Post Production 911

Following is an actual email thread from one of our contacts who is mac-based.

Dear Kirk at BetaSPtoDVDcom,

Does final cut pro or final cut studio output to flash format for the web?

I have a client who wants a promo video to do double duty--display on the
web AND to play on DVD at trade shows and such.

But since I have yet to get the software, I thought you may know--maybe even
point me to pro vs. studio--vice versa--or even another video editing
solution.

I'm simply not happy with the image quality of iMovie.  I'm guessing the
slicker programs will produce TV-quality images.

Also, is it possible to grab footage from DVD movies and use them in Final
Cut?  Y'know--grab some war footage from Saving Private Ryan, or something?
Or a full moon shot from a Werewolf movie?

S'all fer now.  Enjoy the rest of the weekend.

Joe

___________

Hi Joe,
First of all, iMovie is TOTALLY broadcast quality. If you are not
getting great quality, then you either have low resolution source
footage, have an old version of iMovie, or have are using some incorrect
settings. In fact, iMovie even supports HD!!! So I wouldn't spend the
money for Final Cut solely based on the broadcast quality issue.

Final Cut can make .FLC files, but it is not great at it and the files
are usually bigger than they should be. For making Flash files, I sometimes use a
program called Sorensen Squeeze and it works pretty well.

As for ripping footage from a copy protected DVD, you are going to need
a DEMUXING program. Then you are going to need
a DVD ripping program like Cinamatize.
Cinematize is a great tool and we use it all the time. It can rip any DVD that is
not copy protected. If the DVD is copy protected, then you have to start
with the aforementioned demuxing application.

The other way is to do it analog style. Just patch cables from the dvd
player though a professional video deck or TBC (timebase corrector).
Those will strip off the copy protection in real time.

One word of caution though... we do not advocate using any copy-protected material unless you are legally allowed to do so!!

On the issue of Final Cut Studio vs. Final Cut Express, I would go Final
Cut Express.  The Final Cut Studio has tons of stuff you will never use
like heavy-duty motion graphics and pro sound editing. The learning curve
on those tools is huge.

Anyway,  hope I helped a little.

Kirk

I don’t know what it is about the universe, but somehow, we have been getting a lot of questions about Mini-DVDs these days. Perhaps the camcorders that made them have died and there is a desperation to save the material on these discs before their material is lost forever to the dreaded “incompatible format” message.

So what do you do with those little discs and how the hell do you get the material off of them safely?

Alright. It’s not as hard as it seems. There are two ways to do it…and one way to definitely NOT do it.

First of all, if you have a side-loading iMac, do not insert the mini-DVD into the CD slot or your computer (errr… and your life) will be seriously hosed. Instead, you’re going to need an external DVD drive that sits flat on the desk. Also, that drive must have the Mini-DVD imprint cut out in the tray to accommodate the small disc.

Then, stick the disc in the external drive. Once it loads, copy the entire disc to a folder on your computer. Eject the disc.

Next, open your burning software and burn all the contents of the folder to a new disc as a data dvd, not a playable DVD. This will include the VOB files. Burn the disc and you’re all done. Even the menus are copied and the disc will play perfectly on any DVD player if you use DVD-R media.

The second way to transfer the mini-disc to a standard DVD-R is to play the disc in a DVD player or camcorder that accommodates the format. Take the analog wires from the DVD player “Out” connectors and send it to a DVD-R recorder. Make sure to set your source DVD player as “play continuously through chapter stops,” or something that sounds like that. Then hit record on your DVD recorder and the video will copy. The only problem is, the menus won’t copy, but at least the video content will be preserved.

Finally, don’t buy into newfangled technology that is unproven in the marketplace for less than a year and a half. Seriously! People clamored for those adorable little mini DVDs the second they hit the shelves in stores without thinking of the fact that the format is inferior, holds insufficient amounts of video, overly compresses the footage, is next to impossible to playback on any other video or computer machine, and easily scratches and jams.

By the way, those discs are a freaking blast for teenagers to have “frisbee” fights with!

HDCAM SR leaves Pamela Anderson’s sex tape in the dust.

