Mixing of the mediums

Zensteve

Zensteve

Okies... let's set the stage.

This is more of a "what do I need to consider" question, than an "already in trouble" question. I want to be prepared, for when the assembling takes place.

I'll have footage on the following:

HDV @ 1080/60i
Super-8 @ 24fps
Celluloid animation sequence

All of the above need to end up on an HDV project, to match the rest of the (unrelated) films. (1080/60i)

The animation sequence has not been started yet, but I would assume that it would make sense to have that drawn at the same framerate (24) as the Super-8, and have the lab do some fancy pull-down trickery to arrive at a 60i speed?

Or would it make more sense to animate at 30fps to avoid that bit of digital juggling? Or would that be helpful at all?

Or am I missing something else?

Working with HDV has been a lot more problematic than I anticipated.
 
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I do try not to end my sentences in prepositions
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Well as Churchill once said....

'From now on ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put'

;)

'Rules' for a germanic language based on latin sytax made by classicists? How much sense does that make? :D (Nothing against classicists per se .. I've studied Latin and Greek myself).

I think 'rules' to optimize communication are great and reasonable. I just find it mildly amusing when people insist that there are 'correct' ways to write or speak when talking about such an amorphous entity as language - especially when those rules aren't even developed from the language itself but a language of an entirely different syntactic nature!

EDIT:

For Zenners: I would animate at 24fps and convert the HDV to 24fps as well. That's probably the easiest way to go about this in my mind and it will save you some time animating! When you're done you can then export a 24p DVD - no need to go back to interlaced.
 
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wow...sorry I brought it up ;)

I know Final Cut (which I beleive is what ZS is using will just magically accomodate any type of footage you throw at it...if not, compressor (part of final cut studio) will do conversions for you. If they are long clips...bring a book. If you don't have final cut studio, PM me, we'll talk jelly babies!
 
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The reason I wouldn't just jump to deinterlacing the 1080i as a defacto recommendation is simply because there is going to be some resolution loss. If the 8mm is going to be scanned at 2K (although I wouldn't think so), then I'd want to think about it. If the 8mm is scanned at 720x480, then downscale the 1080i to 540 lines to cleanly separate the fields, then downscale again to 480 to match the 8mm. Then you must decide if your target is expecting 24, ~24.97, or ~29.97 frames per second to determine how many frames of the HDV to keep and what frame rate to choose for the animated sequences. If the target is DVD (or projection), then 24fps is probably the best choice. For [HD] projection, you'd want to keep as much resolution as possible.
 
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There are a few post houses that can do HD and even 2K Super 8/Regular 8mm film scans (meaning TGA or PNG sequences) to hard drive (see http://www.bonolabs.com/HiDefspecials.htm for lists and prices). You can drop them on an HDV 24P timeline and they will require a "rendering", it will then be conformed to the project settings, at least in theory.

When mixing formats on the same timeline, you should (in my opinion and experience) pre-format the various clips to be the same as your project settings. Doing this BEFORE starting the project will alleviate any mixed format issues or letting the NLE decide how to best conform/convert the various files. AVID's Xpress Pro and higher do a pretty good job, but Premiere not so much (and I love my Premiere Pro).

When "uprezzing" DV to HD/HDV, there are some tools that convert the footage better than others. I just find that it takes longer, but it's far more worth it for the quality of the overall project.

- PJR
 
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Hmm, okies. Going to answer some of the Q's.

At what resolution will the Super-8 be telecined?
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I imagine at 1920x1080? I'm trying to arrange everything to be at same dimensions & fps, before the edit starts. Right now I'm looking at FotoKem to do this, as they are right around the corner. Another issue with this, also, is that the Super-8 is 4:3. Oh joy. :rolleyes:

What is the target format?
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Once again, 1920x1080/60i

There are a total of 6 films altogether, all shot at 1080/60i. Mine is the only one that has ridiculous extra technicalities involved, so it makes sense (I hope) to have mine match the rest of everything. Though it would be really nice to have a different look, I would think, but wouldn't that open a whole new can of worms when time to burn finished DVDs?

and what will you be eiting with?
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Premiere Pro 1.51, with the HDV Cineform codec.

I would animate at 24fps and convert the HDV to 24fps as well. That's probably the easiest way to go about this in my mind and it will save you some time animating! When you're done you can then export a 24p DVD - no need to go back to interlaced.
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Yah, but once again it needs to mesh with the other (unrelated) films as a finished product.

I know very little about DVD authoring, but I would think that even though the final mpeg2 DVD file wouldn't be an issue, there would be all kinds of crazy conversions going on with the individual films in the transcoding process. How much? I have no clue. :no:

The reason I wouldn't just jump to deinterlacing the 1080i as a defacto recommendation is simply because there is going to be some resolution loss. *snip* If the target is DVD (or projection), then 24fps is probably the best choice. For [HD] projection, you'd want to keep as much resolution as possible.
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In theory, the goal is for DVD sales. Not planning on making a fortune, or even getting the money back... realistically that's where it's at, though.

I'm starting to think that choosing HDV for a basic DVD release may not have been such a smart idea after all, if having to reduce resolutions to accomodate. Right now I'm thinking that keeping everything at maximum resolutions for as long as possible couldn't hurt (who knows what will happen in the future?), and just downgrading as required.

When mixing formats on the same timeline, you should (in my opinion and experience) pre-format the various clips to be the same as your project settings. Doing this BEFORE starting the project
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I suspected that might be the case. I've been experimenting (in PremPro) with some sample HDV clips, converting them to various formats & fps, and it has not turned out well so far. Interlacing artifacts all over the place, and even the sound goes wild.

