True 24p and the A1U... Can it be done? Absolutely! - A PC Users Solution

[Dave F. Nelson]

Originally Posted by Forrest Schultz

Thanks Dave. I like the quality of the image the A1u puts out in decent lighting. And i like the idea of being in control of exposure and iris. i am going to film a short film pretty soon, and i would shoot with something like the HVX if i had the money, plus the more money for the darn p2 or a firestore. but i dont think that in a reasonable amount of time id have that money. thats why im thinking the a1u. XLR, manual controls, and cineframe 24, which i hope to extract the 24 frames from in post. My final output would be DVD, an most likely will be shown to audiences from televison or computer projectors onto silverscreens. I am worried though about the look of motion extracted from cineframe24. Will it give the audience the feeling that something is off when i do a quick-pan. perhaps that digitalized feel that just doesnt look natuaral? if someone knows how it can pass or if it looks like crap. let me know. Its one thing to extract true 24. but if it doesnt look at all right, then its no good.

As I said earlier, I would recommend Solution 3, shooting in 60i with a CineGamma of 1 to 2 and a shotter speed of 1/60 of a second, and then following DVFilm's workflow to get decent 24p out of the A1U.

Using CineFrame 24 will yield acceptable results with minimal motion. However the Aspect HD/DVFilmMaker solution which yields far superior results will cost an additional $700 in software purchases.

--Dave

--Dave

[Dave F. Nelson]

Originally Posted by Ash Greyson

Software de-interlace has always been an option. Unless you are using something very expensive you will see a loss in sharpness but not too bad. IMHO the low cost software options dont touch the in-camera stuff. The more expensive stuff costing thousands can look almost exactly the same if the motion is not too intense. So in theory, any camera can do 24P with post software but unless it does it in-camera... I wouldnt call it TRUE 24P...

ash =o)

Yes, I agree. You're absolutely right! That's why I am buying either a Canon XL-H1 or a Sony PDW-F330, and selling my Z1U. Fortunately I have the money for a new camcorder in our DOC budget.

But many here can't afford to drop the extra bucks to get a camera that can do the job without a little help.

You are, no doubt, already aware of the options available to low-end Sony camcorder users, but I am quite convinced that there are many here who own an A1U but are not aware that there are reasonably good solutions available to them short of buying a new camera, especially if they don't plan to go to film... And even if they do.

Afterall, many have taken DV or DVCPro solutions directly to film and were happy with the results, even at the resolution of Standard Definition.

We may already be jaded with the current offerings in the HD/HDV/DVCPRO HD arena, however all of the cameras, even the little HC3 put ALL DV camcorders to shame.

Isn't it great? What a marvelous time to be making Digital Films!

--Dave

[Frank Howard]

Originally Posted by Dave Nelson

Isn't it great? What a marvelous time to be making Digital Films!

Yes it is! A few years ago I wouldn't have had a chance to consider filmmaking on my own no matter how much work I was prepared to put into it. Now... The sky's the limit even when you have serious budget limitations.

And I'm loving the learning curve (am I sick or what!).
This phase is lighting: I'm going to set up one of those wigmakers heads and try different lighting to start to get a feel for how I'll want to light things in different situations. It just seems the way to go.

Actually, you answered a *couple* of questions I had a while back in one thread. Thanks again Dave.

[Philip Williams]

I haven't fiddled too much with the 1080i videos that I've downloaded over the last year or so, but I suspect that if I really wanted 24P output from a 60i HDV stream, I'd probably look at converting down to 720P/24fps. The downsampling might go towards smoothing out some of the de-interlacing artifacts. Just a thought, maybe someone's tried...

[Riley Harmon]

i believe u could shoot in cineframe and then just remove the interlace pulldown with any program that can do it. ie cinematools

[Dave F. Nelson]

That is correct but it is well documented that Sony's Cineframe 24 has too much motion jutter to be acceptable for true 24p filmout.

That's what the hubub is all about. Sony's method is not too well suited to filmouts. That's why there are third party solutions to solve the Z1U/FX1/A1U CineFrame 24 problem.

If there were no problems there would be no need for a solution.

For occasional use and for a special effect, Sony's CineFrame 24 mode is a good tool, according to Adam Wilt, a well respected writer for DV.COM... But not for filmouts, without a lot of software help, according to many experienced production people here and elsewhere on the web. I have provided links to what I feel are helpful discussions about Sony's CineFrame 24 modes elsewhere in this thread.

In my experiments with both the Z1U and A1U, I decided (this is my humble opinion) that it is best to buy a new camcorder before shooting any more footage for our documentary. I want the best we can afford for our production.

Don't get me wrong. The A1U and Z1U are great camcorders. It's just that our production standards are higher than Sony's Cineframe 24 solution offers.

True 24p is a really big deal to filmmakers, and to Sony too. That's why they charge so much for the CinaAlta products. Solving the problem on an under $5000 camcorder would destroy their high end business.

