Graeme Nattress
Forum Replies Created
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Capture, remove pulldown then convert would be safest, I think. As for scaling – no way to avoid that.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
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Your workflow for best quality is:
Remove advanced pulldown from the DV. Use the batch exporter to convert it to DVCpro50 codec.
Use Cinema Tools to remove 3:2 pulldown from the DVCpro50Edit everything in a 23.98fps DVCpro50 timeline.
Export a 23.98fps movie. Open it in compressor to make a 23.98fps MPEG2 file for your DVD. The DVD player will add 3:2 pulldown on playback, thus you’re recording the max possible quality on DVD.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
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The Cineform comparisons on their website are interesting, but as Cineform stores the full raster, and DVCproHD does not, it’s a rather unfair comparison to repeatedly stretch the DVCproHD out to full size, then squash it back down again, rather than keep it in it’s native 960×720 or 1280×1080 throughout processing, as this is what any sensible DVCproHD workflow would do. To keep changing the dimensions would introduce many more artifacts than to keep it native dimensions, as it’s only ever stretched for viewing, not for effects etc.
Cineform is very interesting, but without a camera or tape deck that supports it, it’s only useful as a computer codec. Without camera or deck support, I doubt it will ever be popular. Even for moving videos around, you need something that’s cross platform, and preferably free, or at least with a free playback codec.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
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Thanks Jason, that’s interesting. As I say, my big concern is processing time for wavelt based codecs – they seem to need a lot more processor power than DCT based ones.
I can’t see a Cineform test at Marco’s site. Do you have a link for it? Also, do you have any processing time metrics, compared to, say, PhotoJPEG100%?
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
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Yes indeed. I think if they just went with the equivalent of PhotoJPEG100%, and kept it all RGB from the get-go, then that would be most awesome. I’m not keen on the amount of processor power these new wavelet codecs need to decode / encode. Let’s say good-bye to Y’CbCr compression forever and go 4:4:4 R’G’B’.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
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The codec is the limitation, not the tape, with regards to the resolution.
An 8bit DCT based codec might seem outdated but:
It works, proven in the field,
8bit is enough for acquisition. 10bit is better, but >8bit is much more important for compositing / CC etc. than for aquisition. If you’re going to put more “bits” in, that’s the place where it pays off with the greatest value to the end product – that and in the DSP of the camera. It’s a compromise, remember.
Avid’s codec is Avids. They like to tie you in tight. Much more people than Avid support the DVCpro series of codecs. I bet a lot oof us here don’t edit on Avid.
Wavelets? Are they better?? Does Apple’s Pixlet codec use wavelets?? I think it does. In tests Pixlet performs worse than PhotoJPEG100%. PhotoJPEG, that ancient DCT based codec produces images with less deviation from the original image, in less time, with less processing power. Unless Pixlet is the worst wavelet implementation going, I’d say that good old DCT is better because it’s faster to process with, and indeed, at low compression levels produces images that are essentially lossless. Look at Digital Betacam, although 10bit, is DCT based and beautiful.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
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It might be old, but it works, works well. NLEs have very good software versions of it and it looks fine. Because MPEG2 is “adaptive”, that’s the one that needs extra work to make it usable. Remember the first DVD’s – ouch – what a bad picture – my VHS often looked better. Now DVDs generally look great. The codec hasn’t changed, but it’s implementation has. DVCpro/pro50/HD, has looked great from the start.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
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As you’re right that adding tape would cost about $10,000 to the price of this camera, it’s pretty safe to compare the costs and quality, we’re guessing here, to that of a <$20,000 camera rather than a <$10,000 camera. Also, as it's more mass produced than the Varicam or SDX900, they should be able to put great glass in the lens, and cut the costs with it not being removable etc. Infact, as Panasonic are going on a quality crusade over the HDV masses, it would be pretty daft of them to put a poor lens on the front, even if it isn't removable. Graeme - http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
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This one does:
https://www.mackie.com/products/onyx1620/index.html
see https://www.pfiggianimsc.com/blog/ and podcast 26.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
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But if you’re mastering to DV you’re no further forwards, other than have wasted a tonne of disk space. Indeed, because of the filtering the SDI output does to the chroma, you could have slilghtly worse quality after going back to a DV deck over SDI rather than keeping in DV throughout.
And if you’re outputing to digital Betacam, there’s no need to capture you DV uncompressed, just, when done editing as DV, flip the sequence over to an uncompressed setting and re-render. The Apple DV codec is very much as good as the hardware at decompressing DV. The difference is in the chroma smoothing, for which, see my above post.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP