HD For Indies

For what it's worth, I've been doing a lot of tests with my Z1U lately, and I've found this to be the best workflow for 24p:

PAL 50i > Shake - Optical Flow to 24p > export uncompressed quicktime and HDV quicktime. Offline in HDV 23.98 (adjusting sound in FCP by 4%, pitch shift, etc). Then re-connect project with online clips (need a SATA array of for playback, of course).

Optical Flow is... Optical SLOWW... but time is cheaper for me than other alternatives, and I have found Shake's optical flow work to be stronger at this time than natress or magic bullet. I mean, the look is different, I would test them myself... I like them.

Also, if I were do to a black and white movie, or some sepia-look (as mentioned in one of the articles). I would definetly go into shake and toss out all chroma, tripple the luma, and play with contrast, gamma, etc... that's gonna give you 4:4:4 instead of 4:2:0...

I'de like to know more about capturing straight to a mac from the camera, what I would need, etc. If I can get uncompressed HD out of it, that would be great!

stephan
 

How can you capture uncompressed to the computer that you mentioned?


Thanks
 

stephan,

i don't quite understand why you'd want to use optical flow if you're adjusting sound anyway.. why not just deinterlace the 50i footage, export as image sequence and interpret that as 24P?
btw, i wouldn't use 24P HDV as proxies.. too slow and you cant use them for anything else later on anyway. i'd either go down to DV/DVCPRO50 or up to DVCPRO HD.

i'm also a bit confused why you think that "tossing out all chroma, tripple the luma, and play with gamma" would result in 4:4:4 video.. it's more like 4:0:0 now (even though trippling the luma has probably clipped most of your highlights and midtones ;)
i'm not saying that playing with the color correction tools is a bad idea, they're great... and blurring the chroma channels can definitely help.

as for capturing the analog output in uncompressed hd:
you'd need a G5 with PCI-X (or PCIe), a capture card with analog component HD inputs (the new kona is prolly the cheapest atm) and a very fast disk RAID (like around 6 disks in raid0? i'm sure mike can give more precise info here)

++ chris ++
 

i forgot:

if you're interested in an uncompressed to disk solution the new Canon XL H1 might be worth checking out... it has HD-SDI out which is easier to capture (well, at least cheaper, the decklink HD can be had for about 600 bucks)

the canon will probably only have an 8bit source as well (even if the SDI out is 10bit), but the chip should be a bit better - that's just a guess, but it better had to be at nearly twice the price ;)

personally i'd probably still wait for the panasonic, but if you need a cheap HD camera for studio/bluescreen work now both of the above should work well.

++ chris ++

ps: having problems with the server connection, i hope this doesnt show up in multiple copies :/
 

Stephan - in your workflow, are you taking your 50i and conforming to 24p BEFORE optical flow, or what?

If you were to reconform your 50i to 48i and THEN use optical flow to deinterlace, I think that woulde be the ideal choice. Then do your 4% audio speed changes etc. Unless you need accurate time footage length, do that.

As for capture to disk, AJA HD10A converter to BMD or AJA card in PCI-X/PCIe G5
 

hmm,
not sure if i got that right, but i thought optical flow was the technology behind changing frame rates, ie. interpolating new image data on additional frames rather than just blending them... not sure if/how much the deinterlace function benefits from that though .
so while the optical flow engine certainly is useful for converting 60i to 24P, i don't think you really need it for a 50i to 24P workflow... just a good deinterlacer ... and a sound guy who knows what's goin on ;)

++ chris ++

ps: just stumbled over this thread when checking my facts:
http://www.dvxuser.com/V3/showthread.php?p=273321
seems as if compressor 2 is worth looking into for all those that don't have access to a shake workstation
 

Hey Mike,

Doesn't the Decklink HD upconvert the HDV to 1080 4:2:2 on output?
Therefore, couldn't you just work HDV native, color correcting through scopes connected to the Decklink HD output and skip the upconvert to "full-res" HD altogether?

Joe
 

yeah that should work out ok,
but you'd still have to copy your final timeline over to a less/uncompressed sequence in the endr...
i certainly wouldnt want a HDV tape only as my master :)
 

joe- define "color correcting through scopes" - scopes just show you what your video is, what tools would you be using to color correct it? The Decklink outputs in 4:2:2, but it is starting from 4:2:0 HDV source, you're still shy some color data no matter how you slice (or process) it. If you CC in FCP on HDV timeline, it IS recompressed to HDV before sent to DeckLink HD card is my understanding when you master to tape, and that's all that counts in the end.
 

Actually when you use the 3-way CC without keying so final cut will have it playing real-time then the data is spat out and the the CC will work in 4:2:2 but there is no croma bluring or any other kind of processing happening so it really dosent matter ;)

-Kaspar
 

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