Check out some of the other discussion boards on this website such as the Canon XL-H1 or the new Xony XDCAM HD solutions discussions. There are disagreements and very heated discussions over what is and what isn't TRUE 24p just a few clicks away from where you are reading this.

Even Chris Hurd, who is very knowledgeable on this topic and the owner of this site, has gotten in a few, shall we say, heated discussions on this topic, and one thread covering Sony's new CineAlta XDCAM HD cameras was closed until further notice over disagreements over 24p on this website.

--Dave

[Dave F. Nelson]

Originally Posted by Riley Harmon

i believe u could shoot in cineframe and then just remove the interlace pulldown with any program that can do it. ie cinematools

You are probably right. I'm not familiar with cinematools. But I am familiar with Magic Bullet, DVFilmMaker, After Affects and Aspect HD. Some software does simple frame doubling to remove interlace artifacts such as Aspect HD, but this method reduces resolution by as much as 50% vertically.

Magic Bullet, After Effects and DVFilmMaker use "smart" deinterlacing which doesn't negatively impact resolution.

Again, I'm not familiar with cinematools, so I couldn't speak to that.

--Dave

[Thierry H. Fortier]

Hi Dave, did you try to shoot in 50i with the Z1 in pal mode? imported as 24fps in AE and deinterlaced with realsmart FieldsKit, the motion should be perfect and the resolution loss quite minimal no?

but I understand why you want the XL-H1 anyway!

I ear sony hdv cam are the more soft of the bunch... I wonder how much!

[Dave F. Nelson]

Originally Posted by Thierry H. Fortier

Hi Dave, did you try to shoot in 50i with the Z1 in pal mode? imported as 24fps in AE and deinterlaced with realsmart FieldsKit, the motion should be perfect and the resolution loss quite minimal no?

but I understand why you want the XL-H1 anyway!

I ear sony hdv cam are the more soft of the bunch... I wonder how much!

Yes that is how I shot practically all the footage to date for my documentary. The motion is great. However, I am unhappy with the resolution I lose in deinterlacing the 50i footage. I have access to, and have used the XL-H1 for a number of shoots in the production, and I have found the XL-H1 to be sharper... the resolution is better.

The fact is that even though the Z1U does a good job in 50i, the XL-H1 does a better job, and quality is what I am looking for. The price is not so important because the cost of the production dwarfs any savings between the two cameras.

After my project is done, there will only be the movie. No one cares what it was shot on. They only care about what they see.

I also spent time with 60i and 3.2 pulldown deinterlacing using AE with both Z1U and A1U footage. The Z1U is shaper than the A1U. However, the A1U does surprisingly well.

--Dave

[Thierry H. Fortier]

I find pans with the sony cameras quite weird (not from me but from a production shooted with the z1 I worked on recently)... I wonder if its the camera, the cameraman or the mpeg2 compression fault... I presume its the compression over 15fps but then I wonder why I dont see these artefact (soft image when panning) on hd100 footage...

[Dave F. Nelson]

Originally Posted by Thierry H. Fortier

I find pans with the sony cameras quite weird (not from me but from a production shooted with the z1 I worked on recently)... I wonder if its the camera, the cameraman or the mpeg2 compression fault... I presume its the compression over 15fps but then I wonder why I dont see these artefact (soft image when panning) on hd100 footage...

I agree with you on panning. I have always assumed that this is interlace artifacts. Horizontal movement (pans) is always jerky unless you pan very slowly. This does not happen with DV or DVCAM. But I always see it with HDV in 1080i. And I don't see this on HD100 720p footage.

Also it is not nearly as pronounced when I hook a Sony 1080i camcorder directly to my 24 inch 1920 x 1080 Dell monitor with component video cables, but as soon as I watch the .m2t files the interlace artifacts and panning characteristics degrade substantially. For this reason, I blame the mpeg files. When I switch to blend from interlace during playback on VLC media player scrolling looks a little bit better.

The XL-H1 doesn't do this in 24p. Sonys HDV cmos sensors and/or ccds are always interlaced. Since the XL-H1 uses interlaced ccds too, I assumed that it is something that Canon does tweeking their 24p output to eliminate this problem. It would be interesting to see if Sony's new XDCAM HD camcorders do this too since they save their files in either 18Mbps, 25Mbps or 35Mbps mpeg files to a blueray disk rather than saving to tape. The Sony PDW-F350 and 330 XDCAM HD camcorders have HD SDI (350) and component video output (330) and I haven't been up close and personal with either of these camcorders yet so I don't know how they perform when plugged directly into a monitor live, but since they save mpeg files too, I wonder about their panning characteristics when playing the mpeg file.

I am waiting for the Texas Shootout results to see if these cameras have the same characteristics.

Maybe someone more knowlegeable than me could comment on this.

--Dave