48 hour film competition

The talentscreen.ch 48 hour film competition is in its final stages. Just over 6 more hours remain until we have to turn in our film. I am failry happy with how it turned out. Shooting with a RED ONE from the very generous rental company Octamas was the best thing about the shoot. It makes me never want to shoot HDV again.
The competition began at 12:00 on Friday. All of the teams met at the UTO Kino in Zürich and were given the theme for the competition. This years theme was "Dreck am stecken," which roughly translates to "Dirty Hands" implying some kind of guilt. After we got our theme we spent about 3 hours working out the story and another 4 hours or so organizing the location, actors, props, wardrobe, etc. We arrived at our location at around 8:00pm and we shot until 8:00am.
With all the shooting done we decided it was best that we get some sleep, and start editing at 5:00pm. We have been editing ever since. I would say that we are about 97% completed right now.

Stay tuned, I will post some frame grabs later.


PAL HDV to NTSC DVD

Well my Hell is over.I have been trying to figure out a sure-fire method of creating a NTSC DVD from a 1080i50 HDV source. I think I have finally discovered the best method. If you are trying to do this and its driving you crazy, then try following these steps. (this requires Final Cut Studio 2)

1. Export your final movie as a 1440x1080 50i Prores 422 file. Do this by going to file->export->quicktime movie and then selecting the Apple Prores 1440x1080 50i setting.

2. Open this quicktime in Cinema Tools. Select conform->23.98. This changes the frame rate by making the video playback 4% slower. This will be perceivable in the audio and will be fixed later.

3. Drag the conformed quicktime to into Compressor. Drag the Apple ProRes preset onto the file. Change the settings to:

  • In the frame controls pane select
    - Resize Filter: Better
    - Output fields: Progressive
    - Deinterlace: Better
    - Everything else at its defaults
  • In the geometry pane
    - Dimensions: Select 720x480 from the drop down
    - Pixel Apsect: Select NTSC CCIR 601/DV (Anamorphic)
4. Submit your compression job. For me this took approximately 4x realtime.

5. You now have a NTSC 24p ProRes 422 file. Import this into final cut pro, make a new sequence and drag it in. When it asks if you want to match the sequence to the file say yes.

6. Double click the audio in the sequence and apply the audio filter AUPITCH. Change the first setting called 'pitch' to 80. Leave everything else alone.

7. Export this file as a quicktime movie with the default settings

8. Bring this file into compressor. Drag the default settings for DVD encoding onto your movie (either 90min, 120min or 150min Best -- pick the one that your movie is less than or equal to)

9. The automatic settings should work but double check that it is making a 16x9 progressive NTSC movie. Submit you job.

10. Congratulations. When you are done this should make a nice NTSC DVD. It is not that commonly known that DVD NTSC can be 24p but in fact most commercial DVDs are 24p. All dvd players are able to convert the video to 29.97 in real time.

A couple of notes:
This work flow was for a project shot on a Sony Z1 your camera may vary.
If you have extra time you can de-interlace with the "best" method. But this takes MUCH longer and I think the benfits are negligible.
If you have ALOT of extra time you can do this all in one step by importing your HDV into compressor and changing the framerate to 29.97 with Framerate conversion set to 'Best.' But this take A VERY LONG time. My 55 minute project was going to take over a week on a top of the line Mac Pro. I have used this method with shorter projects at the results with this new method are the same if not better.

If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment. I a relieved to have figured this out and am happy to have shared it.

   

DVD Creation Hell

Pal? NTSC? HDV? Prores422? 23.98p? 60i? 50i? This is what I am dealing with right now.

What I am trying to accomplish sounds quite simple. I want to make a 16x9 NTSC DVD from the PAL HDV master QuickTime for my new documentary Legacy of the Great Aletsch. However this is not as simple as it sounds. There are several thing to consider.

First is the frame rate. I need to convert the original frame rate of 50i (50 interlaced frames per second) to either 60i or 24p. However both options have their problems. Increasing the framerate means that we need to create new frames out of no where. This is not a simple process and often introduces stutter artifacts. Lowering the frame rate means we lose some frames here and there. This can introduce a different kind of stutter.

The next thing I need to consider is frame size. HDV has a framesize of 1920x1080. NTSC 16x9 has a frame size of 720x404 Actually, even this is not so simple because both of these formats use non-square pixels. So HDV's real dimensions are 1440x1080 with wide rectangle pixels and NTSC is 720x480 with squished pixels. So I have to go from one non-square pixel format to another.

The final problem is interlacing. HDV is an interlaced format, meaning that each frame is seperated into two fields made up of the odd and even lines of the frame. With NTSC we have two choices. I have to choose interlaced or progressive.

So I have a multitude of choices to make. Do I convert from 1080i to 480p or 480i? Do I change the framerate first and then downconvert or the other way around? I also have to decide which piece of software to use during the conversions and which codecs to use. It is maddening to figure out which gives the best results. I will update when I have found the best workflow.

I'm Batman

I finally saw Batman last night. For some reason, it came out about 3 weeks later than it did in the states. This means that I spent the last 3 weeks carefully avoiding spoilers on the internet. I was fairly successful -- the only things I knew about ahead of time were "Why so serious?" and the slightly distracting voice Christian Bale used when he was Batman.

I have to say I was very impressed by the film. There were some moments where the entire audience gasped, which is a sign that a movie is doing something right. I also enjoyed how dense they made the Joker's personality. One of my problems with the Joker has always been believing he could actually find henchmen to work for his crazy ass. This film explained it in a truly plausible way.

There is a lot more I would like to talk about this movie, but since I spent the last three weeks avoiding spoilers, I probably shouldn't include spoilers on my blog.

Best Batman movie ever.

First Post!

I have attempted to start a blog before, but have never successfully kept posting. However, I recently decided that my personal website needed a makeover and thought that if I made a blog the centerpiece then I would be inclined to keep it updated. So here is the first of many posts to theautomaticfilmmaker.com