I've searched the forum for an answer to this and I'm if Panasonic has any future plans to release a 4:4:4 P2 camera. If not is it a data rate issue or some other reason I don't know?

Why do you need 4:4:4?

Star Wars Episode I and III were both 4:2:2. I think only two features ever (Sin City, Episode III) were shot in 4:4:4.

Other advancements (higher resolution than 960X720 on the varicam, for instance, 10 bit color even) seem much more important. The naked eye really can't tell the difference between 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 so easily, and for greenscreening work--with interpolation--4:2:2 is more than good enough, as proved by the fact that Sky Captain, Star Wars, etc. were all virtually entirely greenscreened. (Although, I admit Sin City and Episode III did have the best compositing work, possibly as a result of 4:4:4 color.)

And no, it won't happen soon. You'd get a minute or two at most on a tape and the data rate would probably still be too high. Double SDI outputs (on the cinealta) are really the only solution.

If Andromeda and sculptorHD were ever to really get off the ground, this might be a good solution to get 4.4.4 in the HVX200.

It's not that I necessarily need a 4:4:4 camera. I'm just curious.

Why do you need 4:4:4?

Star Wars Episode I and III were both 4:2:2. I think only two features ever (Sin City, Episode III) were shot in 4:4:4.

Actually, Episode I was shot on 35mm film, Episode II was shot on 4:2:2 using the F900, and Episode III was shot on 4:4:4 using the F950.

And personally, I think Episode III looks MUCH better than Episode II. The skin in Episode II looks very much like it was shot on video.

I look forward to Superman Returns which is being shot on the new Panavision Genesis camera with a 35mm sensor. I have to hand it to George Lucas. When Episode II came out, he said "This is as bad as it's ever going to look. It's only going to get better."

check this link

http://www.theasc.com/magazine/aug04/collateral/page1.html


For an interesting articles about the Collateral movie shooting using HD cam.

Hayden--Where did you hear Ep I was shot on 35? I was at Skywalker when they were finishing the film and everyone there seemed to think the film was shot on HD.

Peter

Episode one was 35mm film. Lucas snuck in one shot that was from the first version of the CineAlta (the "midichlorian" scene on the balcony).

Episode II was the first all-digital film from LucasFilm. Wasn't the first CineAlta film released though; the David Mullen-lensed "Jackpot" beat it to the screens.

Episode II was the first all-digital film from LucasFilm. Wasn't the first CineAlta film released though; the David Mullen-lensed "Jackpot" beat it to the screens.

I also believe that 'Jason X' was shot with the very same camera(s) that would then shoot Episope II... this does bring up an interesting question - how many theatrically released films were shot on video? It's still a pretty small number I think....
John

In the link above about Collateral shooting:

The Thomson Viper has been lauded for its 4:4:4 uncompressed raw-data FilmStream mode, in which the pure image signal is sent to a hard drive, but Cameron found that this mode of shooting posed several practical problems. Because the signal undergoes no processing and is viewed on a monitor in “raw” form, the resultant images have a sickly, greenish hue. “That yellow-green image didn’t represent anything we could see by eye,” says Cameron, “and that made it impossible to judge the image from the monitor.

Is this true with all 4:4:4 that exist and will be made ??





"Basically, HD shooting has to do with signal-to-noise ratio,” continues Cameron. “In film, photochemical magic takes place in the falloff and in the highlights, but HD reacts very differently — once you start pushing the gain, you have to carefully monitor your signal-to-noise ratio. Our biggest concern was how to deal with the noise in scenes that show Tom and Jamie in the cab, and those scenes comprise about one-third of the movie. We discovered we had to increase the signal — meaning the amount of light — on the actors’ faces to an acceptable IRE level [registered on a waveform monitor], knowing that we’d later bring it down digitally with Power Windows in color correction before the film-out. What looked great to the eye didn’t necessarily translate into a good-looking close-up on the final film-out (.....) “We’d light beautiful night exteriors that looked amazing and natural and had so much detail, but when we went in for the close-ups, we had to overlight the actors to reduce the noise on their faces. On the monitor, it looked horrible and incredibly overlit. It was very hard to wrap my head around what we were doing, and it went against every instinct I have as a cinematographer.

Is this applicable on "smaller" camera such the HVX or only on high-end camera ? Nightshots are different that much from film to digital ?

How 4.4.4 looks on a monitor would be a good question for the folks at Reel Stream. I'm just at this moment asking over there. Here's some indication from a similar question and answer from Juan at Reel Stream, "The S-Video from the power book will show the uncompressed footage on an NTSC monitor just fine. The same works if you have a mac mini with a DVI-SVideo adapter($19 from Apple) and use the NTSC monitor as a primary display."
I'd love to get some kind of idea if SculptureHD can display clarity (I heard that the image is displayed over exposed) on a laptop computer's LCD.

Juan, "The viewfinder on the cam of coursed shows the DV image. This DV image has at least 2-2.5 stops less of dynamic range on the high end, but it mostly depends on what LUT you are using.

The monitor on the cam is still very useful while you are shooting if you are sitting a the camera. However, to actually see what you will be recording, you want to check the uncompressed monitor and make exposure adjustments with it.

