Workprinter Master Class

[Uppsala BildTeknik]

The bottom line is that someone, at some point, has to interact with the footage and make an asthetic judgement. There is no "one setting" that is going to give you the best results, regardless of what you use to transfer the films.

Exactly. From the original post it sounds like they did a onelight transfer that ended up too dark. Perhaps it could have been adjusted in NLE, but the dark images cannot come as a total surprise if the transfer was unsuperviced.

And the other transfer (the timelapse thing) with grey shadows perhaps could have been adjusted in NLE and actually look OK (at least from the exposure point of view, if it didn´t have blown out parts).

I wonder if anyone did any corrections in NLE to any of these transfers?
I say ALL transfers need more tweaking in NLE to get the best look they possibly can.

[MovieStuff]

I wonder if anyone did any corrections in NLE to any of these transfers?
I say ALL transfers need more tweaking in NLE to get the best look they possibly can.

Boy, isn't that the truth? I am always amazed at some of my customers that spend good money on our top of the line Sniper-Pro system and then either do no post CC at all or try to get by with a $50 Ulead consumer NLE program. Why bother getting into the transfer business if you aren't going to do the best that you can.... :roll:

Roger

[Patrick]

"I wonder if anyone did any corrections in NLE to any of these transfers?"

Certainly not mine, I think they went straight to vhs!

[VideoFred]

I am always amazed at some of my customers that spend good money on our top of the line Sniper-Pro system and then either do no post CC at all .....
Roger

I do not know the situation in the USA, but here in Belgium the problem is....money! They do not want to spend much more then 1 Euro/minute film for a finished DVD with background music etc.... And even then they are complaining about the price. And the end result must be nothing less then perfect.

If I could ask 4-5 Euros/minute I would consider to begin a transfer company myself. Not for the professionals, but for the home movie market.

I am dreaming of a transfer unit that:
1) runs in real time
2) needs no post processing.(or some automatic levels -fast-software that runs the files in batch)


Fred.

[brightlight]

Thanks for all the info guys. Woodsy is talking about me BTW.

I'm planning on running some tests today with my auto exposure, just to see what kind of results I get.

I'm not sure if that's the answer for me. I do agree that my original transfer of his film was too dark in some areas. I had locked my camera off at 4.8, and I see now that it was a stop or two off.

Of course, Woods shoots and lights film for a living, so I can understand that he would have a more of a scrutinizing eye for the footage.

I agree that there must be tweaking of the film in a NLE system, and I do offer this service to my customers. I find that it's earier to correct an image that is slightly over exposed, than one that that is too dark. I do see now that I will have to monitor that film more carefully as it's being transfered and possibly do some manual exposure on the fly.

[threeinv]

This is a timely topic for me, since I'm in the midst of my learning curve for exposure with the WorkPrinter and GL2 camera. I've transferred the same footage several times at different manual exposures, but stupidly didn't document the f-stops. Only recently did I realize I should include the f-stop in my filenames for easier comparison.

Are there any more rules of thumb besides simply "expose for the highlights"? The GL2 has adjustable zebra stripes, I think from 75 - 95 IRE, and I'm working with a small calibrated broadcast monitor. I've been ensuring that none of my highlights go over 95 IRE, but even at that there are a lot of choices as to how dark to expose the scene. Too dark compresses the overall contrast range of the video, and when brightness and contrast are later adjusted to a full range I get noise in the shadows. There really seems to be a magic exposure point at which those later adjustments result in very pleasing, smooth shadows without noise. Are there any more tips for hitting that magic setting? Unfortunately I don't have an external waveform monitor to connect in the WorkPrinter chain; my waveform and vectorscope are in my editing program which is on a different computer.

--Derrick

[woods01]

Did you copy the files to your harddrive before playback?

Yup and they stutter away like they are playing from a slow dvd drive
and not my 3 month old harddrive. These are the only videos that have
this problem so perhaps their is bad setting on Brightlight's computer?

