[David Battistella]

I posted this a while back about this to illustrate the problem.

Here is a Dynamic RT problem with still images.

I have noticed that a timeline showing a light green line which used to be fully rendered RT easily played out by FCP is now showing less than desirabe quality compared to rendered portions of the timeline.

Try this test: Load two high resolution still image (tif, jpeg etc)
Drop the images into a timeline.(withRT set to high the timeline has a light green line on it)
Put a motion move on the first image with keyframe A@45 and keyframe B@100 (I was using 1600×1200 jpeg file)
Place a dissolve between the shots and render only the dissolve.
Go to the headframe of the dissolve and the arrow back one frame to compare the quality betweent the two. You should notice a vast difference.

In 4.5HD there would be no distinction between these two frame with the same settings but somehow we last this ability now. FCP 5.0 does not even give you a choice to see the high rez image when stopped on the still frame, which is very useful for picking out detail in high rez still images. This was a major bonus in all previous versions of Final Cut..

go here to see the stills

https://homepage.mac.com/scarlettfilms/PhotoAlbum9.html

[David Battistella]

This is one of those, “it’s a feature ot a bug things” So many people complained that the motion scaling looked so good that they actually thought that the still frame that FCP showed you was what was going to tape. SO THE FCP team has turned this feature off. Now when you zoom into a hig rez picture (to find a specific part of the frame or rezie it) the picture gets so ratty you can not see it. It is as if you are always working in a 1/3 resolution in After effects. I think this was not a good way to go. The bigger drag is that the sequence is actually telling you that THIS IS FULL RESOLUTION. They should have at least made it a dark green line effect that means it needs rendereing. FULL RT should not mean I NEED TO RENDER YOU.

To me this is a big fat drag.

Please encourage Apple to give us an option or choice that is more condusive to an individual workflow. This one was one of the biggest letdowns for me in going to 5.0

ONthe other hand the motion scaling is a much cleaner render now. Maybe even too clean. But I do not understand the logic of making every still file an automatic render, when it was not before.

David

[David Battistella]

There aer a couple of things:

Are you doing and offline and recapture or a capture and finsish?

If you are doing a recapture I would cut everything in the DV codec at 29.97. The tape that the DVX100A shoots is actually a 29.97 tape unless you remove the advance pulldown (always shoot in this mode) with cinematools ( that is fir film finish 24 frame workflows).

ONE
If you are finsihsing to tape I would offline by capturing all of the footage in teh DV codec and using the Kona2 card to play the material out to monitors etc. I would even capture the telecined film tapes from any other source at this resolution too. Do the Cut. Recapture it all 10-BIT uncompressed. you will be shocked a thow good it looks. The DV timeline will play out fine throuhg the KONA 2.

TWO
Do all of the above in 10 bit uncompressed and do not recapture. The drive space and speed will be an issue. The DV codec will allow you to use firewire 400 or 800 drives and the 8 or 10 bit uncompressed will require faster, (SATA, SCSI or FIBER storage solutions)
DV=3.8mb/se
SD10BIT=27mb/sec

you get eight times more footage on the drive with a DV capture, so that is one advantage to going that route.

David

[David Battistella]

Bob,

I think that many of the basic princeples still apply. You are never going to make an HDV tape look any better. You are just going to prevent it from getting worse. What are the possible workflows.

I have not done tests, but we can be fairly sure that HDV does not re-capture frame accurately. This has huge effects on workflow.

You could:

1. Capture HDV and edit HDV incoporating all graphics etc. Then you could render your HDV timeline, output it to HDV and transfer to HDCAM or SR. OR drop a HDV timeline into an 10 bit uncompressed sequence and render the finished timeline in 10 bit uncompressed (I am not sure the QT codecs will let youdo this)

2. Capture HDV and edit HDV NOT incoporating all graphics etc. Then you could render your HDV timeline, output it to HDV, recapture at 10 bit uncompressed and add titles etc. and then transfer to HDCAM or SR. This would give you cleaner graphics workflow.

3. Transfer all HDV to DVCPRO or HDCAM, offline at DVCPRO100 and Recapture at 10 bit uncompressed. (this workflow gives you some security in that if you loose your media you can frame accurately recapture.

HDV, DV, DVC codecs are all built and designed with the firewire digital transfer protocol in mind, so these data streams look really good when they are captured via firewire, it is designed to be a “lossless” workflow and the data rates are low enough to handle it. It’s hard to call them unprofessional because you basically have to say that all of these codecs are not for professional use. we know that there is a ton of marketing hype and that we can always get more pixels, but to discount these formats and the workflows they are designed for is not really fair.

