Oliver Peters
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Forum Replies Created
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[Scott Davis] “Do you think the 3 day classes in DS (I think the Moviola training center has one) are good?”
If your employer pays for it, then yes. I don’t know about the classes, so I can’t speak for them, but you can learn most of the basics for editing and effects using the DS manual and tutorial. Avid also offers a free tutorial disc that is the full interface which will run on most PCs. You simply can’t use media (I think) or save projects. I believe any registered DS owner can get these from Avid and I’m pretty sure they are included with new systems.
Sincerely,
OliverOliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Check with FMC Training. They have courses in Miami and Orlando on a per scheduled basis.
Sincerely,
OliverOliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
The answer is – it depends. If DS sales continue strong, the product will live. This is Avid’s “DI” solution and compositing solution. I think the people who would have bought DS for HD conforms will move to Symphony and those sales will be lost; however, that still leaves the folks who need a Flame-style product – but from Avid.
Not to mention, it will be possible to get a dual-boot Symphony/DS Nitris system. If you are working in a market with existing DS systems, then you should improve your skillset, as you will continue to be in demand. Heck, if Avid didn’t kill off the Pinnacle Liquid line, then I hardly see them dumping DS within the next year. After that, of course, no one knows.
Sincerely,
OliverOliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Don’t know. Theoretically 10-bit is better, but depending on your footage, you might not see any difference, since HDCAM is 8-bit to start with. As far as your AE effects, you’ll probably want to export uncompressed and do the effect that way and then import as either DNxHD or uncompressed. The workflow will depend on which Avids or other NLEs you have at your disposal. Although AXP can work with HD today, I really think you should use it as an offline tool and then see about something more advanced for final conforming, like DS and Symphony Nitris.
Sincerely,
OliverOliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
Unfortunately Pixel Monkey is wrong. The Panasonic cameras shoot with two pulldown modes. 24p (standard pulldown with cadence 2-3-2-3) and 24pA (“advanced” pulldown with cadence 2-3-3-2). BOTH modes record to tape as 30i, just like a film-to-tape transfer. The advantage of 24pA is that the tape signal can be captured as true 24p media over FireWire with the simple removal of the middle frame (a split frame) of a five frame stream. Standard pulldown is more complex to remove.
In fact, certain Avid models will ONLY remove pulldown at the highest resolution over FW if it was recorded as 24pA. It is quite possible that in the example Pixel Monkey gave, the 24pA footage was captured with pulldown removal on a system designed to remove only standard pulldown, such as a Meridien-based Composer, which expects 2-3 cadence, not 2-3-3-2. This means the system would have removed the wrong split frames resulting in a totally screwed up cadence, which sounds like what he described.
Either mode can be used if you intend to work in 24p, but proper removal of the specific pulldown mode used will depend on your system. Generally 24p (standard) should be used if you want a film look but intend the destination to be video and not film or a 24p DVD. If you record 24pA, but cut 29.97, the image will be technically correct, but strobe in odder ways than what you are used to seeing because of the different cadence.
The advantage to cutting it as a 29.97 project is that you will get a film look, but all effects, like credit rolls, DVE moves and transitions will be smoother on interlaced TVs because the movement is field based. If you edit it in a 23.976 project, these effects are progressive (frame-based) and will strobe more on TV, but look better if you went to a film-out or upconvert to 24p HD formats.
Modern compression systems and upconversion systems, like to see consistent and not mixed cadences on 24fps footage, because the image processing required is better when it can be done in a progressive mode. This mode detection is difficult to non-existant on some units when they encounter mixed cadences on a project (shot 24p with pulldown and cut in 29.97). So if you don’t have a lot of video-style effects and all your footage is 24p, they will be a number of advantages to cutting 24fps material in a 23.976 project.
Check out more info on 24p.com.
Sincerely,
OliverOliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Kevin Monahan] “Sounds like some complicated matte work. As the boys say, you need to rotoscope AKA cut out a new matte for every frame. It’s tedious, and maybe something you don’t have time to do. Fortunately, there are a lot of folks out there that specialize in doing this stuff. Sometimes, you can even get an eager student to help you out.”
