaming movies over the internet is going to happen irregardless. But the studios believe they can stream higher quality as well as encoded movies to consumers, whom will be able to watch HD content on their home computers.

The discussion on CML about this states that Star Trek going HD was largely a cost cutting measure. The show had to cut costs if it was to survive at all. That even meant SR was too expensive. So I guess that means they won't be using Genesis.

I don't know much about the plus/ minus of this system, but it does say in the article it is developed for domes, and that it cannot replace video projectors.

I saw an ad in America Cine about new electronics, viewfinder, and video assist for the Moviecam Compact. I'm curious about more information on it. Has anyone seen anything on the web?

Part of the problem is the introduction of 24P HD, the whole way that was done polarized everything. It was proclaimed as the "film killer" which forced everyone to take one side or the other. And that developed zealots on one side or the other, who made over statements of the advantage of their view and overstated the disadvantages of the opposing view. There was no clear dialogue about the truth and myth of shooting HD, nor a truthful discussion about the advantage or disadvantage of working with and how it can fit into today?s production market. I think Robert Rodriguez and George Lucas as much as they are HD advocates do it a disservice in their over inflated claims of its advantages as well as equally ludicrous claims of the disadvantage of working with film. They should be able to speak of its advantages in the context of their own workflow, that would truly help people determine if HD will work for them or not. Instead of using dogma to build a religious HD following. Comparing HD to 35mm is really unfair to the format and its possibilities, HD should not have been introduced in that way. Now that the hype and glitz has settled and the truth as come more to light film zealots get to say ?see HD isn?t as good as 35mm?. Which then makes HD zealots continue to rail against the disadvantages of working with film. And in a way continues the divide. Which leads us now to those who like to shoot HD feeling as though it?s a second rate format after film. While in reality its not, it?s a very useful tool finding its place in the production market. George Lucas wasn?t sitting at the Vision 2 presentation, where DP?s nitpicked over every little thing about the stock, how it performed, and how it was presented. DP?s don?t give Kodak or its products a pass just because its film, they are very critical of both. But once George brings the discussion to a level of unfair dogma then yeah, traditional film shooters will more fiercely defend film and its advantages over HD. Stop comparing HD to 35mm and it will be free of this expectiation, it will be free to develop find its own place.

Right and this deals with carbon based (organic) physical properties.

Right I agree I wasn't trying to argue the superiority of one over the other either. It's all semantics really. I wasn't really talking about the feeling of viewing film vs. digital either. I was just really refering to differences in their physical properties. HD picture essentially is made up of binary encoded electronic pulses, which could be considered more synthetic way of making pictures. Which of course is an advatage for HD in many ways in that it doesn't exist in the physical world, it doesn't have the limitation or vulnerability of a physical object. Binary encoded electronic pulses are free to be maniplulated in ways that could never be done with physical objects. I'm not really saying one is better than the other just that their is a difference.

Camera manufacture and cost isn't a race to see who can stuff the most into a box. If anything the goal is to manufacture smaller profile lighter weight camera's. And have you seen the cost of the F-900? You, your pet dog, cat, or fish are all organic and none of you were made from tree leaves. HD images don't have a physical form. The CCD is a step in the creation of the HD image, it is not the image itself. You cannot hold a CCD up to light and see pictures.

Film can be called organic because it does exist in a physical form, and its made from organic materials. While digital images don't really exist at all in a physical, tangible way.

I don't understand this statement. What did you expect to see?