DIY Home Telecine: HD or SD??

[Raimo]

I have refined the Telecine method of KimmoH ( Forum member's Thread :viewtopic.php?t=3709&highlight=) and have made transfers strictly for viewing on TV with DVDs in SD. The quality of the transfers is very good indeed using my GS400 3 chip camcorder. Now here's my question: With the advent of consumer HD camcorders and the general trend today to HD TVs, how much better would such transfers be using a HD camcorder ?We are talking about watching old family Super 8 movies transferred ultimately for TV viewing. Is the resolution that much better and would there be a noticeably better picture to enjoy? There appears to be a good reason to go to HD DVDs because of the archival quality and said longevity of these discs but that is another issue. I am sorry if this topic has been discussed before but my search yielded no direct answers.

[metaT8]

Maybe true HD if that's where your projects are headed and you can afford it. But NOT HDV!

Then there's the aspect ratio question:

Do I crop out some of my image or transfer with pillar bars?

I've been experimenting with increasing the width of the gate on one of my projectors. There is actually a good deal more image on the film than most projectors present.

[Raimo]

No further comments from anyone? Should I consider purchasing the new coming HD camcorder from Canon model HV10 just to improve my transfers? Would it do it?

[gianni1]

Looks like few if any around here have HD camcorders... It's on my wish list, but not a priority... Personally I would rather something else, like a new Digital Camera and send my 4008ZMII to Bjorn for service and maintenance than upgrade perfectly good working Digital camcorders.... When HD comes down to £400 maybe i'll bite....

Gianni

[BigBeaner]

Why not HDV?

[metaT8]

Why not HDV?

Keep in mind that we're talking about HDV not HD.

HDV has ridiculous amounts of compression. Far worse than DV especially in the color space.
Not even remotely archival. It's the same type of compression that you use when compressing for DVD.
Some in the video world wish it had never been born.

The other thing is that the pixel resolution far exceeds what super 8 can achieve. So the only thing that you would get better resolution on would be the grain in the film. And the aspect ratio exceeds super 8 as well.

Even though mini DV does compress the signal I think it's a better option for transfer. You can always up the resolution to match an HDV project.

[MovieStuff]

I have the Sony 3CCD HDV camcorder and the image quality is terrific, compared to standard DV. There is no comparison. Also, while there has been much speculation about whether SD transfers from 8mm are sufficient enough to hold all the information in a super 8 frame, our initial tests with the Sony HDV unit show a noticable difference in detail, compared to standard DV, when transferring super 8 footage. We are in the process of working out our HDV prototype and I should have some samples to post in the weeks to come. At this point, I have only the live images on an HD monitor to reference but I should take possession of the new Matrox RTX-HD edit system in about a week and that will let me export some HDV still frames for you guys to look at. While HDV isn't "HD", I think you'll be surprised at the level of detail in an HDV frame. Looks just great. Still kinda pricey for the average joe, though, and my opinion is the color doesn't seem to be any better than standard DV, though that doesn't mean its bad. But the 8mm image definately has more detail in HDV than in an SD transfer.

Roger

[npcoombs]

I have the Sony 3CCD HDV camcorder and the image quality is terrific, compared to standard DV. There is no comparison. Also, while there has been much speculation about whether SD transfers from 8mm are sufficient enough to hold all the information in a super 8 frame, our initial tests with the Sony HDV unit show a noticable difference in detail, compared to standard DV, when transferring super 8 footage.

This is fairly obvious to anyone who has really studied their projected super-8. I recently did this and was staggered at how much more detail was in the image than in my SD transfer.

SD does have the theoretical resolution, but I think oversampling is the only way to reveal details that fluctuate through grain movement and definition.

[metaT8]

This is fairly obvious to anyone who has really studied their projected super-8 ...
SD does have the theoretical resolution, but I think oversampling is the only way to reveal details that fluctuate through grain movement and definition.

So what you guys are say is that super 8 film exceeds the resolution of SD DV...

Hmmm... I haven't heard many people make that claim. Contrast latitude maybe.

You must be shooting some pretty spectacular footage cuz the only increase I can see is better access to the grain itself. Which to my eye does not translate into "better resolution" necessarily. Super 8 is an amazing creative tool with many wonderful qualities but resolution is not one of them. Especially now that Kodachrome is gone ... whimper ...

