Go to DVFilm for more on transferring to 24p and 35mm.

heath

I kept arguing on another site about this EXACT same subject (and about DVfilm too)!

I worked a few years in a post facility where we do film out for video. The site you mention keeps telling people that they can transfer both 60i and 50i as easily because they want your $$$. In reality, YES, ANYTHING is transferable. Heck, bring me 30p JVC, I'll chop 6 frames out every seconds and there you go! But that is totally unusable.

About 60i to film out (no matter what the resolution):

We take the (usually NTSC) footage, convert it to (PAL) 25p by removing the interlace and rebuilding 25 full frames out of 60 fields. This means stuttering motion is pans, loss of resolution. UGLY. If you worked with DV, it's even worst as you are upsampled to 576lines from 480 too. The PAL or 25p HDV master is then slowed down 4% and shot at 24p onto film stock.

50i: slowed by 4% and that's it, although I would recommend using field blending on all projects to get good clean frames for film out. If you shot DV, you get 25% more resolution too!

Masters at 30fps look like TV sitcoms shot on Video, Masters at 25fps are already somewhat film-like in quality. Imagine taking an episode of Oprah and converting it to 24p for a film out. How can you even BEGIN to imagine that would look even remotely professional???

The fact is: if you have the tens of thousands of dollars necessary for a film print, or if you are thinking of selling your project to a distributor for a film release, it is completely IRRESPONSIBLE of you NOT to get a PAL/Zone 50 camera when they are readily available, just as it is irresponsible for DVfilm not to educate people about it (that is the FIRST thing we did with every one that inquired about video to film services).

X Frederic Haubrich

It's posiible for you post a 1080i.Ts 25fps clip?

PLEASE!

Best regards


Gabriele

Gabriele,

I just asked my contact if it would be OK to share some of the footage with this forum and he asked me not to.

The footage is of a nice young lady who was kind enough to pose for a test and she hasn't agreed to have her face all over the internet.

He did say that he will try to shoot something else or someone else and let me share that footage with this forum.

If any of you live in Doylestown PA, you are more than welcome to come over and take a look.

Frederic

Thanks Frederic

I have appreciated your attempt,
I hope you will can post some others clip!!!

Thank you very much for your invitations,
you are very very kind but i live in Florence (Italy)!!!!

PS:that lady has lost the possibility to become famous!!!!!


Best regards


Gabriele

"Apparently not, according to the lab. At least for now. "

What exactly is the problem with going from 60i to 24p, besides resolution loss, which should be a non-issue since we've got 1080 lines to start and will still wind up with a sharp picture even after deinterlacing.

<<<-- Originally posted by Peter Moore : "Apparently not, according to the lab. At least for now. "

What exactly is the problem with going from 60i to 24p, besides resolution loss, which should be a non-issue since we've got 1080 lines to start and will still wind up with a sharp picture even after deinterlacing. -->>>

1-Take 30 fps, convert it into 24

2- Take a wild guess...

There is no "problem"... film labs have been doing it for decades, and they've gotten pretty good at it.

Obviously you could do a better job by going from 50i, since a simple de-interlace would get you to 25P, and then a 4% speed modification would enable a 24P conversion. Going from 60i is more complex, but some labs are doing it and getting reasonable success with it.

To get a 24P image, the best would be a camera that shot 24P.

Next would be one that shot 25P, converted to 24P.

Next best would probably be either 50p or 60p.

Next best would be 50i, converted to 25P -> 24P.

Next would be 60i converted to 24P.

The worst format for 24P conversion is 30P.

So 60i to 24P is possible, but it won't look as good as other formats. However it's been done, and is being done today, and obviously starting with a high-def image will result in higher resolution in the finished product (not as high-res as the original source, but HD 60i should still be higher res, after converting to 24P, than SD 60i ever was!)

<<<-- Originally posted by Barry Green : There is no "problem"... film labs have been doing it for decades, and they've gotten pretty good at it.

Obviously you could do a better job by going from 50i, since a simple de-interlace would get you to 25P, and then a 4% speed modification would enable a 24P conversion. Going from 60i is more complex, but some labs are doing it and getting reasonable success with it.

To get a 24P image, the best would be a camera that shot 24P.

Next would be one that shot 25P, converted to 24P.
-->>>

I am sorry to say that the lab was not too specific about the "problems", but I will try to find out more. The term "resolution loss" is very wide, but what the lab said is that "the advantage of HD is the better resoluzrion, but in the case of a standard pulldown 60i to 50i it will better show the problems of this technique".

Completely agreed with the order you scaled our options with. I imagine that by "25p converted to 24p" you mean shooting PAL, de-interlacing and then doing a 4% pitch correction on the audio.

The unmentioned matter is that it's a very effective and cheap way to do video to film. If we add HD to that, then the quality vs cost gets very good.

I have seen SD video to film transfers at another lab, origin PAL, from different sources (DV, analog Beta, digital Beta) and the results are incredible. I even saw a blow-up of a film where they used an XL1 with a CCD lacking dots that had to be painted frame by frame, and you could not see it!

In any case, if we can get results as those on the "flower tests" I saw from the FX1, and we can get to hide the artifacts (apparently more visible on pans or fast movements), this new HDV could become a very prolific medium.


Carlos

I have seen some amazing transfers lately (that didn't even get distribution) from SD video shot in 60i. I can imagine that HDV in 60i will look much, much better. Plus the native 16x9 of the FX-1 helps another 10% or so just not having to go 4x3 to 16x9.

I doubt if Sony in LA takes the 60i NTSC footage into PAL before transferring.

<<<-- Originally posted by Michael Struthers : I have seen some amazing transfers lately (that didn't even get distribution) from SD video shot in 60i. I can imagine that HDV in 60i will look much, much better. Plus the native 16x9 of the FX-1 helps another 10% or so just not having to go 4x3 to 16x9.

I doubt if Sony in LA takes the 60i NTSC footage into PAL before transferring. -->>>

Why would an NTSC footage be transferred to PAL?

The main reason why NTSC is so expensive to transfer is because you have to compute the 30 frames (or 60i) into 24 film frames, being careful not to leave out information that could be important. The softwares in charge of that process got better and better, but still take some time doing it.

PAL is tranferred direct, shooting every frame to film, which makes the process quicker and less expensive. Everything is more transparent.

Things are different when you shoot 24p, but then the cameras are more expensive.

One thing nobody could explain to me is why an origin 24p footage can't be as cheap as PAL to transfer. Aren't they ripping us on that?



Carlos