Graeme Nattress
Forum Replies Created
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To display on screen, yes, it goes through a different pathway that will certainly involve RGB at some point. I think the playback of rendered material or video is different to if there’s an effect and RT gets enabled, but at that point I often get lost off with the complexity.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP
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Nope, was 16:9 but what I’m getting at is that it’s not the display, or the resolution, but the processing circuitry that does it. Most displays don’t handle interlace right, or they screw up the scaling or, there’s always something they don’t get right. That’s why I was trying to get to the bottom of “is it the image, is it the display, or is it the display’s processing?”
Say you’ve got one of those cute terranex boxes – if you feed the DV through there and out to any HD display, it should look a tad blurry compared to HD, but it should look more than fine.
LetItWave were doing demos of their uprez technology at NAB, and their HD from SD looked fine on an SD monitor, as were the demos I’ve seen on previous years by Snell and Wilcox and Terranex.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP
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When I’d borrowed a JVC CRT HD monitor, SD looked fine on that.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP
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If you’re editing HDV to go back to HDV then you’d use an HDV timeline as normal. But HDV is in no way shape or form a valid mastering format. Similarly, if you’re going back to DVCProHD tape, not much point your timeline being anything else.
But, if you don’t know what you’re mastering to, or it’s HDCAM SR or D5, or you just want a high quality file on disc of reasonable size. ProRes would be superb. Just stick it on a FW drive, take it roud to Walter’s studio and say, “Can you master this out for me?”, which you do for a reasonable $ fee and everyone’s happy.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP
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But the other major use for ProRes is that it’s a “common” timeline codec of high quality. Take native HDV, DVCproHD, HDCAM, uncompressed, graphics etc. etc. all from their own native sources, and without transcoding put on the “common” ProRes timeline. You don’t have to worry about different raster sizes etc. as it’s full raster and won’t diminish the quality of your graphics. It’s 10bit so an colour correction renders will be at full quality. And the end result file is small enough to stick on a FW drive and take somewhere else for HD-SDI mastering output. To me, that’s what ProRes is about. Being able to capture to it is just icing on the cake.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP
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Well, unless you’re capturing from an HDV camera out the HDMI, SDI or component output live to a laptop with the IOHD, say, I don’t see any benefit trying to transcode in post.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP
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HD is just that though – lowering the viewing distance at which you see the pixels. Pixel for pixel it’s not higher quality than that which went before it. Take a 720×486 centre crop from your HDCAM and guess what, your native DigiBeta will look better (mostly due to larger pixels in the chips on the cameras, + 10bit very low compression recording). Or take an HD source and scale down to SD rez, and shoot again on the HD source zoomed out so that a centre crop matches the FOV of the scaled version. Again, although the scaled version is from HD, pixel for pixel it will look better. All that the HD version gives is a nearer viewing distance before the pixels get nasty.
If an SD source on an HD monitor looks less than you’d expect viewing a SD monitor at the same distance, it’s got to be down to something that monitor is doing with it’s processing circuitry as in the SD test, there’s a 1:1 relationship that gets lost with the HD monitor. I’m guessing crap processing is surprisingly common.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP
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You don’t need any cards to work with ProRes. Workflow might dictate that you want one, but it’s not necessary.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP
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With an HDTV and correct viewing distance, nobody should be able to distinguish your DV from real HD. And after watching some pretty nasty broadcast HD, DV would be preferable. If what you’re seeing is not just the native quality of your video (have you tried piping the DV from the deck direct to the display), then something else could be amiss.
After all, our 23″ Apple displays are HD, and good DV, either progressive or correctly de-interlaced can look very good on them, and even web video downloads of ~SD rez, especially if they’re 16:9 don’t look too attrocious full screen, and from a slightly greater than normal viewing distance look absolutely fine.
The software out there that does a better uprez might be a cool idea, but get the demo and do a similar scale in FCP (high qaulity mode). You’ll probably find you’ll have a hard time eyeballing a difference under normal viewing. FCP is also much easier to use….
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP
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You don’t have to, is the simple answer. With the new timeline, you can edit HDV native on a ProRes or Uncompressed or whateveryouwant timeline. Render and it renders to that format. HDV is only really an issue on render and out to tape, which this above method would avoid with minimum quality hit as you’re not inserting an extra transcode in the path.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP