Patrick Casey

Shooting and editing a STARZ HD concert series and we shot the UK band the Kaiser Chiefs in NYC on Saturday night at the Beacon Theatre. Shooting HVX200's with Fire Stores because we didn't have access to enough P2 cards for the shoot, very last minute shoot and the Fire Stores were the next best thing (remind me never to say that again, because no hard drive should ever be setup to do something like this). Anyway, 5 minutes before set time one of the Fire Stores corrupted/came unformatted and so we sent that camera into the crowd roving, but running SD to tape, the only way around our problem.

 

We now need to find a way to get that footage upconverted/upressed to HD if that is even possible. I've tried do research to no end online this AM and can't find anything solid other than Red Giants product. I know that this is certainly not an exact science, and in fact isn't even truly an HD solution, but we need something to at least give us some more resolution out of that blow up which will be very obvious on a STARZ HD channel.

 

Any help, solutions, thoughts, trouble shoots?

 

Much obliged,

 

Rod

There's a product called Terranex that I used once to scale up sdx900 material for a cinema commercial. It gave surprisingly good results. I believe that they have both HW and SW solutions. I don't know any more details about it since I didn't handle the process. You'll just have to google for it. I know that some people that (at least used to) hang out at DV.com knew a lot about it.

As for recording either Red or Dalsa, neither of them are more than about 400Mbyte/second if you record the raw mosaic. I have a recorder on this desk, right now, that will record that, given an HD-SDI interface for it... and it costs under half what the Red camera does. So it can be done. Obviously, any serious user is going to want it uncompressed.

 

Phil

Hey there Phil,

What sort of recorder is it? Also, have you had any chance to look at the Codex recorders?

All the best,

Hey there,

I've been doing quite a bit of roto work lately and I've noticed a strange optical artefact that I was hoping someone could explain the nature of. Now this material originated on film so I don't think that it has anything to do with video compression or the suchlike.

Sometimes when an actor quickly moves over an object that has well-defined lines (a window in this case) it seems that in the trail of the motion blur from the actor the lines _bend_ in the direction that the motion is going towards. I can't post any stills since the movie isn't released yet but if someone's seen this sort of thing before and know what it is then I'd be happy. It's not important for my work right now, but it'd be fun to know.

Cheers,

I actually thought that the Red footage at IBC looked a lot like a still from a Canon 5D. If I can get footage similar to that of a 5D at 120 frames/sec then I'll be happy as can be.

I used to be scared to go to a screening of a picture that Sokolsy

shot. He would turn around in the seat and give you those fierce

eyes, "ashlock," or some Jewish expression, then get in the studio

and be yelling at the top of his lungs, "WHEN I SAY ADJUST THE

CUTTER, DO YOU "LOOK?" NO, OBVIOUSLY, YOU JUST FIDDLE...etc.)

This was possibly one of the strangest things you could say to a person that you wanted to be your employer.

Your next film should be a documentary about Carlos. I would def. watch it.

Heh,

I actually worked as a game designer on that system when Target Games had their studios in Edinburgh (1998). There was talk of a movie then, and there was even a trailer made (which was terrible), but then Target went belly-up.

Anyway, good for you Phil.

What exactly will you be doing as digital imaging technician? I've seen the title mamy times and always wondered what it was.

I've searched high and low and can't seem to find data about how large an uncompressed HD file is. I feel like I've seen something about it in a previous thread but anyways my question is this:

 

Shoot dvcpro hd, edit with FCP, and then move the edited sequence into a new uncompressed timeline to apply and render some mild color correction type stuff and output an uncompressed file for archiving, possible film out, whatever. Does this make sense? How large is an uncompressed HD file?

 

I'd rather not go the route of $2 billion RAID and 300,000 rpm SCSI devices as I'm not editing with uncompressed files that need to be readily played back/scrubbed through, just outputted and saved. I'm looking to buy a new hard drive along the lines of a serial ATA 350-400GB drive with less than 8 ms seek time, is this enough? My "film" is going to be about 25 minutes long and the shooting ratio won't be insanely high.

