Various CineForm announcements

[David Newman]

JY-HD10U in the press.

http://digitalproducer.com/2004/02_f...02/hdv_jvc.htm

Congrats Geoff on the coverage this gives you. Thanks for the nice quotes.

[Kenn Christenson]

Good to hear this kind of information. I wonder how they are handling the chroma noise.

[Troy Lamont]

That's an excellent article. I'm glad to hear these cameras are starting to make their way to the mainstream. I can't wait to see the CBS show that they are filming with the HD10!

It's my understanding and experience that the noise is more prevelant in dimmer scences. I would imagine that based on reading the article that they are lighting correctly and won't really have too much of it to deal with.

Troy

[David Newman]

We are familar with both Geoff Pepos and the people editing that show for broadcast (all CineForm Aspect HD customers.) The chroma noise issue is something we have been working on. A beta verison of a chroma noise filter is now available to all Aspect HD (for PPro) users (just drop me an email if you wish to beta test), so I hope we can help filter any HD10U work before it airs.

[Kenn Christenson]

Thanks, David. I've been keeping an eye on this camera, as well as the DVX100. I'm currently weighing my options for an effects-filled feature.

Because the project will take about 3 years and a lot of work to create, I need to produce an image that will hold up in a high definition future and possibly film-out. Unfortunately, I'm currently Mac based, so I can't use your product, although I've heard a lot of great things about it.

Best of luck with your products.

[Geoff Pepos]

David, you are welcome. I wouldn't say those things if the software sucked. ; )

Yes, we have noticed the chroma noise and we do welcome Cineform's work in this area.

The first day we got the camera, I went out back and shot at the magic hour...well it's really a magic 17 minutes...everything automatic on the cam.

Brought it back and connected to our HD TV and..."Ooh. What is that red-mooshy-pink-color-cast-smeary junk all over the TV?" It was if a tick had exploded all over the shadows. Sorry for the gross description. A simple solution...checking the white balance. I shot the other day in the same light...white balanced the cam and it looked great. Also, exposing for the highlights (and even verging on more underexposure than you were taught is right by your grandfather and his Kodak Brownie) is a good idea. Contrary to popular belief, there is a lot of detail in the shadows with this cam...

We have created a "filter/multi-layer stack" in After Effects also that we're very pleased with. Some of it is based on Ansel Adams' zone system. With it, we've been able to increase the percieved "dynamic" range of the image. We use a combo of transfer modes and blurs in certain zones to remove the blotchies and various adjustment curves...and we also wave our magic bone over the keyboard.

While I'd love to say that everything we do is lit correctly, sometime ya just have to go with what you have. We have taken on purpose some really awful footage just to see what the limits of the cam are (it still faired better than my not-named-here DV cam that I shot the Sundace pic with) and turned this stuff into something pleasing...at least to us...that's a personal thing isn't it...aesthetics. I mean, look at the Impressionists...Their resolution was pretty crappy. ; ) They did know a lot about visual perception though. I think Degas maybe used a 240 by 180 pixel canvas, maybe sometimes.

One can also increase percieved sharpness or import to your image by blurring (or even darkening) out the unimportant parts of your image...hense the use of DOF, good production design or at least well chosen locations, relative motion in the frame (the only really well kept secret of motion pictures), costumes, and background actors that don't upstage the leads, among other things.

Oh, gotta go. Another movie is starting...it's Friday nite and I shouldn't be working.

T'nite we put some stills from our current film on our web site in the Purgatory Playhouse section...although reduced in size for the web...you'll get the idea.

Take Care,
Geoff Pepos
www.rhythmfilms.com

[David Newman]

For those with a fast PC, and JVC HDV camera and some spare time, here is a good opportunity to try out some neat tools for HD editing.

My company (CineForm) has just released a try out version of Aspect HD 2.2 (latest version.)
http://www.cineform.com/products/DownloadTrialStart.htm

This will require a installed version of Premiere Pro. However, if you don't have that you can download a trial version of Premire Pro from Adobe.
http://www.adobe.com/products/tryado...jsp?ftpID=2333

To make all these trial versions work together we have listed a small patch on the CineForm support site. Note: If you have a release version of Premiere Pro you will not need this patch.
http://supportcenteronline.com/ics/s...asp?deptID=614 (Click on the first link in "Most Recent Topics".)

Have fun.

