ANYONE EDIT FULL LENGTH FILM WITH PP1.5 and HD100u YET? shooting film soon...

[Giuseppe Pugliese]

I wanted to know if anyone has actually shot a complete feature film (around an hour and a half long play time) with the jvc HD100u and started or completed editing it with Premiere Pro with the cineform support... I have a rather large shoot in about 9 months, and i wanted to see if anyone is running into any interesting issues...(color correction issues, realtime playback issuess, exporting...ect.ect....)

I also wanted to get an actually estimate for how much hard drive space needed for a real shoot. im looking at getting a 1 terribite external firewire/usb 2.0 with my new editing system on a dual 2.8 xeon processor pc with hyperthreading on each processor and windows XP pro 64x.

All input would be most welcome, im quite interested to see what people are doing out there with this camera... i know im jumping in head first with it and i hope i can work out any problems that head my way...(thanks in advance for any responces to this)

[David Newman]

It is too soon for a completed feature, but many are in the works using CineForm's Aspect HD or Prospect HD with the JVC 100U. Here is a blog on a feature using HD100Us in South Africa: http://indiefilmlive.blogspot.com/

[Giuseppe Pugliese]

its funny you bring that up, i have been reading that blog for the past week or so they are really going all out... although my production is going to be on the heavy side of the tech world, i dont think i will be working with the uncompressed 10 bit files, it seems to me a bit over kill for my likeing.

I guess i should say that im really open to any info in relation to shooting larger setups with the hd100u and then working post on it.

I would also love to know if anyone is making feature films with the hd100u with the "compressed" tape footage, (basicly just shooting everything on tape and captureing it in premiere later)

(by the way, you guys are the best, this is by far the best group of people who actually seem to know what they are talking about. most other sites everyone is still talking about the whole 1080i vs 720p thing...haha sorry to even bring that up :-O )

[Panos Bournias]

We start our feature film last week, (Final stage of pre production) but it will be in black and white so we do not have the problems of color aberation.

We did not choose black and white because of this. It was chosen from the very beginning of the project. We will edit in adobe premiere using the prospect HD and we will shoot in Pro HD tape (Less drop outs) HDV 24p.

We will try to use the micro 35 adaptor from red rock micro if it comes finally, has been 6 months since we ordered it.

We have already test shots on locations and they look good, we don't see any serious problems with the JVC. The movie is mostly outdoors, with limited night shots.
We shoot in Indonesia, tropical high contrast after 10 o clock, so we will shoot early morning and after 4,30 to avoid the harsh look.

I would advise to take under serious consideration the color aberation of the standard 16X lense as it can make some of your footage unusable. We shot a documentary, that is completed by now, and we had to through away footage that would be very usefull to us otherwise.
So buy the 13X lense or the 2/3 adaptor and rent better lenses. In 9 months the 2/3 adaptor will be for sure available. Best rent the mini 35 P + S Technic for better results or the red rock micro 35, even thought with this you have to use the stock lense. I think this is the most important part of your consideration. For editing in 9 months from now i think it will be a problem any more. Now is the problem!! Good luck

[Giuseppe Pugliese]

Thanks so much, so you haven’t run into the "split screen" problem in your darker shots at all?

by the way I think you and I should keep in touch, as for we are pretty much in the same boat. We can compare notes and tech advice... my email is blueline1226@yahoo.com I would love to chat more.

[Panos Bournias]

The split screen is an issue if you go at extreme low light conditions or if you push up the gain of the camera.
We have had our camera adjusted in detail by JVC and we rarely see the split screen any more.
We do not intend to go in under lighted situations. We try to keep the lighting conditions ideal for the best performance of the camera.

About the slow motion: We have tried to apply slow motion in HDV capture with the Avid Pro HD 5,2 and looks horible. With DV the results were not so bad but with the MPG2 i think that the straight forward effect looks very bad. If you must have slow motion you try the live 60p with a different capture from the component out of the camera.
The component out of the camera seems to over pass the MPG2 compression but I do not have experience of this.

Lenses: You must consider that if you use the 1/2 adaptor you will have an increase of focal length of 1,33, and if you use the 1/2 adaptor you will have 1,82. If you use the adaptor for the nikon lenses available by Optex you will have an increase of 6,9.
This might leed you to a different look as you will be oriented in more tele angles of view.

I would also be glad to keep in touch with you and discuss different ideas.

We have to get off today, next week i will let you know about our problems

[Luis Otero]

I am going to be involved in a feature (90 minutes; $100K budget) thriller, using tape as the capturing medium, editing in Pro 1.5.1 and Aspect HD. If all bugs are worked out by mid January, we will be using the SG35 addapter from Wayne with Nikon lenses. However, the DP (a very experienced and successful young man from Hollywood) is satisfied with the image obtained from all testings we have been doing using the stock lens.

Luis Otero

[Giuseppe Pugliese]

That sounds great, thats pretty much the same software i will be using, again i would love to swap notes and such, when the time comes this communitiy will be quite helpful for the feature film makers.

[Ernest C. Martin]

The only long form project I saw a 10 minute daily of blown up to 35mm was done by Andy Young of DuArt NYC. In fact the screening was sponsored by JVC. The blow was done the day before we saw it, I'll try to get in touch with Andy and see how its coming. What I saw was footage of a documentary shot on location in Madagascar, with a factory preset camera.

[Brian Duke]

I will be shooting feature with HD100U and Mini35 in Spring, but doing some short film projects before that with same. Please keep updating everyone on each other's projects..

[Sean McHenry]

I can tell you all this. We have used the HD-100 camera, yes, with all it's issues, we have used it as a camera head for 1080i feed into a Sony Professional HD deck on a major PBS series that we shoot in our studios at my day job.

I am reluctant to say what show without permission of the upper staff here but we found it a reasonable HD source to compliment our rental and own Sony 900 series HD cameras.

Please note that despite my issues with various aspects of this camera, I really do like the video coming out of it in HDV. I just wish for one that the HDV workflow was a bit more comprehensible for those of us in multi edit suite situations working with Avids. That and it's increasing list of suspect engineering issues. SSE, dead pixels, failure to record audio despite showing on the meters and hearing it in the headphones, TC issues, reports of not going into DV mode, inability to batch capture, noise in low light and so on. The prices we pay for good video I suppose.

Sean McHenry