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can someone tell me me my online capture settings for my varicam footage? Gary Adcock?
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“HDCAM is 3:1:1? Well shoot, I forgot about that. OK, next time I master to D5.”
yeah, wierd, but it’s 3:1:1. Don’t know why, but, yeah, you get a little color shift going from 4:2:2 codec to a 3:1:1 one. Also, HDCAM is more compressed than D5. So, I it’s a little more expensive, but D5 keeps a purer video migration.
But, like you said, the video will NEVER stay pure for long. It’ll get compressed to mpeg2 for digital cable or whatever. NOTHING stays pure because the files are too big and can’t be transmitted. Some say, “oh well, it’s going to be impure sooner or later, so who cares”. Some say, “since it’s going to be messed with and go through the wash, I want to start with the cleanest master possible.” Whichever. Mostly just comes down to whos paying for it, and how much they care.
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“How’s a 65′ screen in a movie theater? We produced our first independent film on the Varicam and cut it using the DVCPro HD codec, color corrected it in FCP, mastered it back to my 1200A and played it directly off the 1200A to a Panasonic projector to an audience of 200, mostly local filmmakers and producers. It was flawless and looked just like 35mm film. 24p production all the way and it was outstanding on the screen with all positive comments. So for all these professionals in the business it looked really really good.”
If you think it looked as good as 35mm, then you are insane and/or blind. Super 16 (which is far better then HD) that’s had a D5 DI done doesn’t look as good as 35mm. You obviously have no eye for image quality, which is a shame since you work in post. The fact that eveyone liked it is probably a testament to your really good creative skills as an editor and/or animator. Or a great DP which can make all the differnce. Hell, I once saw an HDCAM indie movie that everyone thought was DV, because the sound was so poor. And I sound desinged a minidv movie years ago that everyone in the theater thought was shot on HD because the sound was really good and they were super engaged. There’s a lot of varibles that go into audience perception. BUt this conversation is about compression math, and you seem to only want to talk about your feelings.
“Have you even worked with DVCPro HD yet? I don’t think so because you obviously don’t understand how good it looks. Our clients are broadcast networks and they are telling us the work is outstanding. ”
Been working with it for years, and I’m working on it right now, starting at DVCPROHD footae on an HD monitor as we speak. I think a question for you is “have you worked with anything better than DVCPROHD, because you obviously don’t understand how much better other formats (like 35mm) are” And the answer is probably no. Try to get your hands on a 10 bit log file from a 2k 35mm negative scan. POST THAT, Walter, and then come back to the board and we’ll talk about image quality and what it could be.
I’m a colorsit. I work with minidv, dvcpro50, DVCPROHD, HDCAM, 10 bit log files, whatever. I am intimately familar with DVCPROHD, in both compressed and uncompressed forms. I just never capture it because that work has usually been done before it gets to me, which is why I initially posted a question about my capture settings.
“Ok, you’re calling me a liar and putting false words in my mouth? Dude, I’m completely done with this thread and really don’t care how you want to edit your footage.”
At last count, you claimed there was no mathmatical difference. If you’d like to recent you can do so. If not, you remain incorect.
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Jeremiah…please let up on the name calling here. Calling Walter a liar is going a bit overboard. All he is saying, and I am saying, is that capturing upcompressed HD from DVCPRO HD does not improve the quality of the original image. They will look identical. He isn’t wrong there, he isn’t lying. I am not an engineer but a creative editor, and I know that both will look identical.
Where the path diverges is when rendering comes into play. And all that is happening here is a misunderstanding. Walter isn’t saying that whether you render in DVCPRO HD or uncompressed HD the quality is the same. No. He is saying that he gets perfectly fine quality working in the DVCPRO HD codec. As do I. So he isn’t wrong. Our workflow, as you admitted, is viable. The confusion lay in the rendering process, which you explained nicely.
But I don’t see anywhere in this listing, nor in previous posts, where Walter out and out lied. The symantics of this discussion hinge on the quality loss when you render color correction…not initial quality. I know that misunderstanding one another can be frustrating, but please…name calling helps nothing.
Thank you,
Shane
Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net -
Jeremiah…please let up on the name calling here. Calling Walter a liar is going a bit overboard.
Did I call him a liar? IF I did, I apologize. I remeber saying he’s spreading techincal and mathematical misinformation, which is true.
“All he is saying, and I am saying, is that capturing upcompressed HD from DVCPRO HD does not improve the quality of the original image. They will look identical. He isn’t wrong there, he isn’t lying. I am not an engineer but a creative editor, and I know that both will look identical.”
You are both correct here. 100%. But Wather is saying that even with rendering there is NO differnce. That is incorrect. The differnce may be such that he and his clients dont care. That’s cool. Actually, that’s more than cool. That’s less money to spend! But they are NOT identical. Nope.
“Where the path diverges is when rendering comes into play. And all that is happening here is a misunderstanding. Walter isn’t saying that whether you render in DVCPRO HD or uncompressed HD the quality is the same. No. He is saying that he gets perfectly fine quality working in the DVCPRO HD codec. As do I. So he isn’t wrong. Our workflow, as you admitted, is viable. The confusion lay in the rendering process, which you explained nicely.”
I know, and I’m glad his workflow works for him- cheaper and faster!. But he refuses to admit, that there’s a slightly better way. And there is.
“But I don’t see anywhere in this listing, nor in previous posts, where Walter out and out lied. The symantics of this discussion hinge on the quality loss when you render color correction…not initial quality. I know that misunderstanding one another can be frustrating, but please…name calling.”
