Darren Edwards
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When I return to my office later on today I’ll put some PDF
examples of the tech documents I was referring to up on our
server for you to download. The simple problem with HDV
is quality, really. To keep HD useable it involves GOP
and predictive framing — which basically is
comparable to JPEG technology — it’s good, if you squint, but
close up is a thousand miles away from the original raw image.But there are ways around it — namely, bypassing the camera’s
internal cogs and sending the image straight out via HD-SDI
to (firstly) something that will convert the image to 1920×1080
and then straight to harrdrive or solid state. The problem
there is additional hire cost of equipment and the digital
crew to look after it. It’s never easy with HDV.D.
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I concur with the Nitris DX choice. After a few years of struggle,
we’re finally developing our first projects with mainstream
commissioners and we need a new edit HD suite to look after us.
Been using FCP and PPro for years and both platforms have
cost me/the company too much time and money over the years with
their random crashing and other eccentricities, particularly Adobe.Another reason for Avid is we’ll be using their Turnkey setup
on XP Pro (which we’ll upgrade to Service Pack 3 ourselves, I
presume) so we won’t have to repurchase software and licenses
for OSX or whatever.Other reasons: Apple’s ProRes422 codec apparently isn’t up to
its own hype, whereas Avid’s DNxHD is. Windows/Premiere Pro
now supporting RED’s 4K material does make me chuckle, though.Saying that, we also need offline and motion graphics and I’ll quite
happily allow CS3 to take care of it. Offline setup being Premiere,
After Effects and Photoshop (we’ve started editing video in Photo-
shop) running a Matrox or AJA card, for example.Darren.
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There’s a neat little plugin available for Premiere/After Effects
from Buena called Effects Essentials. ‘Camera Flash’ is actually
part of suite costing $199, but ‘Camera Flash’ is the token
fully functional thing within it. And fortunately, when you look at
the rest of the suite, it’s the only plugin you’ll probably use.Download it, install it, happily use ‘Camera Flash’ and not care
that you can’t use anything else.https://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/win/27105
Darren.
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Also, there are some great, media/info rich resources out there
for keeping on top of the HD industry.Two popular examples:
Studio Daily: https://www.studiodaily.com
HighDef Magazine: https://www.highdef.com/magazine/D.
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A good place to start deciphering the technical differences between HD
and HDV is to read the Tech Guidelines paper from a broadcaster
who commission’s HD projects – e.g. BBC, Sky, Discovery, History
Channel HD, et al. In most cases nowadays, you will need to register
(for free) as a ‘Producer’ in order to gain access to this information
— normally downloadable PDFs.You’ll find that HDV/DVCAM isn’t considered to be a ‘professional
format’ anymore, although plenty of local news stations still
shoot in DVCAM and, for example, the BBC still commissions lots
of projects shot on Z1 HDV.I lunched with a Sky One commissioner recently, and she was telling
me that Sky no longer commission in anything other than ‘full HD’,
although she was lobbying their tech dept. to accept the new
EX1/EX3 cameras. I don’t like the EX1 myself, but if renting one
is a 10th of the price of a bigger camera, then so be it.Darren.
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Interlaced video is traditionally considered more suited to
sports (for example) where it’s important to maintain detail
during fast pans and tilts etc., whereas progressive/deinterlaced
video has that filmic blur more suited to drama, film, etc.Deinterlacing footage will reduce the sharpness of it by a
small percent — it’s something like a 15% loss of vertical
resolution.If you’ve shot some sports as interlaced and the footage is
only going to be used on television then there’s no need to
deinterlace it. If it was to be used cross-platform then
it would have to be deinterlaced because some web players
make interlaced footage look quite nasty.That said, a lot of broadcasters are using 720p as their default
HD sports format, and us too — we shoot super league rugby
every week in progressive (for web, DVD, television) and it
looks great; with the shutter speed cranked up too, it’s as
dramatic-looking as it’s going to get.Darren.
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Sorry if I sounded unhelpful. One advantage of having Audition
(as opposed to Soundtrack) on the same system is that Audition
is more powerful; the second is that ver 1.5 of Audition is
considered better to anything Adobe has released since. (I actually
prefer 1.5 for WAV editing/mixing to anything Pro Tools or Logic
can offer.)Terry mentions a way of linking files with Bridge, but I find
the CS3 workflow fairly automated anyway — when a WAV file
is effected and re-saved, PPro (along with whatever CS3 prog
is open) will instinctively re-conform/re-transcode the file.Darren.
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From ver 1.5 onwards, it’s normally found at:
Video Effects/Image Control/Colour Corrector/HSL
Darren.
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Start with ‘Pedestal’. This is where most colourists and
telecine operators will begin when told to crush the blacks
down to near 0.Darren.
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Why not simply install Audition on your CS3 suite? License issues?
Like most Audition purists, it’s ver 1.5 or nothing for me as far as
Adobe is concerned.D.
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