The industry is changing, in very much the way advertizing saw boutique shops enter the fray. The big boys of advertizing said that they could never compete and the quality of the work would never be up to snuf. Then the boutiques became the big award winners and it turned out that people wanted to buy their thinking rather than their gear. It is not hard to see a model for what is happening in our business. Look at what desktop publishing did to the print industry. Did that mean that everything done on a mac and printed on a laser printer was crap? Of course it did not. There is a lot of information out there and people are making choices based on their needs, what makes them professionals is how they think and the product they deliver. In some cases it is about the gear, in some cases it isn’t.

Just two cents.

David

[David Battistella]

What is your set up Bob?

Perhaps we can all learn a thing or two?

David

[David Battistella]

Tony,

To reset the TC, you will have to go into the menu settings. I think it is in the camera menu settings. Once you ahve found it you can set it all to zero.

it is nice to use the leading hour for each new tape. IE. Tape 001 1hour timecode, tape 002 2 hour timecode, and so on. This can simplyfy things in post, knowing 2 hours code are tape two or 26 or 52 etc. When there is a lot of material to handle in large projects this is much preffered over every tape haveing the same start time code.

You will have to reset to the zero code for each new tape.

David

[David Battistella]

This has been a very good thread and many of the same questions that have come up in SD are not much different in HD. Each has a specific workflow and this makes perfect sense.

Robert. The footage looks better via HD SDI because you are capturing more information when you are capturing the DVCPRO at 8 or 10 bit uncompressed quality. But the source never gets better. It can only remain better throuhg the post process and I think that is always the fundamental arguement. The 10-bit uncompressed codecs will hold up better when rendering, importing motion graphics, and multigenerational codec performance. With DVCPRO HD100 you are looking at 14mb/sec file size and a frame that is 1280×1080 vs1920x1080. In uncompressed 10 bit that frame is always 1920×1080 with a data rate of 165MB/sec. That is almost ten times the data rate in the frame. This is why sony has developed SR, to put more information on the tape, which means more information can be captured. If these data rates and sizes did not matter, people would not be trying to capture 4:4:4 for truer color reproduction, etc. There is always going to be a push to crunch the most number of pixels from a through a lens to a CCD and onto tape then into our edit systems.

The question is always this. If you capture DVCPRO100 natively and send it out the Kona a the end of the day are you actually getting a worse picture because of the frame size and data rate? It will never get better that the amount of original information you have captured. But maybe that information is preserved better in the 10-bit uncompressed codec.

Now in HD, you may not see the difference on an 800 line CRT, but you might see the differnece if the tape you output was projected. nIt is also a fair argument to say, why capture more than I ever recorded. All of these choices come down to anyone persons specific workflow. So in Walters case that workflow is perfect for him and it is diiferent for Fred and Robert. IN the past with DV timelines I have cut the DV natively, created all of the graphics in Annimation codec and re-rendered my final sequence in 10 Bit uncompressed SD so that my graphics didn’t take the DV hit. It was a great compromise, using the low data rates and never recapturing, only recompressing (which quicktime is fantastic at!)

I think that if you can offline in DCVPRo100 and online (recapture) that finished product in 10-bit uncompressed you will have the best of both worlds, cutting at HD resoltion and finishing as good as it can possibly look.

It’s hard to argue about how something looks to the eye because it is subjective. 16mm film had a much better archival quality than 3/4inch video tape, but economics won. The worlds archive of events like the fall of the berlin wall, Tienimen Square, is a betacam tape. Compare that to how some re-released hollywood movies look on DVD, where great care was taken to capture the highest quality 35mm film and I guess that is why this sort of discussion will always be alive and well.

10-bit uncompressed is always only going to capture what is there as will the DVCPRO100 codec, but it is hard to argue that DVCPRO100 will hold up better multi-generationally than Uncompressed 10 bit HD.

Great thread!

David

[David Battistella]

One place to really see these tests results is on Graeme Natress’s website. He did an extensive test to see just what the differences were.

this is the article.

https://www.nattress.com/Chroma_Investigation/chromasampling.htm

he did a demo of this at our FCP user group a few months back. He makes some of the most useful products for FCP.

David

[David Battistella]

Great to know Walter,

Thanks.

David

[David Battistella]

Walter,

Are you capturing audio in all of this recaptuing? I read several posts below that stated that the A/V were not in sync with the current driver. The problem, as I understand it, is that the first clip of a batch is in sync, but any subsequent clips are 3 frames out of sync. The workaround is to capture one clip at a time. This way, things stay in sync.

I guess you are just lining picture up to the OMF’s. Have you done any tests with AUDIO and VIDEO in a batch in this CODEC.

Have you heard weather the new driver will be released soon?

I am in KONA 2 land now (just got it in the other day for an HD project. Looking forward to getting things rolling.

David