Regarding autoexposure, that sounds like a method to try out. It all depends on the camera of course but I find that all the cheapo
automatic cameras are too slow to change exposure. And all the
semi-pro 3 chip cameras I've used we shot on full manual mode so I'm
not sure how quick they are to respond. Obviously a supervised transfer
is the best way to go.

I fiddled with settings in FCP to try to brighten up the transfer and it just
looked like crap but I admit I don't have much experience with these
features in FCP. The problem was that some very contrasty, direct sun
lit scenes were so dark it looked like dusk. The information just wasn't
there to work with it was just black where there was shade in the film.

What do you guys do about white balancing? Use the camera's tungsten
presetting? Or do you balance to the projector bulb?

[threeinv]

I white balance to the WorkPrinter bulb with no film in the gate, and this gives good results.

--Derrick

[brightlight]

I white balance to the WorkPrinter bulb with no film in the gate, and this gives good results

This is what I was doing previous to Woods concerns about color (too much blue tint), and sure enough, when we switched my camera over to the indoor filter setting, the color vastly improved.

Again, this is old home movie stuff we're talking about, and it seems like every reel will present different settings.

[Uppsala BildTeknik]

Again, this is old home movie stuff we're talking about, and it seems like every reel will present different settings.

Definetly.

[threeinv]

If the blue tint was on the older footage (not the recent reels), I would strongly suspect that it was shot incorrectly at the time without the 85 filter in place in the camera. For that scenario, I would keep the initial white balance the same (balanced to the WP bulb) and later set new black/gray/white points in the captured file. However, I've never done a comparison--might there be a benefit to getting a more accurate white balance in the initial transfer?

[brightlight]

Ah, I just did a test with my camera. It will not let me be on Auto Exposure unless Auto Focus is activated as well, and I KNOW that I need to be in Manual Focus.

[clivetobin]

...home movies were meant to be projected with a onelight projector...

The mythical "average scene" is figured to have a 64:1 (1.8 log E) brightness range. Taking a poorly lit and composed amateur film with bright reflections and deep shadows, plus the higher than unity contrast of a film such as Kodachrome, can yield footage with 1000:1 (3.0 log E) brightness ratio. With projection in a dark room, your eye can accommodate this span of illumination.

The general video camera, on the other hand, can only see about a 32:1 brightness range accurately on a good day, and similarly a TV set in a lighted room can also only display about a 32:1 ratio.

So your one light projector model clearly will not work when feeding a video camera from this contrasty film, something has to give. That would be either the highlights or the shadows, or both.

[johnnhud]

Not sure what type oc camera you have but if you can't do both aut exposure and manuel focas then you should probably get a better one. Untill then, here is a solution. Capture the film twice. Once set for exposure on the darker scenes and once set for exposure on the lighter scenes. Take both clips and line them on top of one another in your NLE system. Then cut the improperly exposed clips out leaving only the properly exposed ones. This will take a lot more work but it may be the only way to get what you want with your camera.

[super8man]

The problem with correcting things in NLE is the time to render...especially if you are doing projects that last a few hours. My settings on a GL2 include an fstop of about f3.7-f4.0 and 0DB gain and MF of course. I typically overshoot the gate on my own work and for family I shoot tighter so there is no worry about frame lines showing on any playback mode/medium.

With white balance I often try to get the white leader looking mostly grey with a hint of brown (maybe)...then I adjust for skin tones from there if possible. Typically, a manilla envelope or a Kodak YELLOW box will white balance quite nicely in manual mode under my flourescent room lighting. Go figure. Each reel has its own theme but these are general estimates.

Ultimately, most folks cannot afford the true cost scene by scene, edited, and soundtracked home movies. So, one light is a very "authentic" recreation of what the original footage represents and quite adequate for most circumstances...

Can you make it better with variable exposure? Yes. Should you adjust each scene for white balance on a fifty footer? Sure. Can you do some tricks in NLE to make it even better than the previous two steps? Oh yes. Can you pay me enough to do so? Probably not.

The trick? Know your customer's expectations and match your work and price accordingly. And be prepared to turn down work.

In the original case, I believe this was the main problem, a mismatch of expectations.

Good discussion though.