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March 29, 2005 Volume III, Issue 3
The
Right Way to Post in HD
I've shot two features
now on the Sony HD camera. Four years ago, when I shot
the first one, everyone was trying to figure out how
to work with such high-resolution images without running
up a huge tab with post houses.
The cumbersome work-flow
four years ago went like this:
First, as a duplication
house made clones of the raw HD masters (I always make
clones for backup) they also, for a nominal charge,
ran off mini-DV copies. I then captured the mini-DV
tapes onto a PC running Adobe Premiere and edited the
low-res, mini-DV images. (It's necessary to down-res
the raw HD masters because the data requirements of
HD are too burdensome for any home computer). The problem
with this is that when I shot the footage on HD, I did
so at 23.98 frames per second (the same frame rate as
film) while the mini-DVs were recorded, of course, at
30 frames per second. Now, while 23.98 is the ideal
speed to get a "film look" and to maximize
the quality of your images if you blow your project
up to 35 mm film, it was not the ideal frame rate to
work on in your offline edit.
Why? Because after
you edited at 30 fps, you eventually had to convert
back to the high-resolution, 23.98 HD images to maximize
your quality. Doing so was, to say the least, a pain
in the neck. There were basically two options - you
exported an EDL (edit decision list), which the online
house (which puts together your HD Master Tape) was
then generally unable to use because of formatting issues.
Or, you gave them a VHS copy of your final film (at
30 fps) and they manually created an online master from
your HD raw tapes by eyeballing your edits. A slow,
expensive and inaccurate way to post a film.
Four years later,
most of the indie world that shoots in 23.98 HD still
works pretty much this same way. But there is a better
method, and I'm doing it literally as I write this article.
Shoot your HDs in
23.98, just as I did four years ago. Then, buy or rent
one of the HD capture cards (like Kona) and plug it
into your MAC G5. Next, rent an HD deck for a few days
(or two decks and make HD clones as well) and capture
the HD raw footage onto your G5 at 23.98 NTSC. That's
right, 23.98 NTSC. It exists, in fact I have it working
on my G5 now. The beauty of this is that you never leave
the 23.98 frame rate, since you capture your low-res
images at this frame rate and since Final Cut Pro can
now handle the 23.98 frame rate in editing.
When you have the
film edited just how you want, onlining is relatively
fast, cheap and accurate. You can, for those who are
technological wizards, rent a player/recorder HD deck,
plug it back into the Kona card and create a master
in an at-home, online edit. Or, for those less technologically
inclined, you can take your Final Cut timeline to an
online house and they can make a perfect, online master
of your cut without ever having to worry about EDLs
or different frame rate conversions or manually creating
the edits or any of that. Your online master is an exact,
hi-res duplicate of your low-res edit. THE END
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