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LHe Advice needed – Doc shot with JVC HD100
I’m working on a documentary that is being shot entirely with the JVC HD100 camera. AJA recently put out a new whitepaper on how the LHe can be used in the editing pipeline for the JVC and other camers, which I found extremely helpful. You can read it here: https://www.aja.com/pdfs/AJA_whitepaper_HDV.pdf
The footage captured through the component outs on the BR-HD50 looks spectacular. I am comparing it to the same footage captured through LumiereHD, and there is very little difference. Through the LHe, the color is a little richer and more saturated. However, it seems to be a TINY bit fuzzier than the transcoded footage from Lumiere. I might be imagining this since, when viewed in Quicktime, the Lumiere footage shows up at 960×720 and the LHe footage is 1280×720.
DOES ANYONE HAVE AN OPINION AS TO WHAT WILL PRODUCED THE FINEST RESULTS? I am finishing this film to 35mm. I’m taking some footage in for a test next week and will be comparing the Lumiere and Kona footage in the test.
COUPLE OF THINGS TO CONSIDER:
1) Lumiere is a major PIA. Only the recent beta of the program allows you to capture the transport stream from the JVC HD100, and it’s a weak beta at best. Using their method, you’re only able to capture about 5 minutes of footage at a time before the sound goes out of sync and you can’t capture over cuts. I’ve found a solution for this by de-muxing the transport stream with MPEG Streamclip. Using that program, I can directly convert my m2t file to DVCPRO HD 720p without demuxing and losing sync. However, i’m not entirely sold on this method. I get a stroby image about halfway into a 50-minute capture. My export settings from the transport stream are: DVCPROHD 720p codec, 23.976 fps, 1280×720 HDTV frame size setting, 48K audio.
2) When I bring footage transcoded from Lumiere into FCP, it plays back at 24fps. The online process is simple because you create a new offline 10-bit sequence in FCP and connect your footage to the original m2v footage you captured in 24fps. – When I bring it in from the LHe, it plays at 59.97fps. When you jog through the LHe captured footage, you can see that it’s still 24fps with frames duplicated. In order to send this out to film, I have to export it as a 10-bit image sequence set to 23.98fps. This seemed to work okay and plays back fine. Is it correct to assume that in doing this the duplicated frames are removed or does something else take place? If it’s okay to export the 59.97 clips as a 23.98fps sequence to send to a film lab, then the Kona method is preferred.
3) Which brings me to why the LHe is the preferred method. Because the BR-HD50 deck has RS-422 device control, you don’t lose your timecode during capture. You also can capture more than 5 minutes at a time with no hassle.
I need someone’s professional opinion here: Is the LHe really the way to go? Am I sacrificing any picture quality by capturing analogue component over the firewire transport stream with Lumiere?
I will also keep everyone updated as to the results of this film test and the pipeline I eventually settle on.
Powermac G5 Quad 2.5
2 GB RAM
Quaddro 512MB Video Card
Kona LHe -
1 Reply
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this company in Vancouver
https://www.digitalfilmgroup.net/
worked closely with JVC to develop this camera for a very specific tape to film workflow. I have seen uncolor corrected footage straight from the camera to 35mm and it looked very good. I saw this test about four months ago. I think that they used lumiere and wrote it to film with a proprietatry algorythm. Soembody there might give you excellent advice on your workflow.
David
The new year is over
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