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compositing and HDV…is it any easier to pull mattes that regular dv??
just curious…I haven’t heard a lot of talk about that…is the compression inherent to mini-dv still as much a pain with HDV as it is with standard dv…I love to hear from people who’ve composited with both formats and hear your opinions
thanks,
Ken -
9 Replies
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oops, I forgot to mention, I’m talking specifically about pulling mattes off of green/blue screen footage shot with HDV cameras.
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It should not be any easier at all. The thing is that HDV has 4 times the resolution as miniDV but the exact same data rate of 25 Mbits/sec, so if anything it is even more compressed. The colour sampling rate is still the same, 4:1:1 or 4:2:0 depending on where you are. The only difference is that your file sizes will be bigger, so if anything it might be even harder to work with than miniDV footage.
My 2 cents….
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that’s kinda what I was thinking, I’ve edited HDV footage before but never comped it, you’re totally correct about the data rate, it’s virtually identical to the dv settings I usually use. Anyone else have any thoughts/experience with compositing green/bluescreen with HDV footage???
I’d appreciate your thoughts
Ken -
I think it depends on what your output will be … if you’re shooting HDV to use in a standard def show, then you’ll get better results than plain old DV because you’d be scaling down your footage, minimizing your stairstepping and edge garbage …
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Ok, now this ruins my world totally….
Recently I was thinking about the same thing because I want to shoot a band in front of a blue screen for a student work based music video and was sure to get a HDV-Camera (Sony FX-1) and shoot the blue screen shots with HDV (the band video will be seen on DVD and in Web) because of the bigger size and (wrong thought) less compression.
But now this means it doesn’t matter if I shoot it in HDV or Mini-DV….it will be same the after all….is this right?
One of my questions is: Can I shoot in HDV with the camera but make DV-Footage out of it when I record it on the harddisk in realtime? This would be my prefered option, because I would have HDV-Footage on tape but the same as DV-Footage on HD and just edit it for DV and DVD.
Thank you very much!
Cletus
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Hey Cletus
I think that if you are already shooting with HDV, than you might as well use that footage. I have not had much experience pulling keys from HDV so Dancow could be right that for SD output it might actually come up better. The main thing is that you really nail your lighting and get your exposures right. If you want real quality footage for a key than I suggest you try to hire a studio (maybe your university has one) where they have cameras with SDI output. Then you could hire a dvcpro50 or digiBeta deck, which would make a BIG difference (not to mention the better lenses on those cameras)
Good luck
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i have worked with hdv footage and it’s way better than dv. the cameras make better pictures and the image is much clearer even though the data rate is the same as dv. as far as keying here’s what I did. Brought in the sony hdv footage at full 1080i, sized it down to 720p and rendered an animation codec master. Pulled my key, which was much better than dv ever could be, then output a 720p h264 codec quicktime for playback on a macbook pro for a trade show directly to a 40″ plasma through the dvi connector plugged into the macbook and rendered a standard widescreen dvd at 720 X 480 for delivery to the client. The dvd looked much better than similar footage shot on dv a year ago.
the footage was captured with fcp using the apple intermediate codec. The difference between this project and a similar one that i did last year was amazing. i just wish i could afford an hdv camera of my own.
one note…. watch out for storage space for the 720p animation codec renders. they are huge.
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… and if you’re shooting for the web, you’ll have even better results as your baseline resolution is much better … think of it like a megapixel camera … you start with a very big high-res file and scale it down to meet you needs. Once you’ve key’ed it you have a lot of flexibility around scaling and positioning in your finished comp.
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Thanks for all the responses…it looks like my best bet is to rent an HDV camera and do a few tests…anyting I discover I’ll be sure to post…thanks guys!
Ken
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