 

Thank you for your feedback!

Go to:

http://tinyurl.com/a3buv (microsoft.com)

and you'll find good definitions of different video sizes. If you scroll down on that page you'll find all the numbers you can eat.

Actually, looking at that page now I can see that uncompressed 4:4:4 is not in there, but let's just say that it's a lot. Probably more than you can eat.

When will there be a chance to see the movie in Euroland? Looking forward to it.

Sterling work. Love to see what you'll do in the future.

Hi,

 

The DVW-A500 is the standard deck, which also plays out standard Beta SP to SDI. It's the full featured edit deck and is fairly expensive; look for the version without the A if you don't need SP support. At the other end of the spectrum is the J7, which is a playback-only device but which plays more or less anything that'll fit in the slot, including IMX if I remember correctly.

 

Phil

I'm wondering if you mean the J3? I can't find a Sony J7 anywhere. Well I can actually, but it seems to be a mobile phone or something. Anyway, the J3 SDI did what I wanted it to do, so cheers buddy.

Shopping around for a used Digibeta VTR but I'm having problems finding info and reviews. Does anyone have any recommendations for which ones to look for and which ones to avoid?

Cheers,

You could look at "Revenge of the Sith" which had to do a lot of compositing with a shiny C3PO.

From memory I think they keep them pretty diffuse, which is what I would choose to do if I didn't have the previous material to match it with. But I'll have a look at it just in case. If nothing else I get to re-experience "Noooooooooooo!".

I think you're right, it will prob. be murder.

But I guess that's why they're paying somebody else to do it. :D

back projection? not necessarily for the main plate but on the sides for believable reflections. just a thought. i haven't done it myself but i've seen it done with windshields on car process shots.

 

/matt

You know what? That's not a bad idea. I might actually have to try that. Good call man.

Hi,

 

Are you shooting film or video. FWIW Green spills far more than blue!

 

It will be a pig if recording on a camcorder.

 

Stephen

Well, the rest of the material was shot on Varicam, but I guess there's no reason for not shooting film for these sequences. Is there any reason apart from added colour info. to shoot on film for this scene?

I didn't know that green spills more than blue. Since this shot will be a comp. extravaganza anyway I might be able to do just this actor (and the poor lad that he bashes over the head) on blue and then do the rest on green. The original reason for shooting on green was that there's a lot of blue banners, clothes and other stuff around.

Hey there people,

We're in the process of shooting a couple of pick-ups and since the outdoor location is no longer available (it's the wrong season and there has been a heavy storm since the original d.o.s so all the trees are lying down...) the producers have decided that we're doing it on a sound stage against a green screen.

I've got good backplates and references, it's just that one of the scenes is a fight scene where one of the characters is wearing a fairly shiny suit of armour. I've shot tons of green screen before but I've never been confronted with anything this shiny before. It's even to the point where you can sometimes distinguish the features of characters surrounding the person wearing the armour. So not only will the armour pick up every speck of green on set (which I have no idea how to handle) but I'm also struggling with how I will comp in believable reflections in the armour.

I thought about possibly hitting the armour with magenta to get rid of the green and then CC:ing it, but then I'm struggling to get the surroundings into the reflections. I though that I could maybe first pull a key to get the main alpha and then use the colourinfo in the reflections to somehow get the reflections on there.

Any ideas? Or should I just tell them that it's not going to happen without some serious compositing efforts (the frame by frame roto adventure)?

Thanks in advance.

I make the occasional typos, so be gentle...

 

A few spelling mistakes, I can live with. Ocassionally using the wrong "your" vs. "you're" or "it's" versus "its", "there" vs. "their"... fine.

