Bad SD or good SD

[wheatgrinder]

This is not about if SD is good or bad, rather I want to know what good SD looks like. With so many display options I'm having a hard time knowing if I'm getting good SD or BAD SD.... All I keep comming up with is "It sure isnt HD"

http://www.vimeo.com/8810055

Is that good or bad SD footage?

Seems it can still use some color correction, but as far as the quality of the underlying footage.. is it good SD capture or a bad one?

Thanks

 

[Will Vincent]

Looks decent to me. That's got to be saying something.. Since I started working with more and more HD and HDV footage, SD footage tends to look like crap to me. So, my saying that this looks decent, should be a good sign.

 

[wheatgrinder]

Hey thanks! Decent is as Decent does!

I wish I had framed the shot better. The subject angle is just as I story boarded it at and I quite like it, however, I should not have had that blown out sky right where so much of the action is. I had to do the Sky Replace in AE just to get SOME color so the muzzle flash would be visible!

 

[Beeblebrox]

I'm not sure what you mean by bad or good. There's essentially no lighting. The whole thing looks kind of flat. And the automatic shutter on the camera gives it a very stroby effect in the sunlight.

What would help you a lot is an ND filter that cuts the light and gives you more cinematic looking motion blur. Also, some direction to the light. And as you mentioned, some color correction.

It should be mentioned that these suggestions would apply to SD or HD. The problems I see with the footage aren't SD-related.

 

[Will Vincent]

For the most part I think it's lit just fine.. fairly flat even lighting helps get around the tiny dynamic range available in the digital format.
One thing that would help a LOT though would be some eye lighting.

I'd also suggest something more neutral toned than that red sweater...

Color correction makes this look a lot more cinematic, but since the eyes are already in shadow in the initial footage after crushing the blacks to darken shadows and create a bit more contrast she ends up looking like she's got vacant zombie eyes.


Here's the original:

A bit of simple color grading:

And what it might look like after color grading with a bit of fill light in the face/eye area:

Obviously relighting the face in post can only get you so far..

 

[wheatgrinder]

I'm not sure what you mean by bad or good. There's essentially no lighting. The whole thing looks kind of flat. And the automatic shutter on the camera gives it a very stroby effect in the sunlight.

What would help you a lot is an ND filter that cuts the light and gives you more cinematic looking motion blur. Also, some direction to the light. And as you mentioned, some color correction.

It should be mentioned that these suggestions would apply to SD or HD. The problems I see with the footage aren't SD-related.

It was a completely cloudy\rainy day, in fact there was a slight mist in the air (I live in Mist Oregon BTW) you can see a few drops sparkle if you look close..

Im trying to figure out my little cam. It has an "auto shutter ON-OFF" option, but I don't see anyway to set the shutter speed when is off, unless I use the slow shutter options.. The slow shutter options are 1/30, 1/15, 1/8 and 1/4. Suggestions?

In the docs for the camera it says that AutoShutter ON\OFF is for enabling disabling AutoShutter in bright conditions, it very well may have been "on" during this shot, and with the sky so much in the frame I guess it would have engaged.

Dang! I was thinking the same thing.. I need that ND filter(I have one for this little cam, but I was too lazy to go get it)

I had a bounce card out, but I didn't use it for this shot! (again lazy me!)


OK, If I redo this shot.

ND Filter to darken bg and let me open up the exposure..
Light the subject bright to compensate for the ND.
Try the 1/30 shutter speed (auto shutter off)

??

 

[wheatgrinder]

Thanks Will for the effort. I had about the same color correction applied, but I backed off! Im trying to avoid the "too much processing" swamp that I fall in when I do music!

How do I relight the face like that (a combo of a simple mask and a lumma matte?) Link to a tut would be awesome.

Thanks again.

 

[Will Vincent]

How do I relight the face like that (a combo of a simple mask and a lumma matte?) Link to a tut would be awesome.

Adjustment layer that has a mask with a decent sized feather, and an exposure adjustment. Then you'd probably want to motion track it since she does move in the shot. Pretty simple with the AE tracker; track position, rotation and scale, and put each track point over an eye...

I don't have a tutorial, since I didn't do it that way. I will say though, that I changed the color range of the reds and desaturated them a bit before doing anything else, to get the shirt color to something more managable. That technique is covered somewhere in the second half (I think) of the Red Giant TV Episode 22

 

[Beeblebrox]

The slow shutter options are 1/30, 1/15, 1/8 and 1/4. Suggestions?

If 1/30 is the slowest it'll go, then go with that and then adjust everything else around it. This will mean cutting the light down. If you can't stop down the aperture or adjust the ISO, then an ND filter is the best option.

ND Filter to darken bg and let me open up the exposure..
Light the subject bright to compensate for the ND.
Try the 1/30 shutter speed (auto shutter off)

My lighting critique wasn't so much about compensating for the shutter speed (if anything, you'll need to cut down the light) but about flatness. That's more of a creative issue than a technical one. Will, for example, didn't have an issue with it. I thought it looked kind of uninteresting. A reflector or something to give the light some direction would help, but for an overcast day, there's only so much you can do.

