DIY Home Telecine: HD or SD??

[mattias]

HDV compression acts like a supersensitive reversal film its performance is only good if exposure and colour balance is spot-on

um, no and no. What on earth are you talking about?!? This thread is almost hilarious enough for a dv or young filmmaker's forum...
/matt

[mattias]

...but not as hilarious as this:

Betacam SP

and like somebody said, how on earth would they audit this? Especially what exact bitrate you shot your xdcam in?

Btw, sorry nathan if that sounded harsh before. You're right there are 'better' formats, but i don't think there's been any question about that.

/matt

[npcoombs]

HDV compression acts like a supersensitive reversal film its performance is only good if exposure and colour balance is spot-on

um, no and no. What on earth are you talking about?!? This thread is almost hilarious enough for a dv or young filmmaker's forum...
/matt

Ive never used HDV or been particularly interested in researching it, but logically high compression should give you much less to work with, which would make it a poor telecine tool. Please set me straight to why I've got this wrong.

[filmamigo]

Of even more interest to folks here on the Small gauge film forum is that Discovery also forbids shooting on 16mm or Super 16. 8O

They don't accept regular 16. You must shoot super 16.

We're talking about their HD guidelines, not SD. 16mm isn't allowed at all, and Super 16 is limited to 25%. So you can't pack your AATON XTR to Antarctica and shoot your whole show.

http://www.discoverychannel.ca/_include ... ecs_04.doc

[npcoombs]

Of even more interest to folks here on the Small gauge film forum is that Discovery also forbids shooting on 16mm or Super 16. 8O

They don't accept regular 16. You must shoot super 16.

We're talking about their HD guidelines, not SD. 16mm isn't allowed at all, and Super 16 is limited to 25%. So you can't pack your AATON XTR to Antarctica and shoot your whole show.

http://www.discoverychannel.ca/_include ... ecs_04.doc

Presumably then 'March of the Penguins' will not make it to Discovery HD.

[reflex]

Presumably then 'March of the Penguins' will not make it to Discovery HD.

I'm sure they relax their guidelines for popular films. ;)

Their specs are aimed at achieving a consistent look and feel across their various channels -- they don't want an image that looks dated. The trouble with HD on a flat panel is that it emphasizes film grain, which people might subconsciously associate with old stock footage.

Speaking from experience, these standards create an expensive problem for small production houses, who have to rent rather expensive gear. The 25% 'uprez' rule exists for two reasons:

First, it allows production companies the flexibility to use S16 in situations where an HD cam is inappropriate -- (ie: heli-skiing, remote locations, confined spaces, and situations where weight is a critical issue). The second reason is that it allows the inclusion of stock footage for continuity.

[ccortez]

Of even more interest to folks here on the Small gauge film forum is that Discovery also forbids shooting on 16mm or Super 16. 8O

That's the part I was just about to mention. It makes very little sense to me, but luckily I'm not submitting anything to them or screening their many submissions. Still, doesn't it seem they would be more interested in the quality and marketability of submissions rather than the origination format?

Have we become so formulaic and calculated in for-profit media these days? Never mind, stupid question... ;)

[Daniel]

Hello,

HDV with a total compression of about 22:1 ... is really a very critical format for any post-production that need full color correction or keying.

DV = 25 Mbits/s
HDV = 25 Mbits/s
XDCam HD = 35 Mbits/s
HDCam = about 140 Mbit/s

HDV is HD ? I rather beleive it should have been called DVH (DV-High)
With that amount of compression at the acquisition stage...

There are some HDV cam-corders, now, that offers HD-SDI output. May be Roger this can be good for your project. You would be able to use the CCD of the camcorder and take the uncompressed HD-SDI directly to an HD ingest video-card.

Regards,
Daniel

[filmamigo]

There are some HDV cam-corders, now, that offers HD-SDI output. May be Roger this can be good for your project. You would be able to use the CCD of the camcorder and take the uncompressed HD-SDI directly to an HD ingest video-card.

My thoughts exactly. In a telecine situation, that makes the most sense. You can still do DIY HD telecine with an HDV camcorder, and avoid all of the nastiness of the HDV codec - especially important for frame-by-frame transfers. You can choose whatever CODEC your card will support, and you want to edit in.

[christoph]

There are some HDV cam-corders, now, that offers HD-SDI output. May be Roger this can be good for your project.

well, except that the camcorder costs 10'000, the data rate is about 800mbit/sec which results to 15GB per roll of super8 (double that for your color correction render files).. and then you're still stuck with the poor dynamic range of a consumer CCD (not to speak of that nobody has a way to show it in HD over here in europe).
i'm not saying that it's impossible, just impractical and the overall results would probably be better if you're paying for a good SD transfer on a shadow instead.

++ christoph ++