Walter claims he “did the math”, “did the scopes” and found NO difference. Either (1) he did both incorrectly or (2) he didn’t do them and is falsey claiming that he did. I have proof of neither, so I’ll just let the reader decide which it is.
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Jeremiah
Playing back realtime means that you are rendering but rendering fast enough that each frame is “calculated” in time to playback in the time required (eg 1/24 th of a second or 1/30th of a second etc) so in that case the 8 bit vs 10 bit should not make any difference, because you are not recompressing to DVCPro HD. You are decompressing the file, applying the effect to the decompressed data -which is no uncomprssed – and passing that data out through the board. As long as the board and the effect are able to process at a bit depth higher than 8 bit you will get an output that is higher than 8 bit. Once you need to render to a preview file or output to a file then you are recompressing the DVCProHD, which is a lossy 8 bit codec. This is the reason you may see color shifts between realtime and non-realtime segments in a timeline and also why there is a setting in the preferences to render realtime segments. This is similar to playing back a file and viewing on your HD (CRT) monitor, looks good. If the playback is realtime then your monitor is showing you decompressed footage. Now lay that back to tape in a lossy format, DVCProHD, does not look as good. Because you are introducting another compression pass.
Both workflows make sense to me and I have done both depending on what my final needs were. My preference is to create masters in uncompressed especially if there are lots of graphics involved.
Tony
Rev13 Films -
“Playing back realtime means that you are rendering but rendering fast enough that each frame is “calculated” in time to playback in the time required (eg 1/24 th of a second or 1/30th of a second etc) so in that case the 8 bit vs 10 bit should not make any difference, because you are not recompressing to DVCPro HD. You are decompressing the file, applying the effect to the decompressed data -which is no uncomprssed – and passing that data out through the board. As long as the board and the effect are able to process at a bit depth higher than 8 bit you will get an output that is higher than 8 bit. Once you need to render to a preview file or output to a file then you are recompressing the DVCProHD, which is a lossy 8 bit codec. This is the reason you may see color shifts between realtime and non-realtime segments in a timeline and also why there is a setting in the preferences to render realtime segments. This is similar to playing back a file and viewing on your HD (CRT) monitor, looks good. If the playback is realtime then your monitor is showing you decompressed footage. Now lay that back to tape in a lossy format, DVCProHD, does not look as good. Because you are introducting another compression pass. ”
VERY interesting. Thanks for that! I guess I should’ve figured that because when you apply a filter 3 things happen, if I’m not mistaken. (1) the file is decompressed (2) the filter is applied, (3) the file is recompressed to whatever codec your timeline is set at. So, in realtime, the footage (1) is decompressed, (2) has the filter applied, but is never RECOMPRESSED because there’s no need if the computer can keep up with processing the filter’s calculations. Fascinating! Of course, I guess the file will be recompressed if you export a quicktime movie in the native codec.
By the way, I render out 10 bit uncompressed out of AE, because I work in a 16bit space there, and rendering out to 8 bit, doesn’t accurately preserve the work. Kind like you said, it looks good, but the render looks different.
“Both workflows make sense to me and I have done both depending on what my final needs were. My preference is to create masters in uncompressed especially if there are lots of graphics involved.”
yup, me, too. I also always go uncompressed in I’m doing heavy color grading “film look” type work. But it doesn’t matter for some jobs.
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Where is Gary Adcock in all this? Did we scare him away? I mean, you Batsignaled the guy…
Shane
Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net -
[jeremiah black] “But I don’t like recompressing my compositing and color work. This is why I like to work in an uncompressed space and keep it there. As far as rendering out 8 bit or 10 bit. True, there is NO benefit to capturing 8 bit material @ 10 bit, but there is a great benefit to rendering 10 bit if you’re coloring and compositing in a 32 bit or 16 bit environment.”
Jeremiah,
I was speaking all day yesterday at NAB East in NYC — sorry for the delay.
this is a healthy discussion, I too, do not believe that compositing and CC should be done in any compressed format, but everyone’s project is different. I have a very good example of the issue when compositing high-key materials over a gradient sky (clouds added to a pale blue sky show in White Sands, NM) that I am trying to remove the 8bit banding from. This is the exception rather than the rule, but it does happen.
[jeremiah black] “It’s not a HUGE difference, but that extra 5% is worth it to me as the colorst”
your project, your preferences, so do it your way.AS for the workflow
I would select everything in your final project time line, go to MM and set the project settings to 720p23.98 Uncompressed 10bit -take every thing offline and start the recapture. The BMD card should be able to the project fine.
As a note —- everyone I know is having issues with 10bit content when using QT 7.1.3
gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows -
[jeremiah black] “But if FCP is removing flagged frames and only capturing the 23.98 frames that are wanted, then the Hard drive speed suddenly drops to a requirement of around 66 MB/sec.”
Plan on about 80 mgs a second for the 720p23.98 10bit. so you are there, just BARELY.
gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows -
“I was speaking all day yesterday at NAB East in NYC — sorry for the delay.”
Cool. Thanks for getting around to it.
“I would select everything in your final project time line, go to MM and set the project settings to 720p23.98 Uncompressed 10bit -take every thing offline and start the recapture. The BMD card should be able to the project fine.”
Yeah, that’s what I figured. The latest BM drivers even label the preset “Varicam”. I was just concerned that the flagged frames were going to be dropped when going over SDI and avoiding the DVCPROHD codec.
“everyone I know is having issues with 10bit content when using QT 7.1.3 ”
Ouch. Can you elaborate on this?
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