 

[wheatgrinder]

Thanks,
Is there a technical reason why you desaturated the red first? And now that I look at what you did on the color grading, I see that my attempt was not that close after all! Thanks for the inspirational target. Ill poke at this some more tonight.

 

[Will Vincent]

Well my point wasn't that I like things to look flat.. but that you can't judge lighting based on an unfinished image. All the requisite information is there to do a decent color grade that gives the image more depth. Granted, there could be more range between the highlights and shadows than there is, but the fact that there is image information in all the shadow areas is a big plus.

Forgot to mention the shutter thing.

a shutter speed of 1/30 means that the shutter is fully open for the entire frame when shooting 30 frames/second. This will absolutely not give you a filmic look.

Even if shooting 30 frames/second rather than 24, the only way you can really achieve something that looks filmic -- aside from proper lighting, framing, art direction, etc -- is to use a shutter no slower than 1/60. Or 1/48 in the case of 24p.

The reason being is anything slower than that is physically not possible in a film camera since half of the time per frame is spent moving the exposed frame out of the way and pulling the next unexposed piece of film into the gate. If you had the shutter open during this move you'd wind up with streaky images. So, to mimic this aesthetic on a video camera, you want to use a 180 degree or smaller shutter angle, that is:

take your frame rate, multiply it by 2.. we'll call that n, your shutter speed should never be slower than 1/n

So, at 30fps, a shutter of 1/60 == 180 degree shutter
at 24fps a shutter of 1/48 == 180 degree shutter.

The denominator in that fraction can increase, but not decrease. so 1/120 is ok, 1/96 is ok, etc.. but not 1/30, 1/24, or anything else smaller/slower.

This may well not be possible with your camera. In that case, get as close to that 1/60 shutter speed as you can, and live with it.

 

[Will Vincent]

Thanks,
Is there a technical reason why you desaturated the red first? And now that I look at what you did on the color grading, I see that my attempt was not that close after all! Thanks for the inspirational target. Ill poke at this some more tonight.

Well.. I don't know if I'd call it a technical reason.. but without doing so it just didn't fit with the rest of the colors in the frame. Because red just don't really belong in that shot. AND it looked like fire engine red without doing so.. I didn't save the comp, but let me whip it up again and show you without desaturating the red.

 

[Beeblebrox]

This may well not be possible with your camera. In that case, get as close to that 1/60 shutter speed as you can, and live with it.

The reason I mentioned the 1/30 was because it was the closest to 1/60 of the options that he listed. Come to think of it, though, it doesn't make sense since all the shutter speeds he listed were actually slower than 1/30, but the shutter speed in the video is clearly a lot faster.

So something seems amiss.

 

[Will Vincent]

Ok.. here's a similar color grade without desaturating the reds.. the shirt kind of glows, like it's a neon light. and doesn't really fit into the rest of the shot:

And the same thing with the reds desaturated prior to applying the grading:

And, if you're curious, this is how those reds were both selected and desaturated:

The disparity is easier to see when you've got it in front of you and can just toggle the red desaturation effect on/off..

If you download both images and open them up in an image viewer you should be able to cycle back & forth between the two and see the difference to get a better feel for why the desaturated one is more pleasing to the eye and pulls the image together better. Just looking at it on its own it's a bit more difficult to see how the red pops too much, and whatnot. Also I think the jpeg compression toned it down some as well.. *shrug*

 

[Will Vincent]

This split-screen image illustrates that even with a warmer final grade, the desaturation of the reds (left) fits better into the image than without it (right).

But ultimately, the problem is that she just shouldn't be wearing something so bright red.

 

[wheatgrinder]

The reason I mentioned the 1/30 was because it was the closest to 1/60 of the options that he listed. Come to think of it, though, it doesn't make sense since all the shutter speeds he listed were actually slower than 1/30, but the shutter speed in the video is clearly a lot faster.

So something seems amiss.

No, nothing amis .. rather I was wondering IF I should use those slow shutter speeds, that answer seems to be a definite NO!

I THINK, and this is unproven, but from what I can read it seems that if I set the AUTOSHUTTER to OFF then it is running at 1/60. (this seems to be true for other sony handycams.. but I cant get a positive YES\NO for my model yet.)

Now if I still had the little remote, I could test it for myself. (the shutter speed is recorded in the data) but the function to display it is only available via the remote

Thanks, keep the tips coming!

 

[Will Vincent]

Thanks, keep the tips coming!

I'd suggest picking up a copy of the DV Rebel's guide.. all of this shutter speed and color palette stuff is covered in it, along with a LOT of other info.

 

[wheatgrinder]

Thanks AGAIN (have I said thanks yet?)

I told her mom(my beautiful Kim) to pick something colorfull. (bad plan I guess)

My idea was to contrast the "bright little girl" with the "dark activity of blasting baddies!" Good idea, poor execution!


Thanks again for the VERY SPECIFIC help and suggestions.


Did I say thanks already?

 

[Will Vincent]

No problem.

Ok, one more for you to help see the whole picture come together:

Again, this is the more subtle, warmer grade than the first I posted.

 

[wheatgrinder]

Looks like a color correction Tutorial to me

That last pic really brings it home. I was leaning towards more cool color treatment.. I see it everywhere now that I know what I'm looking for!