Varicam and Telecine

[Dale Mccready]

Acccording to the very useful Mike Curtis of hdforindies.com, recompressing to a 10bit format and outputting to a system such as D5 is preferable for colour correcting. I’ve done some grading through After Effects to DVCproHD and had reasonable results, but have also done a whole series with a 2K suite and DVCproHD footage upconverted to 1080i and then colour corrected. I think the amount of flexibility we’ve had in this system has been preferable and I’m sure I would have ‘broken’ the footage had I tried some of the grading things we’ve done this way in AE.

I’ve heard said that the recompress from the native camera format DVCproHD (if captured via firewire) unlocks the 10bit and allows better grading. Anyone else able to chime in and confirm this?

But I would guess that recapturing via HDSDI to 10bit would give you a better result. Can you do a test?

One note of interest I’ve found when grading my footage that was shot using the Film Rec settings. If exposed as rated the midtone ends up being at 30.5%IRE. So the division between each control, ie shadows, mids, and highlights can be misplaced to deal with the low con image. Using a curves control tends to have better results, unless these thresholds between each control can be adjusted.
Otherwise lifting the mids just overexposes the shots as it lifts the highlight area as shot (between 40% and 80%)

Just something to think about when grading with someone who is more used to grading footage thats skintone/midtone sits more around 60%IRE.

[Gary Adcock]

[Dale McCready] “I’ve heard said that the recompress from the native camera format DVCproHD (if captured via firewire) unlocks the 10bit and allows better grading. Anyone else able to chime in and confirm this?
But I would guess that recapturing via HDSDI to 10bit would give you a better result. Can you do a test?”

Dale
it is always better to work with “decompressed” material-(ie: it has been laid to tape). ALL current decks do have hardware decompressors built for the specific codec used by that company. SO opening up DVCPROHD content to save you from working in a compressed format is always the best. then you can color correct without the need for dealing with the compression issues.

gary adcock
Studio37
HD and Film Consultation

[Bryant Richardson]

Thanks a lot. Confirms my thoughts and tests. In capturing footage both through firewire and HDSDI I have noticed more latitude when doing green/blue screen and/or color correcting in AE but after talking with some post houses I started questioning my eyes. Some transfer houses will say “when it’s compressed it’s compressed, you’re not going to get anything back, while others will say it does matter (then again, even at those houses it depends on who you talk to). Do you guys recommend any particular transfer houses and will most upconvert to 1080 before correction (is this desireable)? I would love to find a house that will do data to data correction. Thanks again for your time?

Bryant P. Richardson
VA Beach, VA