See if you can guess which of these pictures is video and wh

[Lucas Lightfeat]

The question I'm asking myself is this:

You shoot on video, edit your film in computer to let's say a modest 5 minutes. How do you then apply this process to 24x60x5=7200 frames, without a Supercomputer and a year to go crazy in? Also, when you've done it, will it really look any good? And won't you end up concluding that it was all a waste of time, and that you should've accepted the format's qualities to start with, or else chosen a different format. I personally don't mind black and white pro spec video, especially in progressive scan. I'd rather shoot digibeta than super8, I just don't have the £50k for the camera, but if I did, I wouldn't be trying to pretend it was film - I'd put it on film (35mm) and it'd look great (like Buena Vista Social Club).

There goes my twopenneth, as we say here in England,

Lucas

[mattias]

You shoot on video, edit your film in computer to let's say a modest 5 minutes. How do you then apply this process to 24x60x5=7200 frames

well, you obviously apply it to one frame only, and the software automates the same effect to all the frames. the rendering shouldn't take more than a second per frame, even if you're using a simple photoshop batch, so it's actually just a two hour render. and if you're using after effects or similar, effects like blurring, desaturating, adding noise and compositing with the overlay mode are done in real time on many systems, so there's no wait.

i do agree that shooting film is better, but if your only option is to shoot video and you still need the film look for some reason, like matching to film footage, emulating old film or whatever, i can't see why you shouldn't try. you gotta have a reason though, since the result never looks as good as film, but rather just less like video...

/matt

[Lucas Lightfeat]

Yes Mattias, sorry for my scepticism. It's actually a pretty good discussion, and I was being overly opinionated. I can see why you would want to apply grain to DV black and white. Infact, I may well even consider experimenting with it myself sometime, if it works easily and looks good.

Which software does this? I can't see how photoshop could do the layers thing automaticaly. It's the random pixel dispersion which makes film grain look like film grain. As we've established that the mid grey areas are the main grain tones, we need to adjust a lot of things on each frame - this requires a fairly complex render, doesn't it? Would you use a specialist grain program, and is such a program available for the mac?

I am starting to realise that this is not only off topic, but slightly heretical too. We should get evicted for this treasonous talk!

Lucas

[mattias]

I can't see how photoshop could do the layers thing automaticaly

start the recording of a new macro, do everything you want to do to one image, stop the recording, start a batch job, select the newly recorded macro and the folder containing your images, have a cup of coffee. or did you mean that you can't record layer creation in a macro? i'm not sure, but i can't see why not. haven't tried it though...

As we've established that the mid grey areas are the main grain tones, we need to adjust a lot of things on each frame - this requires a fairly complex render, doesn't it?

i've written a grain plugin for premiere that performs great and looks pretty much exactly like super-8 in both color and b/w. it cuts a few turns (in a rather clever way if i may say so) so it doesn't have to do all the steps i outlines above, and it rendered at about 5 fps on the 200 mhz computer i used back then. i don't use pc's or premiere anymore so i haven't used it for a while, and i haven't done much programming in a last few years either so porting it to mac and after effects or something seems like too much of a hassle. it might happen though... ;-)

/matt

[+AnonymousGuest+]

Mattias, I would be very interested in having a look at this grain plugin of yours if you would be willing to send me a copy. I am using Premiere 6.5 but also have a version 6 somewhere...

At the moment I am writing a Premiere plugin that will hopefully simulate the look of bleach bypass processing on transfered super-8. It's looking pretty good so far

I have tried many plugins (Cinelook, Cinemotion, Aged Film, FilmFX etc) proclaiming to simulate that 'filmlook' with DV & have found them to look quite convincing with stills but not so much with moving footage.

There is so much more to creating the look of film than just grain, colour & soft(er) focus... motion blur for instance. If you can't get the motion correct then no amount of grain and film scratches will save you.

It seems kind of pointless to sit here posting stills and asking how much they look like super-8 or whatever because no matter how good any of the examples appear it is impossible to make any judgement without some actual moving footage.... as that's where all these plugins tend to falter.

Don't get me wrong, I have seen some really nice effects made by use of these plugins but to echo Mattias "...the result never looks as good as film, but rather just less like video..."

If anyone is thinking of shooting DV for convience and hoping to make it look like film in post, keep in mind that for the price of say, 'Magic Bullet SD' (list $995), you could buy a great super 8 camera, a tonne of kodachrome & still have money left over for a transfer. Granted it's all a bit more work, but when you project that finished masterpiece for the first time I'm sure it will all seem worth the trouble

[mattias]

There is so much more to creating the look of film than just grain, colour & soft(er) focus... motion blur for instance. If you can't get the motion correct then no amount of grain and film scratches will save you.

yeah there's a lot more. the focus isn't actually softer though, it's just that it lacks edge enhancement which is a totally different thing, which if you add it to film footage (using unsharp masking for example) it can actually create a rather convincing "video look". :-) and if you're shooting progresive pal you get the exact same motion characteristics too. the huge difference is in the dynamics of the film/ccd and how the contrast is compressed into it. this can never be fixed in post, since information that is lost can never be brought back...

/matt

[Lucas Lightfeat]

So you shoot progressive scan 25fps PAL, with a 50th second fixed shutter speed, expose correctly ( I suggest neither under nor over, as this allows more information for adjusting contrast in post production).

I personally wouldn't want to add any scratches, but I would like to add grain, but not much (make it look more 35mm than 8mm), and it should be very randomly dispersed within the same greytones as common black and white film, with every frame having a distinct dispersion of grain, to mimic the fact that each frame of film is infact a seperate photograph.

I still have no idea how this could be done with the method described in this posting. If a layer, derived from frame one, has filters applied to it to mimic the grain, is then applied over the original image, you can have a nice fake film look on that frame - fine. How you get the computer to do this process for all the other frames in Photoshop is a mystery to me.

Mattias, does this sound like I've understood the process? Obviously not the batch processing aspect of it. I have no experience of dedicated "grain" programs and filter systems, though if ayone has any advice for a mac user.....

Many thanks

Lucas

[mattias]

How you get the computer to do this process for all the other frames in Photoshop is a mystery to me.

this is exactly what the batch feature in photoshop does. it opens every frame, "derives a grain layer" from it, applies it along with any other filters or operations you chose, then saves it and opens the next one. doing it in after effects, final cut or even premiere would be a lot easier and faster though.

/matt

[Lucas Lightfeat]

Thanks Mattias

I'll see if I can figure it out...?

[mattias]

you're welcome. it's really not that hard. just start a new recording in the "actions" dialog, do whatever you like (don't forget that you have to flatten the image as a last step if you're using a format other than psd), press stop, bring up the file->automation->batch dialog and it should be pretty straightforward from there.

here's an example. it's far from perfect since i didn't have time to tweak it, but it worked and it rendered at about 3 seconds a frame in photoshop 5 on my imac g3, at full dv res. open it in quicktime palyer, select looped playback or loop back and forth and press play...

http://www.d.kth.se/~d92-mas/psfilmlook.mov

/matt

[+AnonymousGuest+]

"...the focus isn't actually softer though, it's just that it lacks edge enhancement which is a totally different thing..."

yes, you are right... I didn't word that very well. I just meant the lack of edge enhancment with film gives the illusion of a softer image than DV