More night footage in NYC

[Sean Maroney]

real nice stuff...you say with a little color correction...just curious...how much did you need to do??

[John Huling]

Spencer could you tell me "All" the settings you used? Manual focus, coring, approx mm setting for the dof focus, how you panned etc. It would be a great help. I am shooting tonight and could use a view pointers. I come from a still background so much of this is new.

[Chuck Spaulding]

Originally Posted by Michael Padilla

HEY SPENCER.. Michael Neuman here (VisualMasterpiece)..
its good to see you on the posts..
I saw your name and had to say hi.. I'm DL your video now..

Looks like we are all going to the A1's hu?
What ever will we do without a manual lens for the "Throw-zooms"!?
Hey have I shown you the vineyard wedding yet? Check it out:
http://www.visualmasterpiece.com/qui...rospective.mov
There is a lot inspiration from your work in this edit.

C ya around!

Sorry for hyjacking this thread a bit, nice work on the wedding video. What music did you use?

[Luc Meisel]

I have been downloading footage from the Ah and the HVX all night.

Trying to figure out if the 24f looks less progressive than the HVX 24p?

Stared at the footage side by side trying to see the INTERLACED 24f as INTERLACED and different than the HVX.

Now I realize that my eyes may not be trained properly yet to see this.
and sometimes the 24f does look more videoish.

But then sometimes the HVX does!

Now maybe I have to find footage with more action to find those horizontal Jaggies on the A1. Just havent seen it yet really, or not as much or as less than the HVX which is the cam to beat in this price level IMHO.

What do others see? Please Help me! :P

IS it my eyes or what.

[Bill Pryor]

If you have to look that hard to find something, does it really matter?

[Luc Meisel]

I agree it wouldnt matter IF this was only a subjective situation.

But there is the consensus of opinion that I am trying to understand and train my eye to understand.

Education isnt always about if you dont see it, it doesnt matter.

I need to learn to see it!

Thanks though

[Steve Nunez]

Luc, the footage from the A1 shot in either 24F or 30F should look progressive as it really is!
Canon simply doesn't call it "progressive" as they feel the frames are derived from an interlaced chip- but the end result is a full frame of video and is recorded as such. I applaud Canon for doing this as it shows they aren't going to label something falsely even if the end result is the same and might cause loss of sales due to lack of knowledge. The HVX and A1 both produce stellar video- any differences are more inherent to chip design and they fact they employ different HD codecs HDV/DVCProHD, and are two seperate cameras.

[Pete Bauer]

Originally Posted by Chris Suzor

Has anyone experimented with higher shutter speeds and 24F? Does the "F" algorithm still render "P"-like frames, ie. sharp?

As Steve indicated, Canon has recently clarified that F Mode is in fact progressive video derived by simultaneously reading all 1080 lines of a CCD that was supposed to be interlaced. This is -- wow! -- a year old now, but when I first got an XL H1, I did a test at 1/1000th of a second and confirmed way back then that F Mode does NOT show interlace artifact:

http://www.geosynchrony.com/scratchp...XL_H1_is_here!

There is a slight reduction of vertical resolution as compared to Canon 60i, but it still a superb image. It would be a mistake to shoot 60i and de-interlace, unless you're setting up a 24fps slow motion shot. I've gotten very nice results taking 60i into After Effects and slowing it down by 2.4x to use into 24fps projects.

[Luc Meisel]

I appreciate the help, gentlemen!

SO your saying that the A1 does NOT have interlaced artifacts and that would be why I am having trouble seeing it?

Am i right here?

but if shooting in 60i gives full rez why is it bad to make it 24p with Magic bullet and such, is it because their methods out of camera creates more artifacts than in camera, kinda like better slow with variable frames rates than in post?

Funny thing is I had a discussion today with a DP that was declaring that the he hated the interlaced look for the 24f and told me that he perfers to work with the HVX because of the TRUE 24p.

So I am trying to understand what is he seeing?
that I cant see.

Then when he showed me his Reel, using the HVX, he had boosted all the primary colors and created SO much aliasing that it was really video looking.

Now this really confused me.:P

[Steve Nunez]

The only way the DP is hating the "look" is if he/she is looking at source footage that was shoot at 60i initially- otherwise there doesn't seem to be a reason to dislike it from true progressive when shot in 30F or 24F!

[Larry Huntington]

Spencer,
I have yet to download this movie due to a slow internet connection, but a quick question before I have an oportunity to watch it...

Are you dropping the blacks in post on your shots? Which NLE are you using?

