HD For Indies

....so I'm come into the studio this morning to check on an overnight MPEG-2 compression I'm doing for a friend. Said friend is a DP who shot their own feature, I've known Friend for several years, Friend knows exactly what I do for a living, friend knows I Know Stuff.

We'd had a brief conversation about Friend's needs - this is an hour forty-five minute long feature, Friend needs a DVD for Sundance submission (deadline Friday). 4:3 or 16:9 I ask, Friend has some 4:3 and some 16:9 footage in the same timeline. So Friend needs a 4:3 disc for Sundance submission (has to be there by Friday - good planning to start making the disc with an extra day to spare - kept editing as long as possible, must prep now).

I come in this morning and the MPEG-2 is complete, I drop it into DVD Studio Pro to make a self-playing disc. As I'm stepping through the footage making sure things look right....dawning horror.

Folks - remember this rant on 10 THINGS NOT TO DO?.

I go back to Final Cut Pro and discover this:

1.) There's 4:3 60i footage.

2.) There's 16:9 (anamorphic) footage.

3.) The 16:9 footage is actually 24p with 3:2 pulldown. Not 24pA, just 24p. Captured as 60i, with 3:2 pulldown intact.

4.) I'm not sure what camera this was shot on, or whether this is just an offline edit, but...

5.) It was cut with Final Cut Pro 5.x, (budget constraints, couldn't update), so no taking advantage of mixed format timelines that FCP 6 has.

So that's breaking rules 2, 4, & 6, and actually inventing some new ones in terms of Awkward Things To Do.

So at this point, we'll be able to make a DVD that accounts for all aspect ratios and frame rates. That is good.

BUT....HD for Indies, be-ready-to-filmout-or-festival guy that I am, here's what I don't like about the situation:

1.) Since it is a 4:3 60i conventional timeline, not prepared to make a 24p master.

2.) Since the 24p footage appears to be 24p with 3:2 pulldown, if was from DVX100A, that is not optimal setup - shoulda shot 24pA.

3.) Since 16:9 and 4:3 on the same timeline, the project is pretty much married to a 4:3 deliverable - again, not optimal for festival or theatrical screening...at ALL.

4.) Since anamorphic footage has been placed on a 4:3 timeline with non-anamorphic footage, that means the anamorphic footage has to be letterboxed...thus losing 25% of its resolution. It has to be squished vertically to fit the format, rather than stretched horizontally on playback. Losing image quality (see 10 THINGS NOT TO DO link above for more on that).

5.) If Friend DOES want to show at Sundance, a LOT of work will have to be done on this project to get it formatted and presented correctly. While Sundance in the past has wanted 1080i60 HDCAM for digital screening (haven't checked the specs for next year yet), you'd think that'd be an easy conversion...480i60 to 1080i60, right?

Nope.

While it IS possible to do a simple conversion, what you'd get would be this: 4:3 pillarboxed, then a 16:9 frame sitting in the middle of a lot of black framing - top, bottom, left, and right. And it would be soft and undetailed.

The fix? Many are possible, but moving this project to Final Cut Pro 6 would be an excellent place to start...

There are also potential issues in the upconvert - since it is anamorphic 60i footage (even though it started life as 24p, it has interlace lines in it on the 4th and 5th frames of each 5 frame cycle), the letterboxing squish from the anamorphic on 4:3 timeline thing will probably create oddnesses in a Teranex based upconvert...which Friend cant' afford anyway. Regardless, it is going to be a great big pain to get this ready for Sundance, if it gets in.

All this leads me to this - the MOST dissapointing thing about all this is that Friend knows me, knows that I help in these situations...and never asked me how to set up for this - just dove in and did it...wrong. And if your friends know you help on exactly these kinds of situations and don't ask for any help, and end up making a mess for themselves....what hope is there that strangers are going to hire you for this?

Some would say that is the very definition of there not being a market for said services. Those that either don't know they need help, or can't afford it...in economic terms, are they not the definition of non-clients, a non-market?

Very, very frustrating.

This is one of the reasons I'm planning on heading upmarket, why I'm so enthused that the Red is coming along. If you can afford to shoot Red, perhaps you can afford some help, since it is all so new...

-mike

UPDATE - this may be all a bit off - I have a recollection that this may have been shot on HDV and downconverted, so I'll have to ask. This might have been the right way to do an offline given the source, I don't know right now, I will in a bit. But if it HAD been shot on DV, I would still be justified in being this frustrated, I think.

FURTHER UPDATE - turns out it was shot on a variety of cameras, including 480i60 B&W security cameras, some handheld 1080i60 HDV, and the primary camera was a Sony V1U shot at 24p, chosen in part because it would fit into the very, VERY tight shooting conditions.

So all the HD will have to be recaptured anyway, and a proper conform can be done at this time. This actually wasn't a bad way to get it done for creative edit for Sundance submission - the HDV masters were dubbed to DV at 480i60, so all footage was 480i60 for Final Cut 5.0.4 (version Friend had on G4 Powerbook) to edit with.

But Final Cut Pro 6 deals with these scenarios SOOOOOOO much better than FCP 5.x...

Labels: scars