[Tore Gresdal]

Many thanks for your reply Ron.

I have paypal and would be very interested in participating in a testrun.

I’ll watch the newsletters for updates on this topic.

Regards
Tore Gresdal – Norway

[Tore Gresdal]

Your question is kind of like asking, “why not fly to the moon in a shopping cart?” that’s just not the way shopping carts work.

Hey… you would be amazed at what can be turned into a space shuttle…

Top Gear Rocket shuttle Car
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk5M6J2zMWQ

[Tore Gresdal]

And there we have it! Thank you.

What I didn’t think of was the little time difference between the lower and upper fields. A crucial little piece of information that I completely forgot about.

Hehe, I feel kind of stupid now… but hey… it’s when we let go of our pride and admit our shortcomings we really learn something.

Hm… now it makes more sense what the salesperson said about the Panasonic AG-DVX100A… “it’s true progressive because it records a full frame and then splits it into two interlaced frames”

BTW: Regarding interlacing… why didn’t we get rid of it when we had the chance in the transition to HD? It was initially invented because of slow phosphorus in the Cathode Ray Tubes, and that is certainly not the problem anymore.
Is it simply a question of bandwidth, or is it something else? I’ve noticed that there is hardly a difference on my progressive and interlaced file sizes so I feel tempted to question the bandwidth theory…

And while on the HD transition thing… why was the NTSC framerate retained… why not transition it to the PAL framerate of 25fps (50i) which seems much easier to deal with, at least to my inexperienced mind… PS! My apologies if I opened a can or worms here. I am asking out of pure curiosity and nothing else.

[Tore Gresdal]

Thanks for your informative answer.

I guess I should have elaborated my question a bit further. I understand the basic concepts of interlacing… but it feels like I am missing that last 10% to finally GET IT and be confident about it…

Let me try again: (still SD, PAL, 50i)

There is 50 half res frames in one second. 25 of them are lower field, 25 of them are upper field. Why not display the two of them simultaneosly.
So grab 1 frame with lower fields and one frame with upper fields, put them on the screen at the same time and you have 1 full frame in full resolution.
Do that will all the 50 half frames and you have 25 full resolution frames with no speed problem. It’s neither sped up of slowed down… Where is the need to do vector analysis and all the other fancy stuff? Why can’t the deinterlacer grab the missing lines from the next half frame instead of making it up?

Now, this must be wrong, or fieldskit and magic bullet wouldn’t exist… but what is it that I am not getting? I don’t get the big picture… litterally.

[Tore Gresdal]

I think I had the same problem as yourself;

– Flickering due to Fields order (HDV PAL is Upper and DV PAL is Lower Fields)
– Project edited in HDV becomes slightly soft on export to standard DV

Here’s what I did to get around it:

1. Export HDV project to tape (in HDV format)
2. Go into the menu on the HDV deck and set it to downconvert to DV through firewire.
3. Open a standard DV project and capture from tape. (The hardware downscaling in the deck did both a beautiful sharp downscaling to SD DV and also took care of the conversion from Upper Fields to Lower fields

Regards
Tore Gresdal

[Tore Gresdal]

DVD shrink is still available: https://www.dvdshrink.org

I haven’t tested that many standalone burners but the one’s I have testet use copyprotection and enables the macrovision bit on the dvd’s.

Here’s my suggestion/summary of what’s allready been said:
1. Disc must be finalized
2. Duplicate disc in DVD shrink (it removes copy protection and macrovision)
(just click open and then backup… It’s fully automated)
3. Disc is ready for duplication either through computer or duplication machine. You should not have any problems with it as dvd shrink removes copy protection.

Regards
Tore Gresdal

[Tore Gresdal]

Trapcode Particular does some very nice flythroughs, you can even make ’em streak if you decide to jump into hyperspace 🙂

https://www.trapcode.com/help/particular/index_presets.html
(click on natural to see the space flythrough preset)

Regards
Tore Gresdal

[Tore Gresdal]

That was my intention when we shot it, as I put a bright red sticker on the end of the plastic stick they were fighting with. However, the fighters were swinging them so hard and fast that I couldn’t see anything but a huge blur… and the motion tracker got lost after a few frames… so I ended up doing it by hand.
But it might be possible if it were shot with higher shutter speeds… But then again that will most likely kill the realism as motion blur in film is essential.
I don’t know how to add motion blur to footage in AE, but the lightsabers were easy enough as AE is aware of their motion and I would just open the shutter angle. (at least that’s what I think I did… can’t remember exactly)

Regards
Tore Gresdal

[Tore Gresdal]

You’re right of course. But I am pretty happy with it considering I created a 2 minute fight sequence in three days, including figuring out how the heck I would do it. (And my fellow students were pretty darn happy about it too… so why put more time and energy into it? :-))

But I know a lot more of after effects today then I did then and I don’t think it would be a problem to add some flickering. (each lightsaber were on a separate precomp.) Connecting the wiggler to opacity or glow strength would probably be a good choice.

[Tore Gresdal]

Sorry about the delayed post, but I have a different solution to offer:

many DV cameras have analog inputs and you can hook them up to the analog outputs from a regular dvd player. (just remember to use the s-vhs plug and not the composite plug for best picture quality)

I did this recently and it worked like a charm! No rendering times or interpolating of pixels. My computer was hooked up to the camera and grabbed the video live as the camera translated the analog signals into DV firewire.

Regards
Tore Gresdal