high end HD green/bluescreen...
by Chad Briggs
on
Apr 9, 2006 at 6:01:41 pm
Hello HD gurus-
I'm getting ready to spec out some HD shooting thats going to be greenscreen/bluescreen work in the vein of Sky Captain. I've got about 20 mins to shoot and trying to work out a economical way to do this and get the greatest color depth to work with. So a couple of questions/thoughts/comments if someone could correct me:
1) there is no tape format right now that supports 4:4:4 besides D5 corrrect? And you must have two D5 decks together to get 4:4:4?
2) The panasonic varicam and the first generation cinealta do 4:2:2 at best before it hits tape? (I know the cinealta compresses down to 3:1:1 or something like that when it hits tape)
3) The new version of the cinealta (950) records 4:2:2 to tape (hdcam sr on camera deck) and does 4:4:4 before tape?
If the above are true, then it sounds like the best way to handle a shoot like this is to digitize directly into a capture system that supports 4:4:4 onto a raid, then back up the data on the shoot to external HD's so you have two copies. The only thing i worry about going this route, is if you have the camera on a jib/dolly/whatever, you'd have to make sure you have a really long cable run to support such an endeavor?
any thoughts or workflows that y'all have experimented with in the past that you could share, that would be great.
thanks
Chad
Re: high end HD green/bluescreen... by Juan Salvo on Apr 9, 2006 at 7:36:22 pm
[Chad Briggs]"1) there is no tape format right now that supports 4:4:4 besides D5 corrrect? And you must have two D5 decks together to get 4:4:4?
Not correct, the only tape format that supports 4:4:4 is HDCAM-SR (HD-D5 will have a 4:4:4 option announced at NAB). HDCAM-SR supports 1 full bandwidth 4:4:4 stream onto a single tape, on a single deck
2) The panasonic varicam and the first generation cinealta do 4:2:2 at best before it hits tape? (I know the cinealta compresses down to 3:1:1 or something like that when it hits tape)
This is correct, Sky Captian actually used an F-900, and recorded to tape, the keying from HDCAM material, while tricky is not impossible.
3) The new version of the cinealta (950) records 4:2:2 to tape (hdcam sr on camera deck) and does 4:4:4 before tape?"
Partialy correct, the F-950 is a camera head only, it's simmiliar in function to the Panavision Genisis, Thompson Viper and a few other cameras in that it can produce a Dual Stream HD-SDI 4:4:4 signal. You can a record this signal to an HDCAM SRW-5500, or the SRW-1(???, this is the smaller field recorder that is ussually paired with the f-950). You could also record straight to drive, however this would be risky (if you loose a drive you could loose all of your material) and trouble some from a production perspective (you have to set up a massive raid on location as well as a dedicated capture station) but will result in the best possble images.
Re: high end HD green/bluescreen... by Chad Briggs on Apr 10, 2006 at 1:21:28 am
Juan-
thanks for the clarification. I didn't know that HDCAM-SR could do that on a single tape. I think it was the dual SDI thing that got me thinking it had to be two decks (one for each sdi).
You have any idea what the 950 and deck rents for these days?
Also, is there THAT much of a difference in keying 4:2:2 vs 4:4:4? I mean obviously you can get pretty darn good keys with the former.
Re: high end HD green/bluescreen... by Juan Salvo on Apr 10, 2006 at 5:36:23 am
[Chad Briggs]"Also, is there THAT much of a difference in keying 4:2:2 vs 4:4:4?"
Yes, because with 4:4:4 you can shoot on blue instead of green, which can frequently make for cleaner keys.
[Chad Briggs]"You have any idea what the 950 and deck rents for these days?"
Nope, but ALOT. Althought you don't have to shoot with the f-950, you can shoot with the Genesis or Viper or D20 or a couple of others (I'd recommend the Genesis above all). And just feed the 4:4:4 signal into the SR deck.
Re: high end HD green/bluescreen... by Steve Connor on Apr 15, 2006 at 7:43:35 am
We filmed a short using the output from a 900 head direct to Final Cut Pro in 10 bit uncompressed 4:2:2, pulling a key was incredibly easy and certainly much cheaper than going the 4:4:4: route.
Steve Connor
Adrenalin Television
Have you tried "Search Posts"? Enlightenment may be there.
Re: high end HD green/bluescreen... by Chad Briggs on Apr 15, 2006 at 9:31:05 pm
And one last question for you, i promise :) Did you have shots with a lot of motion in it? (running or frantic movment)? Did the 4:2:2 still hold up even with that?
thanks!
Chad