I have noticed with night footage I have shot with my XH-A1, that a tiny drop in blacks (using FCP) makes a huge difference in black levels- it takes away some detail, but it also gives a look I have grown to like and it just looks more night-time-ish to me. It also matches the black level of the letterbox bars when viewed on SD. I just recorded the moon this evening and I barely had to drop the blacks at all to achieve deep blacks (ND Filter set at 1/32 to bring out moon detail). I was even able to record a star traveling up the sky (gain was at 6db for this shot).
I am still experimenting, but I am really impressed with the A1. In FCP, I zoomed in the moon shot to 200%- and when viewed in SD it looks like you are there...little or no artifacting. Otherwise it gets a little jaggie at 200% in HD. I'll post again when I see your city footage. Thanks Spencer.

[Philip Williams]

Originally Posted by Luc Meisel

but if shooting in 60i gives full rez why is it bad to make it 24p with Magic bullet and such, is it because their methods out of camera creates more artifacts than in camera, kinda like better slow with variable frames rates than in post?

Pretty much sums it up. Plus footage shot at 1/60th shutter just will never, ever look like footage shot at 1/48th shutter. I've seen at least one pretty successful videographer argue this point and even post 60i->24P footage to prove how good it looks. And it looked all wrong and stuttery to me.

Originally Posted by Luc Meisel

Funny thing is I had a discussion today with a DP that was declaring that the he hated the interlaced look for the 24f and told me that he perfers to work with the HVX because of the TRUE 24p.

Who cares what the DP thinks. Who cares what I think or what anyone else on this discussion thread thinks. What do YOU think??

Originally Posted by Luc Meisel

So I am trying to understand what is he seeing?
that I cant see.

Not sure, but please see my point above. Also factor in that some people become extremely possesive and protective of their favorite camcorder and/or manufacturer and poo poo every product that competes with their favorite toy. This isn't an HVX phenonema, its pretty common across all brands.

Originally Posted by Luc Meisel

Then when he showed me his Reel, using the HVX, he had boosted all the primary colors and created SO much aliasing that it was really video looking.

Uh... and then why is this person's opinion important again??

Originally Posted by Luc Meisel

Now this really confused me.:P

There's really nothing confusing at all. You've just probably gotten caught up in trying to figure out every piece of technology in these cams rather than just looking at footage, format and form factor in determining which cam you need.

Stop worrying about 24F, 24P and 1080i. Look at the footage. Look at the price. Look at record times and infrastructure. Determine which format you can most easily work with (HDV or DVCPROHD). Pick the cam.


By the way, I personally think the HVX is the best under 10K HD cam out. But I performed a complete examination of all my needs and I bought the XH A1. 24F looks awesome, my current software supports Canon's HDV natively and it cost HALF of what an HVX/Firestore combo would have been.

Good luck and remember, all the time you're spending trying to figure out CCDs, 24P, 24F etc.. is time you could spend actually shooting video.

www.philipwilliams.com

[Spencer Lum]

John - Unfortunately, I don't remember too many of the settings, but I believe that I was using the default settings for the camera, except that I bumped up the saturation a couple notches. All focusing was manual, and panning was done on camera for the majority of the piece, except towards the end, which was handheld. I'd say in general, for most of the shots, the camera was about half way through the zoom range if you were to look at the indicator on the screen, though the shots where the cabs are close were generally full wide.

Larry - Yes, I did crush the blacks. Much like you said, for night footage, I tend to like the bump in contrast and I agree that if feels more "night-ish."

Sean - Hard to describe the color correction and how much I did, but it was light. Crushing the blacks was the most significant thing, and I didn't pull them down too substantially, at that. The other correcting was pushing some of the clips towards a bit of green in the middle luminance range.

Finally, on the 24f issue, I just thought I'd throw in my two cents. I tend to agree with Philip that you should just trust what you see and not what you know of the technology. The motion signature for the camera is quite nice. I do like the color rendition on the HVX a little better, thus far, but I'm finding that there's a good amount of flexibility to the A1, so we'll see how things go.

Also, lighting, proper exposure, depth of field, dynamic range, sharpness, and color balance and even composition and camera handling make a big difference in making something appear filmic. There's far more than the 24p/f issue, and a good part of all of these things is how well you know how to work with your camera. I've seen a lot of footage where I'm blown away by what people manage to pull off, but I've just as much footage where I can't believe that people used the same cameras as those whose work blew me away. I often spend too much time thinking about the equipment myself, but I really think it's all about the craft and artistry in the end.

[John Huling]

Thanks Spencer! Simple but effective.

[Anthony Leong]

Very nicely done. I'm glad I bought the Canon A1 and will get it later today =D