However, once you use a particular LUT a couple of times you will be able to adjust exposure for Andromeda on the camera as well, it's just a matter of knowing how much to stop down."

Cheers,
Juan

It seems reasonable that with a bit of experience behind this kind of workflow, it's possible to get exactly what you need on a shoot.

Are the Sony Cine Alta 900 and 950 cameras 1920x1080 or 1440x1080?

900 is 1440x1080 and 950 is 1920x1080.

Well... depends on how you're asking the question. Both CAMERAS are 1920x1080. If you output HD-SDI you'd get the full 1920x1080.

The HDCAM recording deck on the 900 downsamples to 1440x1080.

HDCAM-SR keeps the full 1920x1080 frame, IIRC.

So the chips are 1920x1080?

Since Star Wars was 2.35, was it anarmorphic or cropped?

If cropped that means an effective resolution of only 1920x817! That's amazinging low for something that looks so bloody good! How can it be???

They don't list the chip's specifications, other than to say 2.2 million pixels, so yeah, 1920x1080 active pixels is a pretty reasonable guess.

As for cropping or anamorphic, I don't know for sure, but I'd strongly suspect cropping. Anamorphic would require some specially-engineered 1.33x anamorphic optical lenses, and I don't recall hearing anything about those, so... may be wrong, but... yeah, I'd bet simple cropping.

And -- how can it look so good? I keep trying to say -- pixel count is only one small factor in overall image quality! They're using $120,000 camera bodies with $100,000 lenses on the front, and recording full uncompressed dual-link HD-SDI output... it's gonna look pretty darn good. I've seen a couple of DV movies projected in the theater that weren't bad-looking at all. Having six times the resolution would sure make it plenty sharp, especially since Lucas et al certainly put it through first-class post-production techniques as well.

Also, keep in mind the way they're projecting 2.35 nowadays. Back in the "old days", they used to widen out the movie screen -- there were curtains over the side that pulled away to reveal more width. Not anymore, not at the new theaters here. Now when it's a 2.35 movie, they actually letterbox the screen -- curtains lower from the top and rise from the bottom, so the 2.35 screen is actually smaller than the 1.85 screen! So if it's magnified less, it'll inherently look sharper too...

I could be wrong, but couldn't Lucas have used the Pro35 with normal 35mm anamorphic glass and gotten the 2.40/2.35:1 aspect ratio on the CineAlta? That would give him the anamorphic image, using the full pixel count of the chips... then it's just a matter or setting your project up correctly to stretch it back out... right?

<<Now when it's a 2.35 movie, they actually letterbox the screen -- curtains lower from the top and rise from the bottom, so the 2.35 screen is actually smaller than the 1.85 screen! >>

Yes I know and it is funny that really in effect it is "letterboxed", but the Average Joe never complains! Because there are no black bars that he notices...

<<but couldn't Lucas have used the Pro35 with normal 35mm anamorphic glass and gotten the 2.40/2.35:1 aspect ratio on the CineAlta?>>

I was thinking and with anamorphic lenses its easy to tell, since all out of focus lights are not circular but oval. In Star Wars, I can see perfect circles in the out of focus background, so it must be cropped and not anamorphic.

So if 1920x1080 can produce such good quality, why do they scan 35mm film at 4K res to do any post work on it? What exactly is 4K? Is it 4096x2048?

I could be wrong, but couldn't Lucas have used the Pro35 with normal 35mm anamorphic glass and gotten the 2.40/2.35:1 aspect ratio on the CineAlta? That would give him the anamorphic image, using the full pixel count of the chips... then it's just a matter or setting your project up correctly to stretch it back out... right?
No, because cine anamorphics are 2:1. So if you used a pro35 with anamorphic lenses on a 16:9-native camera, your actual recorded aspect ratio would be in the ballpark of 3.54:1!

Barry,

I didn't think about that, but now that you mention it, it makes perfect (and obvious) sense. However, I did just find this product by Canon that could be used for anamorphic aspect ratios (on 2/3" cameras anyways)--I don't suppose this would actually work on the crop of 1/3" HD cams...

Canon's Anamorphic Adapter (http://opd.usa.canon.com/html/industrial_bctv/acv-235.html)

<snip>So if 1920x1080 can produce such good quality, why do they scan 35mm film at 4K res to do any post work on it? What exactly is 4K? Is it 4096x2048?

Actually, I believe for typical effects films they scan at 2K. 4K is probably much, much more expensive and frankly no one complains about movies scanned at 2K. That's why Lucas went HD - 1920 aquisition is basically considered close enough to a 2K scan.

And yes, EpII and EpIII were cropped.

Philip Williams
www.philipwilliams.com

So the chips are 1920x1080?

Since Star Wars was 2.35, was it anamorphic or cropped?

If cropped that means an effective resolution of only 1920x817! That's amazingly low for something that looks so bloody good! How can it be???

Episodes II & III were matted to a 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Anamorphic camera lenses were not used. The 2.35:1 safe area was displayed in the cameras and on the plasma screens the director used for monitoring and playback. When shown digitally, the source material can be scaled to use more of the effective pixels in the more common 1280 x 1024 DMD chips. An anamorphic projection lens returns the image to its native wide screen format.