Why doesn’t my footage look as good as Hollywood?

[Casey Petersen]

Thanks everyone for your responses!

The thing is, I don’t see the strobey look on anything that’s uploaded to Vimeo or YouTube. I haven’t had time to look at the clips that have been uploaded for this thread, but even with my own stuff in 24p, it looks great on Vimeo…it looks pretty good on my FCP timeline and pretty good on a Blu-ray, but looks lousy on a tube TV set.

I noticed on a thread (perhaps this one!) that someone mentioned changing the settings on the camera to drop the sharpness and chroma. I wonder if that would have any effect on looking lousy on a regular TV. I’m also trying to play to the lowest-common denominator, and hopefully the old tube sets will be out of the picture soon.

Thanks!
Casey

[Anthony Bari jr.]

Make sure you do a few things:

Focus and stay focused

use a rig or tripod, handheld looks very amateur

Use adjust Picture Styles, like Flat colors so you have room to color correct.

Great Lenses, L series, or don’t buy plastic cheapies.

good audio is a must!

be aware of shutter speed at half of your framerate ie: 24p shutter 1/50th (smooth movement)
thats a start.

*Production*Post-Production*
Apple Certified Instructor (Final Cut Pro 7)
“Semper Fi USMC”

[Paulo Teixeira]

I would not use that video as an example. It was my very first outing with the GH2 and not only were the settings not the best, I used a lower quality 24p mode. The higher quality 24p mode looks much better than that. On top of all that, it was obviously on a shutter of 30.

Again, that example is very poor to be using it and I did thought about deleting it and this thread is reminding me that I probably should.

[Jason Jenkins]

Motion looks fine in those samples, Peter. In my experience with several weeks of shooting with the GH2, it’s not movement within the frame that is the problem, it’s movement of the camera that shows the weird jerkiness. Rolling shutter?

Jason Jenkins
Flowmotion Media
Video production… with style!

[Jason Jenkins]

[Peter J. DeCrescenzo] “Do these GH2 & GH1 1080p24 videos look “jerky” to you?”

The images look very nice. I can see some jerkiness going on in some of the handheld shots, though. It matches with my experience shooting with the GH2. I assume that the rolling shutter is what exacerbates the jerkiness of handheld movement.

Jason Jenkins
Flowmotion Media
Video production… with style!

[Casey Petersen]

I’m starting to think now that this is more of a progressive footage looking lousy on an interlaced TV issue, rather than there is something wrong with the camera or anything in that part of the process.

Maybe the question I should be asking is how to get original progressive footage to look decent on DVD when played on an interlaced TV.

Thanks!
Casey

[Mike Josephs]

I was wodnering the same thing. Its true the right people need to shoot, but without sounding arrogant my stuff looks gorgeous in FCP, and a raw MOV even a compressed H264. But make a dvd and it looks like utter crap! I know the dvd is SD but like the OP intimated, buy an sd dvd of a hollywood movie and it’s fantastic. I shoot on dull HD, progressive, put alot of effort into lighting and shot comp, and at elast for DVDs it’s all a waste b/c, as said, looks like shit.
Help please!