Quote:
Originally Posted by Sean Love
First off... Hello, this is my first of probably many posts to come. Even though I have browsed this forum many times, I never posted till now.
Anywho, on to my question. I remember earlier there was a post about a film called, I think, Blackout. And I do recall that they said they had started on 200+ effects needed in post.
I guess my question is, for those with experience, Is the XL-H1 capable of handeling what's going to be effects heavy sequences in post (via After Effects and what not), using the stock lense.
By effects heavy I'm talking Green/blue screen, compositing in 3d objects (that hopefull look real when textured correctly) and so on.
I'm possibly looking to purchase the XL-H1a when it drops next month.
Thanks in advance,
-Sean
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Hey Sean. We're currently in post-production on The Blackout. We've been working mainly on visual effects right now.
We didn't really shoot any green/blue screen material. We did have green panels sticking off the left and right side of the sets (for set extensions later). But we haven't needed to key any of the material. All extractions are being hand roto'd.
The noise floor of the H1 is the only thing you need to worry about. And if you make sure your green screen is evenly lit to 60 IRE (assuming you have a scope on set) you'll be able to pull some very nice keys with very little noise. And as we all know noise and compression artifacts can create some nasty edge chatter.
One of the nice things about the H1 is that it's one of the sharpest and highest resolution of the 1/3" cameras. So rotoscoping footage has been pretty straight forward without issue.
I will admit that I'm only working with footage that was captured HD-SDI and bypassed HDV compression. So I'm working with footage that has very clean blacks and tight noise characteristics. However, it should be noted that the cleaner ProRes footage does contain some high-frequency aliasing at the highlight clip point. The good news is that the Nattress de-interlace plugin (using blend mode) smoothes it out nicely without adding any blur or softening to the image. We run the footage through the plugin before sending it to AE for FX work.
We're doing everything almost exclusively in AE CS3 (supported with Photoshop, particle emitters from Particle Illusions). Set extensions. Matte painting work. And some creature animation using the new puppeteering tool in AE (I can't speak highly enough about the puppeteering tool). If you look at the last shot of the teaser trailer the creature, boy's body, and set are all real. But the creature's tail was hand animated using the puppeteer tool. Very effective.
In conclusion, I'd say that the uncompressed H1 footage (or ProRes) is very similar to footage from an F900.
Rob