I've heard frame mode from the Panasonics is better than the Canons. People have said the Panny's have more perceived resolution, and the Canon's come out looking a little too soft.

While using a frame mode might seem easier at first, it's probably beter to shoot in 60i, retaining all your shooting info, and then deinterlacing your final product through software. It just gives you more options for later, and retains more quality.

How do you shoot in 60i on the XL1s?

<<<-- Originally posted by Nicholas Foster : How do you shoot in 60i on the XL1s? -->>>

Movie Mode = Normal

gs400,cinelook and magic bullet..help me!!
 

hi!
i'm an italian boy who loves movies and directin..so, in the next week I will direct my first short movie.so, i've some questions:

1-i've ordered a gs400 from a seller here in italy..it will arrive in few days, so:I WANT TO GIVE TO MY LITTLE MOVIE A VERY VERY FILM LOOK FEELING..do you think it convein to me to shoot at frame mode with the panasonic (25fps) or to shoot normally and then deinterlace to 24fps with magic bullet?

2-i've also ordered a dual g5 power mac with 1 giga of ram..do you think that magic bullet renders time will be not so epic with this configuration?

3-is magic bullet the best compromise to give that film look that i'm looking for?or there is a better software??i want to give also very cold colours at the footage...

4- do you think the gs400 will be good for me to shoot some short movies??i think it's a good machine, what do you think?

thanks for your support!!!i need help to grow....
bye

Hello Giuseppe,

I can help with some of your questions: Like yourself, I have been on the same quest to make my DV shots look more like film, or I think to narrow it down; to give my shots a more "cinematic look".

Here's what I've found so far:

1. Manage your light carefully. This has been gone over a million times in every forum already, but just in case you don't know, DV camcorders have a very limited dynamic range compared to film. The highlights blow out very quickly (which is a very bad thing. It's much like digital audio distortion, and it can't really be fixed in post).

Also the shadows or dark areas act differently in DV. The darks tend to drop off in kind of a brick wall fashion very quickly, concealing the details. Many times, this can be fixed pretty well in post.

I never shoot in bright daylight, EVER, without an ND filter. These bring down the level of light evenly, going into the camera lens, minimizing the chance of blowouts. The color response of your camera will improve dramatically. You will also find you have better contrast range, and less stairstepping, or zipper effects on the edges of straight contrasting objects, (such as rooftops) with an ND filter. They are cheap, and may be one of the first, best things you can do for your camera.

Try a Polarizing filter. These cause the light coming through the lens to only pass in one direction. It looks great, reduces glare, and causes colors to really pop on shiny surfaces like cars or water. Also cuts the glare in the sky, making it look deep blue, instead of white, and makes clouds stand out dramatically.

2. Add some kind of diffusion. Almost every film you see now days has some kind (usually a lot!) of diffusion added to it to give it a slightly dreamy story telling look, as opposed to the hard news footage "DV" look. It's one of the things we expect to see in film without thinking about it. Now days it's a toss up whether to diffuse later in post, or add a Diffusion filter to your lens first. There are ton's of different filters out there. Each one works in a slightly different way. Some add more of a slight misty haze to everything which causes highlights to bloom and flare nicely into darker areas, and some add more of a softening effect to edges while still leaving detail, without much highlight flaring. You can add diffusion with many editors in post, but it takes ton's of CPU resources, and time to render. It also doesn't really cancel the effects of camcorder CCD oversharpening BEFORE it happens to your footage.

I've just added a Tiffen SoftFX/3 to my collection. It's pretty much the best all-around diffusion filter I've found. It's amazing what it's done for my Optura Xi. Shots instantly look much more like an expensive film production, and much less like video. It allows the detail to come through, but minimizes the electronic "enhancement" that video cams kick in on contrasting edges. I've seen this used on alot of BBC productions that were shot on video, to make them look more like expensive film, such as "The Chronicles Of Narnia" from the 1990's. I liked the look so much on that one, it is what I thought I could realistically match with pro-sumer gear. I've got it now!

3. Shift the gamma and color correct in post. I don't believe you see anything nowdays that hasn't been dramatically altered in post (whether film or video) to give it a certain "looK". Most editors allow you to lift the blacks and soften that brick wall effect before all the shadows go dark. Done carefully, you will be surprised at how much detail you can bring back, and how much closer this looks to film.

4. Buy "Magic Bullet" OK, I'm doing a sales pitch here....I just bought it this week, and it blew my mind. I've tried a lot of different software that promises to make your video look like film, most were very disapointing, but this is the real thing :) Besides just taking good clean video, if this was all you had to get closer to an expensive film look, it might be all you need.

You can get close to it's effect by hand, given lots of tweaking time in an editor, but this nails it easily on it's own, and is actually very simple and intuitive to use. When used properly, the effect it has is actually kind of shocking. I don't think I ever want to see my footage without it again...seriously.

They make several different versions of it now. The Magic Bullet plug-in I just bought for Vegas Video was very affordable. I don't want to sound like a dork here, but it really makes it look like I spent thousands of dollars more on my gear. I won't be working without it.

