Graeme Nattress
Forum Replies Created
-
No, you can just conform 24p to 25p in Cinema Tools. Works great.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
-
Yes, a chroma smoothing on/off switch for the DV codec would indeed be useful. If you just want basic smoothing, a horizontal 4 pixel blur on the chroma will work in AE. My main issue with that is that AE is strictly RGB, whereas my algorithms rely on access to the original Y’CbCr data, and I’m so busy coding FCP plugins, I’m not able to look at doing AE ones as well.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
-
A 24p DVD sounds great. I think, according to the DVD SP3 manual, there’s a way to also make a PAl 24p DVD, and the player itself will speed it up to 25fps for you. I’d personally just use Cinema Tools to speed up (conform) to 25fps with the HD media and do a seperate PAL downconvert from that.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
-
There are only “PAL” and “NTSC” on DVD. There is no SECAM. With regards to PAL and NTSC, they’re really transmission formats and hence the formats supported by DVD are 720×480 @ 23.98fps (NTSC 24p), 720×480 @ 29.97fps (NTSC) & 720×576 @ 25fps (PAL). I think there’s also a PAL 24p format. So really, you only need two versions, 720×480@29.97fps and 720×576@25fps. Unless it’s all from a film source, when you might be better off with the 24p option. It works great on NTSC, but I’ve never made a PAL 24p DVD.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
-
Chris, which mode are you shooting in? 24p or 24pA? Assuming the shutter speed is set to the correct value for 24p (that’s 1/48th is it?) there’s absolutely no reason why you should get any objectionable stuttering. 24p does exactly that, just 24 frames per second with a standard 3:2 pulldown to get to NTSC rate, just like any movie is transferred to video. 24pA does a different pulldown cadence that’s designed not for smooth viewing, but for removal so you can edit in a 23.98fps timeline. If you’ve shot 24pA I can well believe it stutters badly. Chris, you know your stuff, so I hope I’m not coming across badly here, but I’m at a loss to see why it’s stuttering. There’s always the possibility of field ordering issues, but that should not be an issue with a DV workflow. Any ideas?? Any chance of sending me some footage to look at?
Thanks,
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
-
DigiBeta is 2.3:1, 4:2:2 10bit, and does indeed look better than DVCpro50. DVCpro50 is good, but PhotoJPEG75% will look better still. Indeed PhotoJPEG75% is an awesome codec, visually lossless, and is very useful for transfering media around at better quality than DV at lower data rates than DV. PhotoJPEG100% is 4:4:4 RGB and again useful, but not as useful as PhotoJPEG75% for video use. The only hitch with PhotoJPEG75% is that it is not RT enabled in FCP which is a shame. DVCpro50 is RT anabled, and is also excellent.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
-
Sean, thanks for checking out my plugin. It realy does help with chroma keying, and I’m working on even better improvements at the moment. I just did some testing with the new 4:2:0 chroma sharpening plugin I’m working on, and it was producing excellent results with some PAL DV footage.
As for chroma sampling, SDI etc. Read this: https://www.nattress.com/Chroma_Investigation/chromasampling.htm
It tries to explain everything. The Apple DV codec is not bad. It’s actually excellent and very accurate and has excellent generational capabilities. However, one of the ways it achieves this is by not smoothing the chroma. This is not a bad thing once you understand it. Apple provide a free 4:1:1 smoothing filter with FCP you can try for yourself and see how much it helps. Download the free “G Take” plugin from my free section and you can use it to see the Y, Cb And Cr components, and see what all these filters are doing.
All decent chroma keyers have some kind of chroma interpolation built in to them to get around the issues of chroma reduction. Even 4:2:2 footage should be smoothed to 4:4:4 (if the codec doesn’t) before keying.
Going uncompressed does not provide a better picture. People think it does, but I wrote the above article to prove otherwise, and that it’s a lack of understanding of what is going on with chroma and smoothing (or not) that adds fuel to the uncompressed SDi DV myth. However, for certainl workflows, it can be more advantageous to capture DV over SDI, but it’s an expensive route and not to be taken lightly.
Hope that helps,
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
-
It’s all about limiting fast action and keeping camera moves slow. If you shoot 24p exactly how you’d shoot 24fps film, the end smoothness of the video will be the same.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
-
24p or 24p advanced?? 24p has much less temporal resolution than 60i or 50i, but it can be as smooth and good looking as a Hollywood movie.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
-
You can put 24p on DVD just fine, and indeed, it will look better than 24p converted to 29.97fps by using 3:2 pulldown.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP