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Filmouts or D-Cinema
Having spend a good part of a decade doing film scanning and recording, I find what happens in post plays a big part in how video looks when it’s transferred to film.
Before DVX100, since most video to film transfers were done from 60i originals, it was important to minimize the motion stuttering that occurred when doing 60i to 24p conversions.
Since most people were letting the transfer house use their own software to deal with this conversion. The problem would be that the clients wouldn’t know what they were getting until they saw a print.
The same with image artifacts. Its been mentioned numerous times that any image enhancing or sharpening should be turned down on the camera when shooting. The same applies for image enhancements done in post.
I have seen commercials shot on film, telecined to D1 tape, heavy post enhancement done, look slick and great on an NTSC monitor, but when taken to film, look crawly, aliased and sometimes extremely noisy. This is because the images were designed to look good on video, not film. The transfer to film is almost always an afterthought.
Even though indies have better tools, the same rules apply.
If an indie is seriously considering even a remote possibility of a film transfer, the transfer house should be involved as early into preproduction as possible.
Since most indies have limited funds, it makes more sense to use the affordable tools available to them. Sure, not all indies are techies, but forums like this are there to help out.
I would recommend that before color grading or visual effects stages, the media be converted to a 10bit or higher lossless format.
I have heard it’s possible, if using a Kona or Black Magic HD card, you can just drop 8bit shots into a 10bit timeline, and still get realtime feedback.
You definitely need the extra headroom in a 10bit or higher format to avoid color clipping in the high ends or crushing in the low ends.
FCP lets you work in floating point, so if you may want to try doing some tests in that.
Even if a feature goes through a digital intermediate for a theatrical release , separate color timing is done for the video masters.
It would make sense to do the same on an indie project. Do all the color timing and enhancements for the video version, then make a “cleaner” version that would be more complementary for a filmout.
This is where it gets critical to work with the transfer house to make sure that the “cleaner” version will look good on film. The transfer house should have their system calibrated to show what your image should look like on film. This way you can head off any problems that crop up.
If you are using mixed source footage which run at different frame rates, you will have convert that footage to 24. Post houses have Teranex or Alchemist systems are designed for that sort of work, but are very expensive. You can also use plug-ins like Graeme Nattress’ Standards Conversion, Red Giant’s Magic Bullet or Algolith’s AlgoSuite.
If you are a FCP user, Compressor allows you to do standards conversion also, using the optical flow code used in Shake, though it may be extremely slow even on a G5.
The flip side of all this is that there isn’t any real need for the expense and hassles of a filmout if indies just go the digital cinema route.
Currently there is something like 170 digital screens nationwide out of 36,000 traditional cinema screens. There has been estimates that something like 6,000 digital screens are planned for 2006. It will be interesting if this turns out to be true, but that ball is rolling. There is definitely a desire at least on the studio and filmmaker side for digital to be rolled in, it’s more resistance on the theater side because of the costs.
Landmark Theaters owned by Mark Cuban already announced their plans to convert 60 screens to digital, and have set up a relatively “affordable” pricing structure for filmmakers who want show their films digitally.
I have heard that even though some festivals show films digitally, it’s not always a properly setup system or in a choice venue, and 35mm film features get the preferential treatment.
IMHO a theatrical release is bragging rights for the filmmaker. Sure it’s cool to say that a film is playing on the big screen, but I don’t find it to be critical that a film needs a theatrical release to find it’s audience.
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10 Replies
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I know you can’t capture to the ipod because Ipods can’t capture 100mbs, but you can at least store the HD footage on Ipods right?
Thanks.
By the way. How on earth do you start a new topic? I can’t figure it out.
Thanks.
-Ed
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You can, although if you can’t if you want to continue using the ipod as an ipod. The thing is, if you want your ipod to continue to function as an ipod (meaning, a music player etc) then no, you wouldn’t use it for storing HVX footage. If, however, you don’t mind formatting the hard disk in the ipod, then yes it definitely can work as a P2 offloading drive.
So as long as you have a complete backup of your ipod on your computer, and as long as you’re using one of the older ipods that has a firewire connection (vs. the newest, which only have USB2) then yes, you definitely can use the ipod to store HVX footage. Just be aware that while it’s storing HVX footage, it cannot be used as an ipod, it can only be used as an external hard disk.
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Get the most from your DVX camera. The DVX Book and DVX DVD are now available on ebay and at Amazon (https://www.fiftv.com/db) -
Thanks Barry. Thats a good thing to know. I think it is also helpful information for others. Thanks again.
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Thanks for the post!
Gunleik
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Barry,
The ipod can be enabled in hard disk mode and any leftover space can be filled with any data (not captured to but just for transporting purposes). I do this all the time between home and work and still plug my ipod into my car and listen to my music.
You just have to make sure enable hard disk use is checkd in your ipod preferences and it can still stoe music, play it back and store data too.
David
The new year is over
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Response to the original D-Cinema post! (Ed, you need to click on the “Add New Post” link in the top right hand corner instead of hijacking someone else’s thread – not cool)
Anyway, back to the thread.
Thanks very much for the considered, expert and invaluable advice.
Certainly when editing on an NLE it’s a cinch to duplicate the locked-off sequence and grade once for digital out with a separate grade for the film out.
I’m a big proponent of leaving all the film out stuff until you have a distributor asking for it. It’s a great way to save money when chances are you’ll only get a DVD release. The studios have quite an investment in keeping indies out of the theatrical loop so the odds are not in your favour regardless how good your movie may be (not confusing good with commercial)
Thanks once again for the great post!
Cheers
Bettsy
Burra Films -
[David Battistella] “You just have to make sure enable hard disk use is checkd in your ipod preferences and it can still stoe music, play it back and store data too.”
Maybe. Probably not though; I’ll have to try that. See, the HVX formats the entire hard disk and destroys all partitions on the hard disk. It then allocates a new partition for each card that you offload to it. It’s not like a simple file copy, it’s a major thing and I doubt the ipod would cooperate with that.
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Get the most from your DVX camera. The DVX Book and DVX DVD are now available on ebay and at Amazon (https://www.fiftv.com/db) -
100mb/sec to an Ipod? Ipods can handle that data rate over firewire?
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[David Davidson] “100mb/sec to an Ipod? Ipods can handle that data rate over firewire?”
I’m sure it can’t, no. But we’re not talking about streaming live video to it, we’re talking about using it to offload the contents of a P2 card onto. And for that process it’s a file transfer, which can take as long as the ipod needs it to.—————–
Get the most from your DVX camera. The DVX Book and DVX DVD are now available on ebay and at Amazon (https://www.fiftv.com/db) -
Whoooooooooa now Bettsy!!!
Ummmm you should read my post of not knowing how to add a new post and how I asked how to post before you accuse me of hijacking someone elses post and saying… not cool. – not cool.
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