[Neil Weaver]

Good grief… As easy as that. Perfect, Todd thanks.

I didn’t want anything complex like Andrew Kramer’s tutorial – it’s just going to be a magnifying lens.

Sometimes it’s the simplest things…

[Neil Weaver]

Too many cameras, too many formats, too many codecs…
Still, thanks to the Cow, I’ve discovered JES de-interlacer which could be the answer to all my problems. Well, the editing ones anyway!

[Neil Weaver]

Thanks Dave – I would, but I’m over here in PAL land shooting at either 50i or 25F.

My Cannon does offer the option of 720P though – what are the advantages of that over 1080?

[Neil Weaver]

Thanks all.

The reason I was asking is I’ve just discovered the joys of shooting progressive over interlaced – I never realised it was interlacing that makes footage look really ‘video-y’!

I’m not looking to shoot proper slow mo, despite the title of my post – sorry Dave! It was more for those times you might need to run a clip a little slower than full speed, so thanks for all the advice.

[Neil Weaver]

Thanks everyone.

Grading with Color is certainly a next step – have followed a couple of your Cow tutorials on the basics Walter. (Am interested in buying the DVD, but there appear to be some shipping issues??)

I’m pretty au fait with the 3-way color corrector, and as I say, the videos look great on the web. It’s only on DVD that I’m getting that slightly unreal sensation from some of the shots…

[Neil Weaver]

Hi,
we recently achieved a pretty good looking DVD busting 50i HDV down to SD by creating a DV50 sequence and dragging the HDV sequence into it. If you’re working in PAL and I assume you are with 50i, make the field dominance upper and set the motion filtering quality to fastest.

Export the movie self contained, (deinterlace in QT) and import it DVDSP. Field order top, and best quality motion.

Ta-dah!

[Neil Weaver]

Hmm, I don’t think the budget on this allows for the type of work you’ve outlined there. The digital pull out would work though – especially as the final clips are for the web anyway.

Thanks for your suggestions, Barend!

[Neil Weaver]

Thanks for responding, Barend. Yes, we are digitally adding the floor – how does that change the process?

[Neil Weaver]

Ben, thanks a million. Rendering it out from AE ‘straight’ and changing the comp mode in FCP to ‘add’ has fixed it.
Cheers!

[Neil Weaver]

That’s just it – when I shoot as a one man band, I know I’m getting the shots I want. When I direct, I’m relying on the camera op to get the shots I tell him to get. A lot of the time, it’s fine – my regular guys all know what they’re doing and we plan stuff out accordingly. It’s just sometimes, back in the edit, I’m thinking, ‘you know what, if I could actually have seen what was being shot as it was being shot, I would have asked for x,y or z as well…’ Not because we’re missing hugely important stuff, but when you can see what your operators can see through their viewfinder it makes a difference – particularly with composition and framing. And on these highly mobile observational shoots a wireless monitor would be worth its weight!