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HD authoring in after effects
Hi, I am a film student in India, and I have made a 25 minute diploma film, shot on 35mm. I recently finished doing the post production and managed to get a dpx 1920×1080 output of the film( i.e. in *.dpx still images at 24 frames per second). Now for reasons entirely due to budgetary constraints we converted those images to targa(*.tga) file and then imported it into after effects timeline to color correct it. My question is this- the dpx scan has a lot of black area in it(the masks at the top and bottom)- since I have never done a dpx scan before, is that how the scanning is normally done? I was under the impression that only the picture and not the mask would be scanned. Now the following photos will show you what the footage looks like in original scan, then with a 134% zoom, and finally with another mask applied to cut out the rounded edges. This is where we are stuck- what should we output it as? Because uncompressed, the output video would form almost 2.7 terabytes. What compression should we use so that it wouldn’t tax hard disk space but allow for a good Hdcam tape transfer? Finally should we not zoom in at all? I ask this because the dvd mastering that we did wasn’t zoomed in and when it was played back on tv, it autostretched to fit the screen at the sides, but when it was played back on a computer the autostretching never happened, unless you chose such options on powerdvd. I guess we are not clear on the HD mastering area. Please help.
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1 Reply
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[Tamal Sen] “Hi, I am a film student in India, and I have made a 25 minute diploma film, shot on 35mm… My question is this- the dpx scan has a lot of black area in it(the masks at the top and bottom)- since I have never done a dpx scan before, is that how the scanning is normally done? I was under the impression that only the picture and not the mask would be scanned… This is where we are stuck- what should we output it as? Because uncompressed, the output video would form almost 2.7 terabytes. What compression should we use so that it wouldn’t tax hard disk space but allow for a good Hdcam tape transfer?”
These questions for your film lab and finishing post house; we could give general guidance, but not the specific answers that only come from the vendors you’re working with.
Since you scanned at HD resolution, you will visibly soften the image when scaling it up 134% for HD mastering — though it should still be plenty for standard definition. Unfortunately, the only way to get those lost pixels back would be to rescan with adjusted framing.
Ask your video post production facility what mastering format they’d like. They might accept ProRes or DNxHD instead of uncompressed.
Also, 1920×1080 @ 23.976 fps at 10bit uncompressed YUV is only 200GB or so for 25 minutes.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
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