Just like the great format wars, Beta vs. VHS and Blu-Ray vs.  HD DVD, another video format has finally pushed its last pixel. Yes, the popular professional tape format D5 has finally been relegated to the digital wasteland of yore like its brethren, the Jazz Drive, Digital 8, and of course, its dark father, D2.

The giant studios like Universal and Disney have onlined many a show on the robust digital format of D5. But now, the majors have fallen in love with HDCAM SR, sexy young digital powerhouse of a tape format. This baby has 4K of the richest digital picture imaginable, and delivers full 4:4:4 at 440 Mbps. Yeah, this baby knows she’s hot.

Supporting 23.98/24/25/29.97/ 30PsF, 1080/50i/59.94/60i, and 720/59.94P, HDCAM SR was created to meet all common worldwide delivery requirements. It’s support the gamut of HD frame/line rates in both 4:4:4 and 4:2:2 formats using the highly efficient MPEG-4 Studio Profile compression scheme. The format supports 10 bit Log or linear, at 2.7:1 compression ratio in 4:2:2, and 4.2:1 compression ratio for 4:4:4. It can also run 12 channels of audio at 24-bit per sample resolution.  So yeah, this baby is about as sexy as they come.

But nobody said it’s cheap.  In fact, it’s painfully expensive and the studios are going to let years of  television disappear into the past without being archived on the HDCAM SR format because it is cost prohibitive unless the show was a hit.

So if you still have a couple  favorite shows on VHS tapes you recorded back in the day via your rabbit ears (also a relic of the past), you better transfer them to DVD yourself because that’s the best quality you will likely ever see again. But boy, that HDCAM SR is pretty damn sexy.

- Kirk

There are so many codecs for digital movies out there that is becomes really confusing when you are trying to make a small file to place on Youtube, an ftp site or to email to everyone in your address book.  By the way, a codec is the formula used to compress and decompress a digital movie.  For example, you can compress your video clip using H263, H264, Animation, Sorensen, Cinepak, Animated GIF, DV, DV  Stream, MPEG-4, MPEG-2, M4V, FLC, SWF, and on and on.

You could literally test and play with settings and parameters for days and you will eventually drive yourself crazy trying to get the perfect file that is small enough to email but vivid and snappy enough to get you the recognition and accolades you deserve.

Here’s a fool proof, easy way to do it…

Buy Apple’s Quicktime Pro application for  around $40 bucks. Then open your big, uncompressed monster of a movie file, then say “EXPORT” in Quicktime Pro and choose “FOR iPOD.”

That’s it. Your file will be tiny and look amazing. Even though you ended up with merely an .M4V file that you could have done that yourself, you would never be able to compete with the genius eggheads at Apple who have spent hundreds of hours in R&D to have the perfect codec settings!

This is also a great file to upload to YouTube. Their upload robot LOVES this file. However, if you want to make it absolutely perfect for YouTube, you should create your original big file at 400×300 pixels, because otherwise YouTube will scale your file and cause it to lose some resolution. I understand that 400×300 is a non-standard aspect ration in computer land, but that’s what YouTube is, so you might as well create your original file that size. Be sure to make the file with those dimensions PRIOR to crunching down with the “EXPORT TO iPOD.”

-Kirk

Macrovision is a piracy protection system that darkens the video image if it is copied from a standard DVD player.

First off, this is NOT a subversive message to coax anyone to break the law. However, there are plenty of times when it is vital to a project to use “copyrighted” material ripped from a commercially sold DVD. Some examples of when this is important are:

1)    You acted or were crew in a particular film and wish to present a clip of your scene in a montage of  your demo reel.

2)    You are making a “rip-o-matic.”  That’s when, as a filmmaker, you create a fictitious preview trailer using clips and footage from a variety of different movies, since your film is not shot yet. This is useful to use as presentation tool to potential investors. Of course you can never broadcast, sell, or otherwise exploit the original material. The rip-o-matic is also useful for creating a living storyboard from which you can plan shots for your own movie in the style of the original.

3)    You want to use footage in a montage at a wedding or other family occasion. For example, you may want to have famous love scenes (Casablanca, etc.) edited together with your own voices dubbed in for a spoof at your wedding reception.

4)    You may want to digitize the footage into your own edit system so you can practice graphics and editing.