Be aware though - it takes forever to render - especially if you crank up the diffusion settings. that's why I'm using a real filter in front of the lens now.

5. Use a TV monitor to check your shots whenever possible when shooting or editing. The LCD on your cam is nice for framing things, but you never see what your shots really look like untill you see them on a TV monitor. This could save you alot of ruined footage.

Also, very important here: computer monitors use a completely different approach to color than TV's do, NEVER try to color correct or gamma shift without watching the results on a TV monitor live! You will not like the results, and you will waste all your efforts if you don't do this. It's like throwing darts in the dark- why bother.

Well those are my main tips. Yes, my stuff actually comes off ( I think so anyway... :) impressivly much closer to film, or at least an "expensive cinematic" look than video now. I have not talked about lighting here, which is a book in itself. If you are trying to attempt a better look for your shots, I'm sure you are studying all your favorite movies closely. That's the best place to start. Also, one more quick tip: frame your shots and focus FIRST before pulling the trigger. It sounds dumb to say it, but it can be the biggest difference between amature and pro shots. Have fun!

If you've got true 25p then use it. It will be better than any simulation in post. If you have to use 50i and de-interlace in post then you can, and it works very well. Take a look at my Film Effects package at www.nattress.com

Film Effects has a very nice 25p look with a smart de-interlacer. It also has a great bunch of presets, looks and it renders very much faster than Magic Bullet for Editors, and extremely faster than Magic Bullet on After Effects. There's a free demo and great tech support.

If you want a particular look and can't get it, then send me a shot from your project and give me a reference of what you'd like it to be like and I'll figure out the settings for you. I've done that with a number of customers and it works well - or you can just play with all the wonderful controls and do it yourself.

Graeme

Magic Bullet is creating Bands on my image
 

Hello again dvinfo community,

I was using magic bullet on my works Computer for some dv i had shot, (Usually use it with Digital Betacam) anyway i was having problems with feint vertical bands on the video and was wondering if anybody else had this problem.

I experienced something similar some time ago. I think it happens when your video has been recompressed a couple times, like if you exported/imported back(ie: after rendering effects and such) your footage in your NLE. That's what happened to me anyway, it is very noticable when there is bright colors on the screen, especially reds.

To avoid this is to always export to avi uncompressed until the final render.

Anyway, it might not be the same thing we're talking about, but I though I should share just in case.

Fred.

Post a picture perhaps?

error in magic bullet help me please!
 

I keep getting an error that reads "magic bullet has encountered an unknown exception error (512) (25::60)." I can deinterlace and render fine from 29.97 to 24fps when the "Quality" is set to "Draft", but when I set the "Quality" to "Best", I get that error message. I have already tried reinstalling. Can someone help me?

Try going to Red Giant Software's support site and getting their latest updates:

http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/updates.html


They have the 512 error listed (though I don't know if this is the problem you are encountering):

Magic Bullet Suite Look Suite Xeon Crash (Error 512) Description: Fixes a bug with memory allocation where rendering Look Suite caused it to crash mid-render, usually in the middle of a very long render. This was found only on high end Xeon machines, over 3Ghz.

I tried that but it doesn't seem to work. I emailed them. It's weird though. I can convert 29.97 video to 24fps and do all of the other magic bullet effects(deartifact,look suite,etc) and I can also render this but only with the DRAFT mode. For some weird reason, it wont let me render in BEST mode so that I can have better resolution and quality.

Magic Bullet Suite...
 

I would like to try the demo of Magic Bullet Suite. The only problem being I don't have After Effects. Is there a free (or inexpensive) program that I can buy that will accept After Effects plugins?

Thanks!
Josh

lol Guess not?

You could try the after effects demo:

http://www.adobe.com/products/tryado...jsp#product=13

MAGIC BULLET (for After Effects) HELP?
 

I'm a student making a film and just recently I found out that one of the labs has a copy of magic bullet we can use!

I did some messing around to get the hang of it - I shot 60i on my VX2000 (with lowered sharpness in the custom settings) and then followed the basic procedure outlined in the magic bullet manual.. I came across some trouble and I just had a couple of questions...

When I rendered the clip and tried to watch it using numerous different players on my computer, it played back extremely choppy and slow. Is this normal?

Also, if i edit at 60i at once in Premier first, then render the whole thing through magic bullet in the end, can I open it again in Premier to bring it back to export it back to DV?

"When I rendered the clip and tried to watch it using numerous different players on my computer, it played back extremely choppy and slow. Is this normal?

Without knowing the exact setting you used, it can be difficult to diagnose the problem.

I can tell you that odds are you had your composition setting incorrectly set in After Effects. In order for Magic Bullet to work correctly, the setting in After Effects have to be set correctly as well.

I don't have the manual in front of me, so I can't give you a spefic answer right now. But my first guess would be to check with the manual, and make sure you were importing your footage into the right kind of comp in AE.

"Also, if i edit at 60i at once in Premier first, then render the whole thing through magic bullet in the end, can I open it again in Premier to bring it back to export it back to DV?"

Are you asking if after you render out of AE can you bring that file back into Premiere for layout back to tape? If so, yes that shouldn't be a problem at all, as long as you are rendering out of AE into a codec that Premiere can recognize.

