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Super 16 Test - Vimeo Compression


Giray Izcan

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I just shot a couple rolls of film - 7219, 7203 to se how the two stocks match in terms of grain. I shot it on Eclair NPR w/ hard front PL mount.

 

The apartment stuff was on 7219 rated at 500 with Optar 9.5mm lens

The driving sequences along with LA city tripod shots were on 7203 - rated at 50 - with Optar 9.5mm for the driving parts and Cooke 20-100 for the tripod shots.

 

There is absolutely no concept behind this. I wanted to put the two film stocks under various real world situations to see the result. I have a feature coming up next month on s16.

 

https://vimeo.com/133768840

 

Enjoy.

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Also, is there a way to handle s16 better on Vimeo? On the original material, the grain structure doesn't get all blocky as it does on some of the set-ups on the vimeo video clip. I rendered it out of Avid at h.264, with best rendering option and multiple pass setting.

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I rendered it out of Avid at h.264, with best rendering option and multiple pass setting.

 

In a word ...Don't.

 

Feed the site the highest quality you can, even if that means you have to wait overnight to upload. H.264 is highly compressed even at high bit rates, and is strips out a lot of color information as well. Doesn't matter if *that* file looks good on your computer because Vimeo, Youtube and whoever will recompress it further, to their specs, after you've uploaded it. Think of it is as a photocopy of a photocopy. Generation loss and all that.

 

Try uploading something like a ProRes 422 file (even regular ProRes 422 should give you an improvement, with a little file size savings over HQ). Also, higher resolution matters here. If you can upload 2k, you get better HD when they recompress it. Same with YouTube.

 

-perry

Edited by Perry Paolantonio
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I did, with 1.3x Hawks but due to their availability and cost, we will be shooting s16 and crop 2:35. I own the camera and the lenses - so no rental involved. Ironically, I enjoy shooting on the NPR. It is a highly modified camera with a hard front PL mount and a new Barney. The Groundglass is etched for 1:66, 1:85 and 2:35 by Visual Products along with full servicing of it. As you can see, the camera is rock steady - I guess you be the judge. Then again, those shots weren't locked off shots so it's harder to judge the camera's steadiness.

Edited by Giray Izcan
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Camera looks great. Does the NPR have a registration pin?

 

Are the Hawks that hard to find in LA? I want to shoot with them, but if they're hard/expensive to find, that maybe a deal killer. Might have to go with 1:66 which I'm OK with, just leave a bit of head room for 1.75:1 16x9 release.

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Nice test. I bet it's great to have a lot of camera rental options in Los Angeles. The only cool motion picture place out this way is Visual Products, which I have yet to visit.

Edited by Luke Roberts
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Great test. It’s astounding to see the prores version’s difference in less-blocky grain.

 

 

 

Are the Hawks that hard to find in LA?

 

Keslow carries them, so not too hard. There aren’t a great many sets to begin with, let alone stateside.

Edited by Kenny N Suleimanagich
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Cool, Keslow does huh. It would be interesting to shoot with those for sure. I'll give Keslow a call I suppose. By the way, Perry, thanks for the advice on compression settings etc. I honestly did not even know you could upload anything other than h.264 to Vimeo. One other conclusion I reached during this test was that Optar and my Cooke 5:1 have a similar look, which is good in terms of intercutting the two together.

Edited by Giray Izcan
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Rad. Yeah, the same goes for uploading to Youtube as well. And youtube allows resolutions up to 4k, which gives even higher bitrates, if you feel like uprezzing (but that would increase your file sizes and upload times significantly).

 

I've got a super16 eclair acl with arri b, pl, and cameflex mounts. Let me know if you ever want to get together and eclair it up around LA.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Wow, still technically solid for film negative to digital. I am very impressed with the evening (sunset) shot at the end.

I love how it handles the boulevard with high contrast lighting. And the reflected light from passing traffic spilling into the foyer shows films sensitivity. It very much mimics how the human would see.

 

"The Walking Dead" is over one million feet of Super 16 film negative and probably on their way to shooting two million feet of Eastman Kodak. The thing to look out for is critical back focus on the wide angle, apparent on various zooms.

 

I was messing around with the 2.5K RAW of the BMCC camera, seeing how far I can trash the sensor and see what a "best light" grading could come up. My f-stop was wide open at 1.4 and 2.8. I used the highest and noisiest ASA of 1600.

Comparing with your S16 negative, my sunset shots did not fare too well and the daytime high contrast shots are not as even as your boulevard.

This test was for my own curiosity, as the YouTube codec was darkening client footage by two stops. I also have Vimeo Pro but working on a quarter million views per channel on YouTube, I have no choice but to go where the traffic is.

The half hour shows were running almost 200 gigabytes. Using H.264 YouTube specs, I get to upload a measly 2 gB (wondering where the 198 gB went??).

The vimeo codec was giving me a respectable 20 gB from the 200 gB original. I just hate math.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFAwMp07mkc

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