[Antonio De la cruz]

But to what type of HD should I transfer to?

Be well,
Antonio

[Antonio De la cruz]

This is funny. First I just want to clarify something. I was aware when I shot my film “Salsa Lessons” that there was going to be a loss of quality. But my DP was told that at the end of the day the adapter was going to do more harm than good. All I said about the point Jan (she not a he) made was that going up to HD does help.I mentioned the film “Iraq in Fragments” by James Longley, the film was shot in letterbox on the dvx100,then on the dvx100a, the film won best cinematography at Sundance.What does that mean? It means that the initial letterbox image was good enough to get that award. Obviously he went to HD and then finally 35mm film but as I mentioned before your film will always be in the format you started in. You can improve the image here and there but it will always be in the original format.

Yes David if I were to shoot the film now I would shoot in squeeze mode, actually I would take Jan suggestion and actually do adapter in wides and squeeze in close-ups. You know what I am actually going to upgrade to the Panasonic AG-HVX200, and just simplify matters.

Seriously this speaks to the fact that there is so much information out there some errouneous and some true but I am glad that we have this forum to make things easier for alot of people. I admire David’s passion and also the fact that we have peole like Noah and Jan to help clarify things. Stay positive! By the way I am about to finish the first rough cut and I am very happy with the results.

Antonio

[Antonio De la cruz]

Thanks, Noah, I think that the best thing will be for Panasonic to come out with a camera with native 16:9. I guess the DVX100C? I know the DVX200 has native 16:9. But some of us still prefer to work on regular dv. As you know when you go up to HD the expenses go up. Especially in Post.

Thanks for all the advice its been helpful. Thanks!
Antonio

[Antonio De la cruz]

There is also this guy that shoots on the Panasonic dvx100a in letterbox mode. He makes nature films. Check out his site:https://www.pinelakefilms.com/faq.html, I think he does a great job. On his page he has a questions and answer section and he explains from his experience the pros and cons of shooting with the anamorphic adapter. He also has a way to improve the letterbox image using a particular program that also allows him to go into true 16:9.

[Antonio De la cruz]

This is how it was explain to my dp. Check this out.

Q1) “My MiniDV or DVCAM camera does not have a “real” 16×9 CCD in it … I hear that the 16×9 is “fake” and I shouldn’t use it at all”

A1) Not entirely true. While a “true” 16×9 CCD is better than “interpolated” 16×9, the “true” 16×9 cameras are prohibitively expensive, and really overkill in many ways. Like the gameshow, your image chain is only as strong as it’s weakest link. In the world of MiniDV and DVCAM, the weakest link BY FAR is the fact that the image data is 4:1:1 encoded and has a 5:1 lossy compression ratio (in essence that means that 80% of your image data is thrown out, and only a portion of that makes it back into the final image).

Thus, the weakest link (in terms of image loss) you need to be most concerned with is the amount of useable image that gets on tape.

Here’s an interesting way to look at it:

If you shoot in 4:3 but you’re intended output is HDTV at 16:9 or film at 1.85 (or letterbox NTSC), then the pixels that you throw away to crop for one of these formats are the EXACT SAME pixels that get thrown away from the CCD when you work in the “interpolated” 16×9 mode of most cameras. The huge difference is, that when you work in 4×3 and crop later, you are throwing away pixels AFTER the major 5:1 compression stage, with the end result being that 25% of your valuable data space on the TAPE is unused. (note that it can be worse than 25% – since the DV codec is fixed rate, if a high detail object (like a tree) is in that 25% unused image area it could soak up more than 25% of the available dataspace. YIKES!)

Thus, if you are going to end up in either 16×9 or 1.85, the exact same pixels of the CCD will still end up in the resultant frame, but if you shoot 16×9, those pixels are interpolated across a significantly greater data space and the result is a superior image.

FIGURES TO NOTE:

A 4×3 image cropped to 16×9 uses only 75% of the available pixels of the CCD and only 75% of the available data space on the tape.

A 16×9 “interpolated mode” image presented in 16×9 uses the EXACT SAME 75% of the pixels of the CCD as above, but has the advantage of using 100% of the available data space on the tape.

[Antonio De la cruz]

K. David. Cool. I was aware of the adapter and so on. My DP was concerned about Glass on Glass and we would be wasting the good lense of the camera which is a Leica lens.(German lens, I believe) Also we had heard from a number of people bad things about the adapter. I heard that Century Optics is coming out with one for the DVX100b? I actually projected some footage today. It looks good. My objective with this film from the onset was to take it to festivals and to try to market it to a channel like the women’s network.I don’t have grandiose ideas about transferring to film.

I do agree with you about going up to HD is not going to help. Your film will always be in the format that it was shot in. Now in terms of the squeeze mode that you mentioned as far as I know there is no difference in resolution from Squeeze mode and letterbox. My other option would have been to shoot in normal mode (4:3) and get all 480 lines.

Yes, I agree with you next time I will use the adapter. It’s funny though, I shot my first feature with the canon GL1 and got good results. Looking at this footage from the DVX100a and comparing it to the footage from my first feature I must say that the DVX looks way better even in letterbox. And the Canon yields 525 lines of resolution.

Finally I think thats why sites like this are very helpful because there is so much information out there and sometimes its very hard to distinguish fact from fiction.

Antonio

[Antonio De la cruz]

K. Noah, thanks. I guess the only reason for using Pal is if you are sure you will be transferring to film. AS I am sure you know the film “Full frontal” was shoot with a Canon Pal Camera. Also the film “bamboozled” was shot with a Sony Pal Camera.