I hope this helps.

Danny,

If you are using DV source and rendering at Best quality, you're output will be an uncompressed AVI file. Those are pretty large, and limited hard drive speed/throughput or processing power won't be able to play this back smoothly.

If this is your scenario, you'll need to render as DV-AVI (adds a recompression cycle and potential loses quality), or work on a faster system.

Josh

Magic bullet field order
 

Hello Forum,


In the manual for Magic Bullet it says to select no fields in the interpet footage window, and then your on your own after that.

I imported some mjpeg upper field first footage as they stated with no fields and then exported uncompressed mov. upper field first.

The results were very bad strobing and honestly, i have had better results with exporting with no fields.

Has anyone else had problems with this happening? and are there any tweaks to make the bullet even better, aprt from shooting, lighting, lense etc.

B.Sundry

If the reason (one of) for using MB is to do a de-interlace your
import should be set to upper first and the output to none, I'd
reckon. At least that is how it works on systems like Sony Vegas.
(I haven't used MB myself).

Otherwise it is always wise to keep the same setting throughout
the system. In this case you would maintain the interlacing and
need to set everything to upper first.

For your information, DV is lower field first.

There are three places to set field order. If you are deinterlacing, you need to...

AE Interpret Footage - No Fields
Magic Bullet - Upper Field First (MB shoul detect and set this in auto-config, it's lower for me)
AE Output - No Fields

Josh

thanks so much Josh,

I think this seemed to be my first configuration before i realised i better set my fields right.

Actually seems that i was right the first time.

dvx100 and Magic bullet
 

What are the primary differences in motion between Magic Bullet Suite and the DVX100a? (besides the obvious of real-time) Do the two yield basically the same result. I think I remember reading that Magic Bullet is a bit more shuttery, but I can't remember...

Thanks

"differences in motion "

well.. magic bullet deinterlaces, while the dvx is shooting in full res true progressive

to the naked eye, it may not be that noticable, but the native progressive footage will be sharper...

It's the difference between actually taking an image at 24 distinct moments in time (per second)... and trying to approximate that based on images taken after 60 other moments in time. At best it's an approximation, and will never be as accurate or as detailed as the real thing.

magic bullet - frame blend
 

does anyone enable frame blending with magic bullet in after effects? it looks like it might provide a little bit of an added motion blur and may look better. what are people's opinions on this?

My experience is that it adds too much blending. It seems to blend a number of frames together. I'm not sure if it's configurable. It may be better suited as a creative tool, since it'll give a real slurry effect.

Has anyone even tried Magic Bullet with HDV footage yet?
 

It's been a while since the Sony FX1/Z1's came out. Hasn't anyone tried Magic Bullet Suite with them? I hear about Vegas being a good NLE for the 24p conversion, as well as many others such as Twixtor and that Avi whatchamacallit, but I've yet to see any FX1/Z1 footage converted to 24p using Magic Bullet. Now that I think about it, I haven't seen any samples of FX1/Z1 footage converted to 24p. What's the holdup people? =)

They're waiting for it to render :D :D :D :D

lol, nice one. I'm still surprised nobody has even tried. >.<

Magic Bullet presets error
 

I recently tried to install MB for Editors (the trial version) but when I install it, it fails to install the presets. I asked my friend to download the trial and install it but it did the same thing on his computer.

Could someone sends me the presets? Or give me the settings forr at least Basic and Basic Warm/Cool presets? That would be really nice since I want to get an idea on the effect it gives on different movies I made.

Thanks, Maxime

PS: I'm using Adobe Premiere Pro

Magic bullet...only if it was faster.
 

I had the same problem and im using Permiere as well. I downloaded a update I believe. Is that all you want to use in Magic bullet is the filmic look? Or what, because I dont think I got the other stuff to work.

Somthing better then Magic bullet?
 

Is there anything out there? I need a plugin for Adobe Permiere pro, I have magic bullet but was wondering if there is anything better out there. Magic bullet tends to be very very slow at rendering, I'm sure there is nothing that is faster though, correct?

Virtually everything else is faster.

What particular things do you want to do?

There may be ways to emulate Magic Bullet looks with Premiere's tools plus Synthetic Aperture's Color Finesse. They won't be exactly the same, and will not be as easy to use. However, you can accomplish lots of different things MB can't do. Use masking to isolate particular areas of an image (like power windows on a Da Vinci, except slower and better). Secondary color correction (affecting only particular colors). etc.

Problem solved, I installed the MB Suite for After Effects at my friend house, took some settings in note and used them in Premiere. The result is impressive!

Glad you got it working

Basicaly I'm just after the film look, was hoping something else was faster. Probably there are not a lot of plugins for permiere, or maybe permiere can do it all on its own.

Not related to Premiere, but others might be interested, VASST has a plugin for Sony Vegas called Celluloid. It uses Vegas' internal filters and is much faster to render than MB.

www.vasst.com/celluloid.htm

Try the color corrector and increasing contrast. Or use the curves function in it and make a s-shaped curve.

thanks
 

Thanks Glenn, anyone else have a suggestion?