HV20 in Japan = better home videos

Just got back from 2 weeks in Japan. Did not have time to take my better equipment (without abandoning the family), so I took the basic Canon Rebel XT and the HV20.
Over 1200 pics and 2.5hrs of video later... I decided to share a couple of tiny snippets.

Trains - My kids had never seen a bullet train before.... and especially not at 155mph thru the station.

Kyoto testshot - Kyoto in the rain... geishas in the rain... testing Colorista and RE:Denoise in Autodesk Combustion.

** Sorry about the .wmv's ... not sure about the Mac crowd... I just know that, on my machines, I cannot get files these small, that look decent in .mov flavors.

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Lighting Director - VFX TD
vfx@matt.moses.name

Last edited by mmoses00 on Thu Apr 10, 2008 3:53 pm; edited 1 time in total

Hey Moses, welcome! Downloading now. Very Happy

Glad to hear you had a good trip.

Wow, nice color work on the Kyoto shot!

Kids love trains. And Japan is the coolest.

-Stu

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The DV Rebel's Guide

RE:Denoise is pretty cool. Never have I processed an image so much and had it come out better(Cleaner) than the original footage. It's like Windex and squeegee for HDV.. gets all the gook off.
One Note: It takes a long time to process footage.. not sure its practical for long form projects - but for short trailerb type stuff... pretty amazing what it does.

Caveat: If you are shooting actual rain..... it removes the rain!

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Lighting Director - VFX TD
vfx@matt.moses.name

Stu, thanks for the comments!

Kind of a hoopty workflow (all my fault).. for the Kyoto CC.

HV20 24F directly to CineformHD (CFHD) @ 23.97 flavor of 24P.
16bit comp in Combustion + Colorista, then RE:DeNoise set to High and had to do the pre-process contrast setting and post (de-contrast ) settings in that plugin.

Then, did a smart resize to 1280x720 with a Lanczos3 filtering algorithm (built-in Resize operator in Combustion has 8 filters of Resampling to choose from.. all about the same...Lanczos3 was the cleanest)

Then, actually added back in standard sharpening operator.... so it sharpened the HDV artifact cleaned footage, which looked too soft after DeNoise'ing and resizing.

Result is pretty clean for that frustrating consumer gizmo. (HV20)
My thumbwork on HV20 shots got pretty good after 10 days or so.... Cinemode...Exp control...let cam choose exp.. then manual and -1..to -2 stops down from that... then check snapshot for 24th or 48th shutter... turn polarizer for effect......zoom in....and...... shoot! AND every f#@king time..... Smile

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Lighting Director - VFX TD
vfx@matt.moses.name

Colorista works in Combustion?

-Stu

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I have After Effects..... but I have been using Combustion for years.... so I just plopped it in there.... seems to work....

Here is a H.264 of the Kyoto... Kyoto in the rain

I hate Gamma issues... I can never get it right it seems on PC's and Quicktime 7+.... so it appears washed out on my PC in Quicktime player.. and changing visual presentation to "Straight Alpha" helped a little... but not totally... This clip is deliberately rich blacks...
Then.. strangely.. Media Player Classic can play it properly.. and VLC player looks and plays the cleanest.

Whatever....

P.S. Thanks for the notes on Prolost about bringing back skin tones.... your pics of the vectorscope and samples were perfect learning tools!
Smile

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Lighting Director - VFX TD
vfx@matt.moses.name

Hey Moses, I DLed the files, I just have had time to watch yet. Been rendering for hours. RE: the washed out QTs, there is a thread in the Onlining section where solutions have been presented. I was/am having the same problem. Check it out.

Hi moses, nice work on the Kyoto clip - love the subtle colours. Did you put a slight blur vignette on that? Would be interesting to see a still from the original to compare.

Also, any mac users who want to play WMV can play them directly in quicktime with the Flip4Mac plugin. Playback functionality is free but you have to pay to export.

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http://www.robert-dee.com
http://www.englishmaninamsterdam.blogspot.com

Welcome! Good to see you here. Loved your clips. Kids and trains - great. Kyoto shot is wonderful. I love the kid with the red jacket shooting down the stairs. That flash of red makes it for me. Very cinematic.

RE:Denoise is a great tool. I've tried the rest and so far, that one's the best. Very impressive results.

Arthur

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Gage - THX... yeah .... thx for the advice.. For a lighter... gamma shifts absolutely kill the work.. I should understand how to deal with it by now..... I keep thinking someone on the delivery client side will know.... then... You see the thing air... and it sucks...

Robertdee - posted a screen grab before/after right............ here. On shorter cuts... time permitting.. a little custom masking and subtle blur gives the plate a faux DOF effect resembles "Vaseline" filter effect or bad lens vignetting. Or you could oput Vaseline on the lens! :0 - I am in no way am affiliated with the makers of Vaseline.

Art - How's it going? Nice to hear from you!.... Yeah.. spent time in a little historical revolutionary town called Hagi in southern Japan. I would love to do a documentary about that place and its impact on modern Japan... The movie The Last Samurai was really lame..... there was so many interesting things that happened around the time that movie is set.

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Lighting Director - VFX TD
vfx@matt.moses.name

Wow... the difference between before and after is really huge. I'm impressed by how much sharper you were able to make the image. Also, did you do anything special to make the color in the umbrellas and jacket really stand out, but keep the rest of the image desaturated (for example, the colors in the umbrellas and jacket got much brighter than the colors in the dresses).

Thanks!
~Mechis

Mechis,

I can thank Stu for pointing me in the right direction... both shooting.. and post... great tips.
save-our-skins

and

digital-cinema-dynamic-range

** On CC, Use your digital vectorscopes! They illustrate where your crazy color corrections are taking you.. and show where things need to be.
Vectorscopes can be turned on in AE, FC pro, Premiere, Sony Vegas, Combustion, etc. Stu's cool "cut to the chase" snippets are just the tricks you need.
When it comes to color, gamma, exposure, and handy shooting tips... I just try to do what he recommends... Smile

Your original footage should look pretty bland and slightly underexposed... trying to keep the most amount of dynamic range that an 8bit tinker toy can hold.
When I lifted the highlights (With Colorista )... I only need lift them from underexposed white (kinda gray looking) to ..just touching pure white... and the rest of the image comes up a little... and has room to be brought down to that Blue kinda punchy look in the shadows .. without affecting the highlights. That gets you a real blue cast across the image.. but skin tones can be retrieved.. to some extent...over in midtones and highlights. Its a kind of orange area in the highlights and midtones where the skin tones live.....and anything that contains red and yellow (like an umbrella or a jacket) will also receive a boost in saturation...
When your pallette in the scene has compelmentary colors carefully placed (think rule of thirds in regard to movement of color across the screen).. some magic can happen.. our eyes perceive depth on a 2D plane when complements get close to each other.... which is why red/yellow.. look very interesting crossing by a green/blue field. Yep.. break out the color wheel and enjoy. Smile

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Lighting Director - VFX TD
vfx@matt.moses.name

	Stu wrote:
	Colorista works in Combustion? -Stu

Combustion is compatible with most Photoshop and AE plugins.. I can't help but find this a little bit amusing though considering the source of this question Smile

I never imagined the custom UI would "just work" in Combustion. I don't think it was tested at all! Great news if it does!

-Stu

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