Has anyone noticed any color banding or increased motion blur on shots that were not tripod? And what about editing? As soon as you start hacking into these GOP streams the re-compression begins to reduce the image quality. Not to mention the amount of horsepower required to edit HDV. And how do you handle the aspect ratio?

If you can't afford to transfer directly to true HD I suppose you could convert the HDV into more conventional HD file-types and edit it with other types of HD content -- or you can easily output it to other HD formats. At least then you could avoid the re-compression issues.

I know that HDV will probably overcome SD as the consumer standard in the next few years so my argument probably will become moot. But I'm hoping that technological advances provide us with an affordable solution with a true 4:2:2 color space.

Development will march forward and new technology will continue to increase in quality and cost-effectiveness, and the lines between HD & HDV will almost certainly become even more blurry. (Pun intended)

Wait... why am I having a discussion about DV on this forum? I come here to get away from all that cr@p!



best,

meta

[mattias]

Keep in mind that we're talking about HDV not HD.

hdv is hd. the cinealta xdcam hd uses the same compression, so does hdtv broadcasts. the varicam uses dv compression at a similar bitrate. even hdcam is compressed. if you've had bad experiences with hdv i'm sorry, but it's not our fault if you and your crew didn't have the competence to get it right.

Far worse than DV especially in the color space.

not true. it has the same color space as pal dv, which in most cases is better than the ntsc dv color space and in any case equal. as for the efficiency of the codec it's far superior. you get many times the quality at the same bitrate using mpeg-2. i don't understand what you're talking about.

Some in the video world wish it had never been born

...while most are happy it was. i suggest you shoot it for yourself rather than listening to the wrong people.

(it's not the best format to use for telecine though, especially not using the frame by frame method, but that's another story)

why am I having a discussion about DV on this forum? I come here to get away from all that cr@p!

yes, it was fairly obvious that you've been spending way too much time in the wrong places. :-)

/matt

[jpolzfuss]

So what you guys are say is that super 8 film exceeds the resolution of SD DV...

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_8 claims that 1.120 lines are "recordable" on a Super8-frame. Unfortunately it doesn't state the used film (it's most likely Vision 200T) - for Kodachrome 40 the number of lines was more like 800 when calculating with the projected size and not the max. size:
"Um ein Super-8-Bild unter Ausnutzung der formateigenen Auflösung maximal abzutasten, ist laut Angaben von Kodak eine Abtastauflösung von etwa 140 Pixel/mm, entsprechend 3600 dpi erforderlich, so daß eine Auflösung von bis zu 1.120 Bildzeilen möglich ist. Super 8 ist somit nicht nur PAL- sondern auch HD-tauglich; freilich beruht die Qualität jeder einzelnen Einstellung aber auch bei Super 8 auf der Güte der jeweils verwendeten Ausrüstung sowie der Fähigkeit des einzelnen Kameramannes, diese richtig zu nutzen und zu handhaben."
The Pixel/mm (or Pixel/Inch)-values should be stated on Kodak's webpage per filmstock, too.

[VideoFred]

The size of filmgrain is between 0,1 and 3 micron. (according to kodak)
One micron= 1/1000 mm.

But lets be realistic and take 2 micron: 2/1000mm as an example:
Then one 6x4mm Super-8mm film frame has 6/0,002= 3000 grains horizontal and 4/0,002= 2000 grains vertical.

To realy capture one single film grain theoretical we need a 3000x2000 pixels CCD. (is this correct English? one grain.. I doubt about this)

But film grain is clustering together....

Fred.

[metaT8]

hdv is hd...

nuf said...

anyone want to takle that one?

i don't understand what you're talking about.

indeed.

[drsanchez]

I thought the HD standard was simply 1080i or 720p, nothing else (I could be wrong). If that's the case, HDV is HD, like Mathias stated.

[MovieStuff]

hdv is hd. the cinealta xdcam hd uses the same compression, so does hdtv broadcasts.

But it was my understanding that the resolution or total picture size was different between HD and HDV. No? Surely what George Lucas uses in shooting Star Wars isn't the same limited resolution that you get from HDV, is it?

Roger