various Magic Bullet questions

[Don Donatello]

what shutter speed did you use on the orginal tapes ?
some shoulder size camera's are set to 1/100 which will give you slightly more "strobic" feel then 1/60 ...
if by chance you had the shutter on auto then that would take experimenting in MBullet

[Gustavo Godinho]

I´m not sure I used a 1/60 footage. Almost sure I didn´t. If the shutter is fast it can cause stroboscopic effect? The faster the more stroboscopic it gets?

[Adam Burtle]

the higher the shutter speed, the more it will mimic film jutter, yes.

also, the more quickly you pan/move the camera, the more jutter you will see.

[Lars Siden]

Hi,

Had a chance to play around with MB and it looked fantastic... just a bit curious of the order to apply the filters

I used them like this

(Top to bottom)

1. Deinterlace ( MB )
2. Film Look
3. Broadcast colors

If I moved MB deinterlace from step 1 to 3, all other effect "vanished" - no big deal, but I'm curious of why?

The current AE version of MB is quite expensive, do we have any price indications of the new "stand alone" version?

// Lazze

[Edward Natale]

Magic Bullet needs to be the top filter in order for it to do its thing. It gives you that little tidbit of info in the info panel if your filters are misarranged.

Your filter arrangement is correct. If you add any other filters I would sandwich them between the broadcast safe and the looks filter. That just seems like the common sense way to arrange them.

Eddie

[Stephen van Vuuren]

I finally got around to posting a short film I did with Magic Bullet 1.5.

The short was originally shot with a GE VHS-C camcorder in a few hours back in 1993 - the camera lacked any manual controls of any kind. It was shot in camera (rewinding the tape for each "edit").

It lay in a drawer until last summer when I restored it (the tape was failing in a number of places).

I added a new narrative/experimental layer, a complete 5.1 score and used Magic Bullet, Film FX and lot of AE effects to completely alter the look of the orginal footage.

It's screened a couple of times on a 20 FT screen with nicely shot 16mm but still got very postive feedback about the imagery, much to my surprise.

Downloads at http://www.sevensmilingshark.com (film is the second listed - "The Golden Girl and Sea of Tranquility".

So don't throw away that VHS cheapo junker just yet :)

[Dave Largent]

Link didn't work.

[Stephen van Vuuren]

Typo - oops! Thanks for noticing. It's http://www.sevensmilingsharks.com

[Rob Sibley]

Does anyone know

1. What do they shoot "The Office" on?

2. I know they go through some sort of Deinterlacing program so What settings would you use for Magic Bullet and What way is best to light for that?

[Scot McPhie]

This is the BBC comedy? (which is absolutley brilliant in my opinion) anyway - it'd most likely be shot on a PAL camera so they wouldn't need magic bullet or anything - from memory I don't think it looks progressive or deinterlaced - just reasonable quality video -- on one of the DVD's there's a making of discussion with Ricky Gervais and Steven Merchant but I think that's more to do with the artistic side of it than anything technical. There is a BBC web page for it - they might have more info

Scot

[Martin Munthe]

Most BBC stuff is shot on digibeta. The sitcoms are usually just interlaced (I guess that applies to The Office). They shoot some of the drama stuff on digibeta and adjust shutters and route the signal through things that make it semi progressive. But most of the drama is shot on super-16mm.

[Gustavo Godinho]

FOR 1/60i to 24p JOB:

Magic Bullet is slow rendering, DVFilm Maker is very fast. The incredible difference makes DVFilm Maker a better choice? Or the video quality is so different (MB´s advantage) that I should be a little patient and get used to loooong hours of rendering?

[Doug Turner]

Hi all,

I did some quick tests that don't prove much, but might be of interest to some. I took some interlaced 50i miniDV footage of me grabbing a juggling ball, processed with the following methods and cropped in Photoshop (and magnified so we can see what's happening easier)...

Original frame grab, interlaced (yuck!):
http://users.bigpond.net.au/spoonyau/BallOriginal.jpg

Magic Bullet in AE, default setting (No Deartifacting, Detail 4):
http://users.bigpond.net.au/spoonyau/BallMB25fpsdefault.jpg

Magic Bullet in AE, Deartifacting ON (default Detail 4):
http://users.bigpond.net.au/spoonyau/BallMB25fpsdeart.jpg

Magic Bullet in AE, Deartifacting ON, Detail 1:
http://users.bigpond.net.au/spoonyau/BallMB25fpsdeartdetail1.jpg

REALVIX Retimer in AE, using suggested settings:
http://users.bigpond.net.au/spoonyau/BallRetimer.jpg

IMHO the Magic Bullet default in this case wins, but we still have horrible interlaced artifacts - see the red dot on the ball.

Anyone have any better methods? (I know going from 60i to 24fps is a bigger and hairier monster - 50i going down to 25fps gives a nice filmic look without having to lose/merge frames)

By the way, when I watched the processed footage on a TV I couldn't tell the difference between them - they all looked great compared to the horribly-real-world-smooth 50i video yuck.

PS - nice DOF created by taking the camera further back and zooming in on subject, a nice little trick, and FREE!

[Martin Munthe]

Deinterlacing is always degrading to the footage. There is no way to create something that can compete with true progressive from an interlaced source. IMO Magic Bullet with deartifacting switched on does the best job.

If you shoot progressive to start with you're going to save weeks and month of rendering and your result is going to look much better.

[Gustavo Godinho]

Shoot progressive is faster? You mean shoot in 24p with the DVX-100 or shoot 30p with one of the cameras that do this job and after turning into 24p with MB?