Thanks for the BonoLabs link, too, Boo. :)

______________________________

I *think* I have a handle on the animation sequence now - will be checking in with my talented (and inspiring
smiley_creepy.gif
) anima-chix in the morn.

Apologies if my replies are a bit disjointed. I'm a headless chicken, right now, trying to get this all together.
 
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Mr. Zen, you're in luck on one thing. The native format of a DVD is 24fps. The DVD player converts to 29.97 etc. for playback. Since most movies originate in 24fps, it would have been a terrible waste to encode the MPEG2 stream at 30fps. Instead, the 60i stuff gets converted to 24p by the encoder ... as I understand it.

Therefore, you can still go to 24p on everything and the look should be the same as the people who encoded to DVD from 60i.

As far as shooting on HDV, I think you'll be happy that you did. The image is just sharper. Even when scaled down, it will have more color information and a more detailed image.

Now that we have the entire story, if I were you, I'd edit everything at 1920x1080 24fps ... treat it all like progressive scan ... don't even worry about interlacing, because you're going to throw away one field in the final output so all frames will be equal. When rendering the animations, I'd render those at 960x540 (16x9 SD+) and so a very simple uprez on all of them (much faster than rendering them with 4 times the needed pixels). When the final timeline is rendered out, it should be rendered out with 540 lines to eliminated any interacing artifacts. That would be 960x540 for 16x9 with square pixels (your animation is now back to it's rendered size).

Finallly, I'd use the best converter I had to rescale the 960x540 to 720x480 anamorphic and encode to DVD. You don't have to follow my advice to the letter, but no matter what you do, scale to 50% vertical resolution before you do any other scaling on the interlaced video. This step is critical. If you don't believe me, take a 20 second clip with some obvious motion and do it both ways to see what happens when you select 1 out of 2.25 lines instead of 1 out of 2 lines from interlaced video.
 
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Ta for the extra ideas, OakStreet. :cool:

I'll be throwing out a lot more Q's in the morrow, but I really wanted to get to this before hitting the sack.

if I were you, I'd edit everything at 1920x1080 24fps
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Now, I assume you mean everything...

This weekend I am going through the camera footage, to make EDLs to import raw footage with later this coming week. (Yah, I know... bad form to skip this while actually shooting, but then I've never had an issue before either :( )

Once the list of cuts to capture is complete, I'll be taking the tapes (and the file) to a friend's studio. (Using an M15, if that matters)

Where does this conversion to 24fps take place in the workflow? (Specifically my multi-format segment, as it sounds like the other ones have no issue) The initial import of footage, before it even hits the timeline? Or a conversion/conforming further down the line?

I'd have a whole lot less questions, if the Z1U was able to actually connect to my desktop... or laptop... or Apple laptop... It's been a mess from start to end. (Can't even get a connection to import lo-res footage to edit offline with)

Rambling now. Thanks for the help all. :blush:
 
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My only question would be 'why telecine super8 - which you will have to crop to 16:9 - at 1920x1080?' There just isn't that much legitimate information in a super8 frame much less one that is cropped. I'd say that a good progressive DV camera can capture as much or more easily. Telecine at anything above SD seems a bit of a waste.
 
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most of the editing packages allow you to invert an image colorwise...you can always test on some regular footage. I would probably be some kind of image controls or filters.
 
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Oh I wasn't saying that Telecine is necessarily the wrong step. I think a telecine at SD resolutions (with uprez later if necessary) would do the trick. I just don't see a need to 'cine it at HD res.
 
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I shouldn't comment here, because I've never worked with 8mm, but my experience with scanning 35mm film is that anything beyond 4K (horizontal res) is out. I'm guessing that 1K would be a reasonable limit for 8mm.

My old rule is to never throw away any resolution (pixels, or chroma res) until the final step, but I can see a case here for downsizing the HD to 540 lines and doing everything else to match. I wish I was actually doing this, because then I could do tests and compare approaches to get the best final print. This is one of the things I do for my customers, since my background is mostly technical.
 
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Yah, I still have a bunch of Q's... some of which I'll be addressing with my HD guy on Monday, and others I'll be popping into here.

Tonight's latest issue (discovered while making batch import lists), is that the HD resolutions are not what I thought I had.

The PremPro 1.51 default seetings for 1080i have a resolution of 1440 x 1080 (at 29.97), and call that 16:9

AEFX 6.5 has a default HDTV setting that is 1920 x 1080i... which they call 16:9, as well. Manually setting in a composition at 1440 x 1080i pulls up a 4:3 aspect ratio... though that might be to do with square vs. rectangular pixels.

I think I'll just bite the bullet and upgrade to 2.0, aftera bit more research.

All this math makes my brain hurt. :blush:
 
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1440 x 1080 is the HDV 1080i resolution. It is stretched to 1920 for 16x9. I'm not sure what camera you used, but every camera I've researched shoots 1080i at 1440 x 1080. Of course, back then there was no 1080p24, either, so someone may now be offering 1920x1080.

I'm pretty sure that, since the copy from camera to computer is just a copy; not a conversion, upgrading Premiere won't change the capture resolution. In any case, 1440x1080 looks pretty hot. Keep in mind that anamorphic video is also stretched from 720x480, and it looks fine at 16x9, although its a bit on the low resolution side.

Finally, since you'll be delivering the final product at 720x480 (16x9), starting at 1440x1080 should yield pristine results. You have at least 4 pixels for every one you are going to keep. That should look really sharp.
 
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