[Will Macneil]

I’m just completing an HDV and SD film for the BBC. Since we’re only transmitting SD, there was never any consideration of finishing in HD. In the end, we converted both HDV and the DigiBeta material to the DV50 codec. If we had had less footage or more storage space, I would have used the 8-bit uncompressed. We captured our HDV to SD using the component output of the sony HDV deck into a Blackmagic extreme card. Timecode/machine control were via firewire. Audio was via analog unbalanced through a Canford balancing box. It all worked quite well in the end. HDV looks great in standard def.

What I do know about HDV in its native state is that I’d never want to edit with it. The fact that it stores frames in groups of 16 means that you’ve always got a terrible delay when stopping/starting playback or marking ins and outs. The intermediate codec sorts this and looks great, but I think you’re looking at data rates similar to HD uncompressed.

As for upressing, I’ll leave that to the experts – you might try putting a post on the Blackmagic forum.

I agree with David above to have a think about your final output.

W

[Will Macneil]

These both look like great solutions for a situation where projects are moving through a pipeline. But what about where an edit is moving back and forth (as often as several times a day) between to or more editors. I can’t see a good way to move a sequence without constantly creating new projects.

W

[Will Macneil]

Thanks Mark. Don’t worry, there’s no need to sell me on the benefits of FCP and quicktime.

How do your editors move their sequences between projects?

W

[Will Macneil]

Have you tried the connect function? Select both models and choose connect from the functions menu. This should give you a new model with your textures intact.

W

[Will Macneil]

Thanks Chris,

I’ll give it a go.

W

[Will Macneil]

DEM’s should come with some geographic references as to the where the corners fall in geographic space (usually decimal degress like 55.111N and -.6111 West.) This can help you when finding the appropriate texture map. Whenever you’re dealing with flat surfaces representing the earth, you’re going to have to deal with projection. So if you can source you bit maps from the same place as your dem’s you’ll save yourself some trouble.

A good place to start looking in 3dmapper.org for lots of links to imagery.

You should also check out the raster roam website under the dtep link for a good dem source. Let me know if you need instructions.

As for making your own texture maps, you might try the gradient method. Just make a linear gradient that looks like a cross section of the earth (from blue sea to white mountain tops) and apply it flat on the z axis of the dem. This has given me some surprisingly good results.

W

[Will Macneil]

Yup, like I said, everything looks good in the editor render, just not in the picture viewer.

W

[Will Macneil]

Using the object buffer settings in the compositing tag, you can assign a separate alpha channel for each object. Bear in mind that these are just mattes you can use to separate the objects in a compositing program. What you can’t do is see one object behind another (unless there’s some kind of layered output I don’t know about.) Your best bet there, I think, is to save three different versions of the project and load them into the batch renderer. At least that way you don’t have to set up one project at a time.

W

[Will Macneil]

I’ve had this issue with SynthEyes and PFMatch. You’ve got to check a couple of things:

1st. Make sure the frame rate is correct in SythnEyes for your tracking video.

2nd. Make sure the frame rate is correct in Cinema after you’ve opened the file.

3rd. Check the animation on you background movie. You want to change to exact frame and then hit calculate.

4th. Make sure that you’re starting on the right frame. If you imported the movie into SynthEyes and then set a new start point for tracking, you’ll need to make sure you’re using the same start point in C4D.

5th. Go to the SynthEyes forum and search for this problem. It seems to come up a lot. The forum is good and you usually get an answer from the developer himself!

I agree this program is great. I’ve just finished a bunch of 3d facial prosthetics for a BBC3 program called Bodywatching. I’ll post the transmission date when I know it.

[Will Macneil]

Sorry, I haven’t heard of the image deformer. Am I missing something?

Thanks,

Will