[Mike Most — account bouncing, bad address]

I’m going to amend what I just said.

If you ***really*** think this is eventually going to be recorded to film, everything I said applies. If, however, your immediate product is HD video, and film is one of those “if I ever get the money” things (i.e., it will likely not happen – and if I were you I would try to honestly assess this), then 1080i is your answer. Convert everything to 1080i and your video will still look like video, and your 24 frame material will still look like 24 frame material (it will use 3:2 pulldown and maintain the “24p” look).

[Mike Most — account bouncing, bad address]

You can’t have mixed frame rates in a final output of anything, and you certainly can’t have mixed frame rates on film. Film is projected at 24fps. That means that everything in that film is running at 24fps. Everything you have must eventually be converted to that frame rate by definition. Whether you do that before putting it into an editing timeline or not is up to you, but ultimately it’s going to run at 24fps, so you’re much better off getting it to that frame rate as early in the process as possible.

[Mike Most — account bouncing, bad address]

Unless you’ve discovered a monitor that automatically sets itself up properly under all viewing and lighting conditions, there’s still a vital reason to have bars at the head of a tape.

[Mike Most — account bouncing, bad address]

Or play it out directly as 1080i from a 1200 or 1400 deck with an HD-SDI card.

[Mike Most — account bouncing, bad address]

>>EDL and Cinema Tools lists

Does this include a combined video TC and film Keycode list for DI use? Or the ability to custom design film lists to include this?

[Mike Most — account bouncing, bad address]

Which direction is the drift? Does the picture get ahead of the sound over time, or is it vice versa? If the picture gets ahead (i.e., the sound gets behind) then the sound is running too slowly. My guess is this is the case, and my further guess is that the sound man pulled down the sound when he did the CD mirroring. This is normally necessary for a program shot on film due to the fact that telecine does not run at 24fps, but at 23.98 fps – so sound has to be slowed down accordingly. In your case, the production was shot on video, so no pulldown occurs in the picture. Therefore, the sound needs to be mirrored exactly as shot, with no pulldown.

[Mike Most — account bouncing, bad address]

>>You must edit on cadence or you’ll end up noticing it.

Not unless you jog field by field.

Honestly, I continually see this misinformation posted here, and it’s complete nonsense. Until the advent of HD, film based television programs were edited in NTSC with no regard to cadence issues and it was never a problem. This was done for at least 15 years. Even today, it’s still occasionally done.

Just reading something on an Internet website doesn’t make it true.

[Mike Most — account bouncing, bad address]

Some companies that do a lot of video to film work (I work for one) have a good idea of what adjustments to make, based on knowledge of their particular combination of film recorder and shooting stock, in order to make the film result look reasonably close to the video original. That said, film and video are two completely different mediums with completely different color gamuts and completely different visual characteristics. It is often not a particularly good thing to make the film look more like the video original, for the simple reason that the result is quite a bit less, shall we say, “filmic” than might be desired. While it is possible to make the film out look a bit more like the video original, much more can be done if the proper steps are taken in post production to produce the best **film** product, if that is the intent. That is what properly calibrated environments and properly done color correction are all about.

If, however, you only want projected film that looks like your video screen, there are shortcuts to that, as you’ve discovered. What I’m saying is that it can be much more than that, if proper approaches are taken.

[Mike Most — account bouncing, bad address]

Well, yes, that’s not surprising. That’s exactly what I was hinting would likely happen.

The only way to ensure that you will get what you expect to get is to look at the original material in a calibrated-for-film environment, and color correct in that environment. If you haven’t done that, no amount of format changing or lin to log conversions is going to help you, because you’ll just be taking the same images, with the same color settings, into another file format. If you really think you can do this yourself, you’ll need to have a monitor that’s appropriate for the purpose, a probe to properly profile that monitor, a profile of the print stock you’ll be using (preferably derived from a print made by the particular lab you’re using and particularly derived from a negative created by the particular film recorder your material is being recorded with), and a 3D lookup table made from those profiles so that your monitor can show you an image that is a reasonable facsimile of the film print. Then you will need to have someone skilled in color correction. The only other thing you can do is fudge your existing material to combat what you now know will happen to it, in other words, make it lighter and more saturated. But in doing this, you are guessing as to what you will get, and guessing when film recording is involved is a very, very expensive process.

Still think you can do this yourself? Or is it time to consult with the facility (or another digital intermediate facility) and figure out where and how they can help you with this?

[Mike Most — account bouncing, bad address]

>>But this client has plenty of money and is still nervous about keeping a >>drive on a shelf.

I wouldn’t call that being nervous. I would call it being sensible.