The Twenty-Third Letter - Scene 10

[Barlow Elton]

Originally Posted by Jonas Nystrom

When you export from FCP (to film-out), which codec do you use?

Whatever codec the transfer house requires. There's a good chance they'd be just fine with DVCProHD, but for final grades they might want to do, you could possibly export to 10bit Uncompressed if you had a giant 1 TB firewire drive. This way final changes for film out could be made without degrading the footage further.

[Jonas Nystrom]

Maybe off-topic, but do you guys know if it's possible to export tiff-sequenses from FCP5?

[Jonas Nystrom]

I've found the answer, for my question (File > Export > QT Converstion > Image Sequence > Options > TIFF, 25fps, Best Depth (Compression: None), size 1920x1080, 72dpi, rgb, 8bit).

Will I still have it as progressive if captured after your recomendations, Barlow?

[Barlow Elton]

Originally Posted by Jonas Nystrom

I've found the answer, for my question (File > Export > QT Converstion > Image Sequence > Options > TIFF, 25fps, Best Depth (Compression: None), size 1920x1080, 72dpi, rgb, 8bit).

Will I still have it as progressive if captured after your recomendations, Barlow?

If you shot 25F it should be as progressive as the original material.

[Jonas Nystrom]

Yeah it is (25fps). I've captured through HDVxDV and exported in Streamclip to DVCproHD or JPEG (not decided yet). Really nice footage! Only problem; disc space. How large files should it be? For example; 100% quality in DVCproHD, size 1920x1080 what should it end up in per minute?

[Barlow Elton]

A little less than 1 GB per min.

[Cole McDonald]

quick fix for the screen direction problem at 24 secs...flip that shot horizontally...that'll put her on the correct side of the screen...no finessing needed. Since there's no text in the scene to show you've done so, this shoudl work just fine. Nice piece...can't wait to see the finished project.

[Stefano Sgambati]

Impressive... I was looking for some film footage and here it is. Very stunning, that makes me want to save money (which would be useless anyway for now...).

Bravo!

[Cole McDonald]

and now that I look at it again, a cutaway would work better than flipping as flipping would feel just as weird since we are looking at their backs in the second.

[Barry Goyette]

Robert-

I have to ask, as your footage doesn't seem to have what I would consider as one of the signature picture elements of this camera, that being significant visible Chromatic abberation or color fringing and softness specifically as you get further from the center of the frame. Virtually every clip I've seen, except yours, shows this issue pretty quickly. Your footage appears remarkably sharp and clean in neutral contrast areas right out to the edge of the frame, there are a few high contrast areas that show the CA, but again at a level that is quite below other clips. I've played with XLH1 only once, and I saw the problem immediately.

Can you explain what is going on? Do you know what F-stops were used in this clip? Is there some magic CA correcting software I'm unaware of? Did you just get a lucky camera?

Sorry to harass. I've recently come into a chunk of cash allowing me to go HD, and this one issue has bugged me from the beginning about this camera, your footage has given me hope. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

(BTW...fabulous work..inspirational to see this quality of a project being done on this camera by a member of our boards.

Barry

[Joey Dee]

Originally Posted by Robert Sanders

We shot the film in 24F. Imported the footage and converted it to DVCProHD.

Robert, wow.. amazing job... well done mate... I have even downloaded the clip, i loved the crane shot and the over shot when u see the girl on the ground with the music...

So what does that mean, u shot in 24f which i get (did you use any kind of lense)? Also impored the footage (im guessing to FCP or AVID or Premier) and converted to DVCProHD? What is that? and how do you do that with what program and what is the benefit of it? Does it change your footage to HD? is that even possible?

Great job and i bookmarked your site.. well done...

Joey Dee

[Matthew Kent]

I'm also extremely impressed. I think when the XH A1 comes out, I'm going to splurge and get it. It unfortunately won't have the viability of lenses that the H1 has, but with the looks of 24f, and the same core imaging system, it should be one hell of a camera for the price!

Thanks for the post!

[Robert Sanders]

Originally Posted by Barry Goyette

Robert-

I have to ask, as your footage doesn't seem to have what I would consider as one of the signature picture elements of this camera, that being significant visible Chromatic abberation or color fringing and softness specifically as you get further from the center of the frame. Virtually every clip I've seen, except yours, shows this issue pretty quickly. Your footage appears remarkably sharp and clean in neutral contrast areas right out to the edge of the frame, there are a few high contrast areas that show the CA, but again at a level that is quite below other clips. I've played with XLH1 only once, and I saw the problem immediately.

Can you explain what is going on? Do you know what F-stops were used in this clip? Is there some magic CA correcting software I'm unaware of? Did you just get a lucky camera?

Sorry to harass. I've recently come into a chunk of cash allowing me to go HD, and this one issue has bugged me from the beginning about this camera, your footage has given me hope. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

(BTW...fabulous work..inspirational to see this quality of a project being done on this camera by a member of our boards.

Barry

Hi Barry. I'm glad you enjoyed the clip. That's why I do it.

I personally think the CA issue wrt to the stock 20x lens is a little out of proportion with reality. I don't think we did anything special with the shoot. We did use a lot of neutral density filters to control the amount of light entering the lens. This allowed us to open the iris as much as possible so that we could get a shallower depth-of-field and additional shadow detail.

Also, keep in mind that there are three shots in that clip that used the Canon 3x SD lens. Remember, this is the same lens everyone said was useless on the H1. We made a custom preset specifically for that lens with detail turned up slightly to compensate for the lens' inherent softness.

We are looking forward to buying the new Canon 6x lens once it's available. Same wide angle field of view as the 3x but with the same sharpness as the 20x. It will make a great addition to our set of lenses (20x, 16x SD manual, 3x).

I did not use any software to fix CA. However, there is a FCP plugin from River Rock Studios called "Bad Lens" that can help fixing agregious problems. But I haven't applied to any shots in my project so far.

[Robert Sanders]

Originally Posted by Joey Dee

Robert, wow.. amazing job... well done mate... I have even downloaded the clip, i loved the crane shot and the over shot when u see the girl on the ground with the music...

So what does that mean, u shot in 24f which i get (did you use any kind of lense)? Also impored the footage (im guessing to FCP or AVID or Premier) and converted to DVCProHD? What is that? and how do you do that with what program and what is the benefit of it? Does it change your footage to HD? is that even possible?

Great job and i bookmarked your site.. well done...

Joey Dee

We edited the project using Final Cut. However, we captured the footage using DVHSCap (free from Apple's website). We then converted that captured .M2T files to DVCProHD using MPEGStreamclip (also free from Apple). Final Cut is optimized for DVCProHD and it cuts and posts nicely. I think the conversion from HDV to DVCProHD softens the image a little, though.

The whole project was shot 1080 24f(p).

[Robert Sanders]

Originally Posted by Matthew Kent

I'm also extremely impressed. I think when the XH A1 comes out, I'm going to splurge and get it. It unfortunately won't have the viability of lenses that the H1 has, but with the looks of 24f, and the same core imaging system, it should be one hell of a camera for the price!

Thanks for the post!

I've used a lot of cameras since being an early adopter of DV back in the day. I've even had the opportunity to use the Sony F900. But I have to say that I think the Canon XLH1 is my favorite camera so far.

I'm sure the G1 and A1 are equally impressive.