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16mm SD Telecine to tape or hard drive??
Hello, I am about to make my first production on film. Exciting!
I am shooting on Super-16 using the Fuji Complete16 package. I did a testshoot that I had delivered on DV Tape and DVD.
I am a little disappointed in the quality of the tape, its all a touch soft. In fact the DVD is visibly sharper.Now I am wondering what format I am supposed to have the footage output on, I can’t afford HD but my teacher suggested I could try to haggle to get it on DPX-files on a hard drive (I’ve researched a bit and find that ProRES is pospular too). Is that the best solution? Are there other tapeformats that look better?
Many thanks guys!
Arvid -
6 Replies
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I’ve never done film-to-file transfers, but obviously it can be done and is getting more popular.
We’ve always had our film transfers for standard definition done to tape… either to BetacamSP or DVcam. We’ve done a little bit of 16mm that way, and tons of 35mm. It always looked great. You can also get film transfers to digiBeta, but you might not have access to those decks in post production.
Talk with your film lab… see if they can send you a short sample file of what the output would be like first so you can make sure you don’t have any editing or workflow issues in post before you have the film transferred.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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Definitely consult with your lab as Todd suggests – unfortunately going to hard drives does not always equal savings – if the lab would spend 1 hour with your footage on the telecine, laying off to an HD/SD tape in real-time, going to a drive might take the same hour on the same telecine, plus putting your media on their storage, plus encoding it to your requested format, plus transferring it to your drive… only they will be able to tell you for sure, as some labs have worked out better ways than that…
If you don’t have regular access to a deck (of the format you want) it can definitely help there. ProRes 422HQ or ProRes4444 are codecs that are of a pretty high quality, and at 1080 24p can usually be played back in real-time on a desktop or good laptop. They strike a good balance between quality and lightweight-ness, especially if the project won’t be traditionally on-lined… I like to keep a ProRes422HQ file of my finished products for reels and the like.
DPX files are larger, and since most people using them are using them as the basis for a digital intermediate at 2K/4K resolution, I think labs are more used to passing along a “flat” pass of some kind – so you would get a file that is too large to edit with, and doesn’t resemble the intended look. But if you are comfortable doing a rough color correct and creating offline media with identical timecode to the DPX files, and will be at some point going back to the DPX in a traditional on-line… they’re definitely high-quality. Keep in mind that at 12MB or so per frame, having drive space and a backup can be expensive…
KC
prehistoricdigital.com
hardworkingpixels.com -
Is DVCAM tapes better quality then miniDV? Because I wasn’t happy with the quality of the miniDV but since transfer to any tape-format is included in my lab deal (unlike transfer to hard-drive which I would have to haggle for) that would be a great solution.
I haven’t got any tapedecks at all, captures my miniDV from a Sony V1 but I think I can get access to a deck some way…
Thanks,
Arvid -
DVCAM and miniDV are the same procession of 1’s and 0’s. The difference is in the tape speed.
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Be sure to keep the aspect ratio in mind as you frame your image.
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OK so how about D9?
Apparently I have acces to a D9 deck that I can capture from. Is D9 better than miniDV??
Thanks,
Arvid
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