[Peter Robert]

Except expiry, any other limitations? Such as limited functions, water marks...

[David Newman]

None that I know of. The Aspect HD is a fully functional version. The try out of Premiere Pro seems fully featured also.

[Peter Robert]

I have tried the demo version. It performs quite well. Now, I want to set up an external monitor to preview the effect during editing. How can I set it up?

[David Newman]

For the real-time external monitor preview you will need a dual head video card that output the overlay channel to a secondary monitor. The Matrox P750 and Parhelia does this along with many of the recent ATI cards. This is a video card setup; nothing needs to be changed within Aspect HD (other than checking "scrub to overlay surface" within the playback settings.) If you can get Media Player to output video to the second monitor it will work with Aspect HD.

[Peter Robert]

Did more tests with the demo software.

1. Aspect HD converts m2t file to its own format and edit in Premiere Pro. At the end, directly output timeline as a ts file which could be sent back to HD10. In the whole editing process, there is nothing deal with the original m2t clip. Is there any loss of quality?

How is the video output edited by Aspect HD compared with the output from JVC Mpeg Edit software?

In fact, I check the resulting video clip of Aspect HD in my HD monitor, my impression is the mpeg noice seems to be more serious.

2. To import the converted file to Premiere Pro, there is a process called conforming. It takes quite a long time to import a folder which contains one hour vedio.

3. To output from the timeline as ts format, it takes 36 minutes to output 1 minutes video clip in which I only put some Aspect HD transitions. Is it normal? My PC config: P4 2.8G CPU, 1 GB Ram, 120 GB video drive.

[David Newman]

1. If you only intend to perform edits capable with the included JVC software, then you will see no quality difference. If you intend use more power editing tools like PPro and After Effects, then quality of the CineForm has to be better because you can't do it with native MPEG. The CineForm approach gives the greatest creative freedom of any HD editing solution, as we don't limit you to one editing tool.

2. That is a Premiere Pro function, it only does it once per clip per project. The result of this "conforming" is far more real-time audio features.

3. That seem long but is a Premiere function, typically an export to HD MPEG is about 8 to 1 compute time (i.e. your sequence should have taken 8 minutes.) Aspect HD transition are real-time for playback, but rendering to MPEG is not real-time for HD on any system (yet.)

[Till Krueger]

maybe i could chime in here for a second:

i've been using Aspect HD for about 2 months now, and am extremely happy with it...over the years, i've used just about everything out there, from the first experimental motion video codecs on the Amiga, to the many MJPEG codecs (including the excellent Miro DC30), to the most recent attempts to offer high quality/high resolution at low data rates (MPEG2, WMV, etc.), and many inbetween.

it is true that MPEG2 TS files are small and efficient, and if used with a tool such as MPEG Edit Pro or Vegas, even extremely fast to "render" out (when re-encoding or special fx processing is not necessary in most parts of the used clips)...but personally, and after much experiemntation with the CFHD codec (Cineform HD), i've come to the conclusion that it is the best thing out there for me, in the light of not wanting/needing uncompressed video.

what has made CFHD particularily useful to me, is the fact that it not only serves as a very high quality aquisition and editing format for my HD10U footage, but that i have also come to LOVE it as an archival codec for my timelaps and CG frames...i have 10's of thousands of frames that were either rendered out from Lighwave 3D, or shot as timelaps sequences with a Canon 1D at 4.5MP.

for example, i recently shot a timelaps sequence of driving a convertible down the magnificent Cabrillo Highway (south of San Francisco) and through beautiful Pescadero Valley, at 1 frame per second...so the delta from frame to frame is essentially 100% (everything changes)...encoding to MPEG2 TS does introduce significant block artifacts (beyond the ones already present due to the JPEG format it was shot in), while ecoding to CFHD generates a beautiful video quality free of additional artifacts...it just serves as THE archival codec of choice for me now, as uncompressed video just adds up too quickly in size...i mean, storage is cheap now, but a few hours of uncompressed HD footage can cause financial and bandwidth issues to the best of us.

sorry for the rant, but i am really happy to have gotten beyond the initial reservations i've had (very much and for the very same reasons as you, Peter), and am feeling at home with this new Cineform workflow...i could go on, but i'll spare you the gushing.

hope you can come up with the patience to see the light ;)

[Al Falaschi]

Any chance of demo-ing the Connect HD for Vegas???