 

What drives me nuts is sloppy writing on purpose -- you know, dropping all capital letters, not attempting to break long passages up into paragraphs, strange abbreviations, etc. It seems that if someone wants us to take a moment to compose a reply, they should take a moment to compose a question and make sure it is clearly stated. Half the replies here are attempts to understand what the original poster was asking in the first place, which is inefficient.

 

And if the poor writing is not deliberate, but just an incredibly poor command of English, assuming English is their first language, then the schools have a lot to answer for, not to mention their parents.

 

However, the argument for attempting to be grammatically correct is mainly for the sake of clarity in communicating here on the internet; otherwise, I don't think a major fuss should be made over it. A very casual writing style is completely acceptable in this environment (in fact, it's more appropriate often). Like I said, the standard should be simply whether the person is being confusing or hard to read because their writing is so sloppy.

 

Of course, we often have no idea whether English is the first language of some person posting... hence why some patience is a good idea.

Well put. Also, extra credits for having the energy to write it. It pretty much sums up how I feel about it too. I do however think that Phil's pre-flaming was fun enough to deserve a sympathy-post.

Btw, I think several dictionaries have "lense" noted as a variation to "lens".

Hi,

 

When I was at school, which is rapidly becoming a distant memory, we got marks for spelling, punctuation and grammar. I'm not sure if this is something they still do, but the "SPG" mark could easily make the difference between a good B and an A grade result. I'd like to suggest that the same applies in life, particularly in professional circumstances.

 

Or, to put it another way, the next time a native English speaker confuses "loose" with "lose" or puts an E on the end of "lens" on this board, I am going to set fire to them.

 

Okay?

 

Phil

Ooooo,

I've got one too. You + are = you're.

I don't know how rugged thhe solution has to be, but my recommendation would be to just a a FW soundcard like the M-Audio 410, and then you would have a nice soundcard to do audio work with as well. I'm sure that there are cheaper variants.

My sound dept. basically does this but they have a Moto Traveller since they need more inputs.

Best of luck!

I'm not sure if it counts as hi-jacking the thread, but is this how you would light smoke and mist as well?

If you're looking for answers about creative issues then I recommend creativecow as well, and if you're looking for answers of a more technical nature (like building your own editing suite) then head on over to dv.com.

I too think it's a good idea for this site to not stray from it's current path.

You can run Commotion 4.1 (OS9version) on OSX by enabling the Classic OS in system prefs. It's a real same that it's not supported anymore.

Otoh, Sillouette Roto is a damn fine program too, it's supported and I know that Weta Digital used it on King Kong.

One idea (if you really want a true black background) is to build a little black-box of your own with stands and black cloth. That way you can hide the light stands behind the cloth. It will also help you when recording the dialogue (cutting down the reverb).

Well, if your February is anything like ours (in Sweden) then there will be precious little green in that forest. It'll be more like brown or grey :). I did something similar last year to what you first proposed, and I found that the forest was so dark anyway (apart from a couple of birch trunks that we dressed down with mud) that as long as the ground was dry (because wet leaves and such reflected too much light) it worked OK.

I like the JPEG2000 standard since it is completely open and I'm sure that developers can come up with some really cool stuff for it, but on the other hand it is MUCH more computationally demanding than the other formats in the mid-HD range. I don't have the exact numbers for it, but when I last tried it you couldn't do anything even remotely close to real-time even on a Dual 2,7 Ghz Mac.

Hope that they (or someone else) can sort something out!

Hullo there,

Signed up today, so I thought that I would take this opportunity to say hi, as well chipping in my 2 cents.

I've been using DVRack for a while now, especially in combination with a DVX100a, and I've found it to be an absolute joy for indoor environments when I have lots of time, and a right bastard at any other time.

As mentioned above, you find yourself trying to "please the software" and end up spending more time on that than anything else.

However, it's great for those controlled studio shots, and I wish that I had an eqiuvalent piece of software for when I shoot larger formats.

Cheers,

/ casey