HDV Effects With AE 6.5?
by Jon_Alpha
on
Nov 29, 2006 at 10:34:06 pm
Hi there. I'm working on a low budget feature that was shot on HDV (sony Z1) I plan to upres the footage to DVCPRO HD for output. The director want an animation guy to come in and do some work on certain scenes. He has told me that he has After Effects 6.5 (Mac). Will he be able to do the effects for us without me having to give him lores footage. This film will be projected in the cinema from a HD projector so quality is a big issue!
Re: HDV Effects With AE 6.5? by Dave LaRonde on Nov 29, 2006 at 11:34:03 pm
[Jon_Alpha]"I'm working on a low budget feature that was shot on HDV (sony Z1)... I plan to upres the footage to DVCPRO HD for output. This film will be projected in the cinema from a HD projector so quality is a big issue! "
Oh, gawd, PLEASE say you didn't shoot it using Sony's stinkin' fake 24p! If you plan to project at 24fps (and I hope you're not), you're going to have a boatload of trouble with your footage, because the Z1's technique for making video look like film matches NOTHING that any other manufacturer does. Since there is no real pulldown cadence in Sony's system to speak of, you can't simply remove the pulldown using Cinema Tools... doesn't work. You'll tear your hair out.
As long as your AE guy has the appropriate codecs and a sufficiently beefy computer, you should be OK for effects work.
By the way, even AE 3.1 puts out images that are every bit as good in terms of quality as AE 7.0... as long as it has quality footage to work with.
Re: HDV Effects With AE 6.5? by Jon_Alpha on Nov 30, 2006 at 12:09:20 am
Thanks for the respond Dave, as usual I have left out details that were important. We shot 1080i, at 25fps, PAL. I know it's not proper frame rate for cinema, but in the UK there is a small digital initiative for HD films to be shown.
What format should I export the scenes as for the after effects guy to import them into his machine? Can I give them to him as DVCPRO HD?
For the record I hate the Z1, the overscan with the ouput monitor has given us some 'interesting' compositions. We would have gone with the JVC and progressive scan except FCP 5 can't handle 25fps progressive.
Re: HDV Effects With AE 6.5? by Dave LaRonde on Nov 30, 2006 at 4:20:10 pm
[Jon_Alpha] 1) What format should I export the scenes as for the after effects guy to import them into his machine? Can I give them to him as DVCPRO HD?
2) For the record I hate the Z1, the overscan with the ouput monitor has given us some 'interesting' compositions.
3) We would have gone with the JVC and progressive scan except FCP 5 can't handle 25fps progressive." _________________________________________________________________
1) Yes, you can give him DVCPRO HD. You will need to make sure that he (or she) has the codec necessary to read the file.
2) Remember that in HDV, you are NOT seeing a 1920x1080 square-pixel picture. It's actually something like a 1440x1080 picture. It's one of the ways that HDV jams a signal into a shockingly small bit rate. If at all possible in FCP, you should capture your HDV shots in DVCPro HD. I have no experience doing this in FCP, but I believe that it's possible.
3) As I understand how most progressive scan cameras work, everything happens in the camera. A TV picture is composed of two fields, but a progressive scan camera captures those two fields at the same instant, then records those two fields, giving the illusion of one complete frame. In interlaced scan, the camra simply captures and records the first field, then 1/50 of a second later it captures and records the second field. The two fileds are separated by time. Other, more sophisticated HD cameras actually capture complete frames.
So, if the Z1 is capable of the "both fields at the same instant" method of image capture -- and your pictures were shot that way -- FCP should be perfectly capable of handling 25p.