I think we might be assuming too much about the complexity. Depending on the movement and just how crisp or fuzzy the edge blend needs to be will determine this. These tasks are hardly ever total frame-by-frame painted rotoscope jobs any more. Most effects artists using rotosplining (traveling mattes). The spline points generally have to be moved or tweaks every few frames and that generally does the trick. This sort of thing can and has been done quite readily with tools like Avid’s animatte and other keyframable mattes with 20+ points.
Sincerely,
OliverOliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[chris] “Thanks so much for reminding me! Square pixels. I thought HDCAM would be non-square. Thats only DVCAM at .9 x 1 huh? Do you have any resorces for explaining progressive and interlaced wookflow? If you are coming form 35m should you always stay in progressive? Do Barco projecters display in Progress?
Chris”The 1920×1080 format and the 1280×720 format each use square pixels. Each codec, however, is non-square within the codec itself. So HDCAM is 1440×1080, but you never see that since you are never natively working with the codec in a way that you can see this. Part of what these codecs do is scale in image horizontally back and forth, which is why they don’t hold up well to post-production, among other reasons. DVCPROHD is the worst for this.
I don’t have specific resources at hand, but there’s a lot of good info at 24p.com, on the Quantel site and in other locations. Generally most modern displays are progressive, but that’s not a given and I don’t specifically know about that projector. Whether to work interlace or progressive with 35mm is a very complex and somewhat subjective question.
I recently finished a film (as editor/post-spvsr) which was shot S35mm, transferred to HDCAM-SR, conformed/graded via an Assimilate Scratch (4:4:4) DI system and mastered out to SR again. We held a screening for the investors using a 1080i HDCAM dub (24p with added pulldown) and it looked awesome. The lab folks brought both a 1080p and 1080i copy, but the 1080i was used because the DLP projector that was supplied needed an extra card to take a 1080p input. So it all depends.
Sincerely,
OliverOliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[BRussell] “So I guess HDCAM “cloning” at a place like Lightning Dubs isn’t really “cloning” (unless they do that propriety Sony thing instead of SDI, I don’t know what they do). ….
…..but rather, export to 4:4:4 and stay uncompressed NLE (which I can do during online nearby, using FCP / Color Finese), or otherwise lay the finished show 4:4:4 export file to SR and work in a linear fashion at some studio? (This will all end in film-out.)”The Sony “thing” is SDTI. I don’t know if it’s proprietary or not as other companies have also used this technology. It bypasses the decode/encode and moves the compressed video across as data. Therefore it is true cloning IF that’s what they actually are doing. The Sony Xpri editor also uses this to move HDCAM native footage into Xpri.
There are a million ways to slice the pie. Since you are shooting HDCAM, I don’t know that you are gaining much with SR or 444 or anything else like that. I would suggest this route if you are concerned about it. 1) Capture and edit on Avid as DNxHD and apply no correction. 2) Output to HD D5 (better than HDCAM and more available than SR, for now). 3) Then book tape-to-tape correction in a daVinci 2K suite and master to HD D5 or SR for your film-out “electronic negative”.
This will be the fastest, most straight-forward route. You won’t be a guinea pig and will get the benefit of a good colorist at the controls.
Sincerely,
OliverOliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
There’s simply no way around tracking a very precise matte to constrain the color info to just the apple. Best if the footage is progressive and not interlaced. Of course, it goes without saying, that this would have been easier with pre-production planning to turn this into a visfx shot, For instance, paint the apple blue for separation and then alter the color in post. The tracking work can be done in Commotion, After Effects, Combustion, etc. It can also be done in some Avids with the Intraframe Paint (Animatte) features as well as with some of the FCP matte tools, like those from CHV.
Sincerely,
OliverOliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “Make sure you are loading a preset and not building your own settings.”
Actually my apologies. If you don’t have a card like Kona 2 installed the presets are for DVCPROHD and HDV. If you create the settings it does say 1080i, but that’s for frame size. If you choose square pixels and 23.98, you’ll notice that the field setting is greyed out, i.e. progressive.
Sincerely,
OliverOliver Peters
Post-Production & Interactive Media
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com