There are probably hundreds of other non-commercial uses where you may need to rip a commercial DVD. Of course, I’m not a lawyer and do not advocate breaking any laws whatsoever, but if you really want that footage without the Macrovision (and if it is legal), all ya gotta do is run it through a time-base corrector. Don’t have one? Many professional video decks have built-in TBCs. Just play your DVD and run the signal through a pro deck or TBC and you’re off to the races.

-Kirk

Yeah, this is something that comes up once in a while with us. Producers or editors send us a hard drive to which we are to transfer their master videotapes as Quicktime movies.

But when we ship back the drive with the new Quicktimes (.MOV files), they can’t open it on their PC. Then the dialogue goes like this:

____

BETASP TO DVD.COM

But you told us you wanted to use the files on a mac for Final Cut Pro?

PRODUCER

Right, but we also need the files to work on a PC so our client can use them.

BETASP TO DVD.COM

Oh, in that case… You’re screwed sucka! Just kiddin’ ya. Let’s say you have a 25 GB file that you want to put on a hard drive for cross-platform viewing.  There is no easy and free way to do that unless you by software called MacDrive to install on your PC.

PRODUCER

But…. But… But…

BETASP TO DVD.COM

No buts. Let me break it down for you:

Hard drives need to be formatted as either Mac OS Extended, FAT32, or NTFS.

OS Extended holds unlimited file sizes on Mac, so that’s cool if you want to use the files on an Apple machine.

FAT32 works on both platforms perfectly. But guess what? FAT32 has a file size limit of 4 GBs!  Jeeze. That’s not even big enough to hold an hour of video. Ridiculous!! Further more, FAT32 has a maximum partition size of 32 GBs.

PRODUCER

What??!! Are you kidding me?!

BETASP TO DVD.COM

Yeah, that’s pretty damn lame, considering your iPod can hold more than that! 32 GBs is so 1994!

NTFS formatted discs, on the other hand, are capable of holding terabytes of info in one folder. But watch out, that format only works for PCs.

PRODUCER

So what am I supposed to do with big files that need to play on both PC and MAC?

BETASP TO DVD.COM

Okay. Here are the solutions to choose from:]

1)    Break your files into small junks of only 4 GBs or less and use the FAT32 format.

OR

2) Buy software such as MacDrive for your PC

OR

3) Transfer your large files onto one disc formatted with MAC OS Extended, and another disc formatted with NTFS.

OR

4) Scrap the whole idea and go surfing here.

- Kirk

Okay, so you spend three months onlining and color correcting your film. It looks stunning and projects like a Technicolor masterpiece.  Excited to show your friends and reach a wider audience, you decide to stick the project or its trailer on Youtube. And of course, it instantly looks like dog meat: blocky, faded, desaturated and worst of all, it actually skips frames and looks out of sync. Dang it! 

So you in the Youtube film requirements. But when you upload it again, it still looks barfy.

And it will always look barfy because Youtube RECOMPRESSES every single film using very loose setting for Flash video. It needs to make it look cruddy because they need small files that take up small bandwidth since so many people upload shots of their cat looking out the window.

Bottom line: If your content ROCKS, then it will be giant on Youtube. If your content is dependent on pristine color correction and the ideal image, then I’m afraid your film is going to look like dog meat and nothing more.

Shoot for content and story and the world is your oyster.

- kirk

Here’s something we encounter all the time, a major client with an insane deadline sends us a precious file of their motion picture to be laid off to BetaSP or Digibeta for use in a critical film festival screening where the audience includes top studio scouts and distributors.

At the screening, the lights dim, the projector fires up, and the film hits the silver screen with all its glory and charm. The distribution execs are cracking up at every joke and displaying the perfect body posture for the dramatic parts. The screening is going to be a hit… until… OH MY GOD! THERE’S SCRATCH DIALOGUE COMING FROM THE CHARACTERS’ MOUTHS! AND, WHERE DID THE MUSIC GO IN THAT SCENE? AAAAAK! A TEMP TITLE CARD THAT SAYS “SCENE MISSING”!

Poooof. There goes the distribution deal. There goes my life!! Anyone need a bartender out there?

But how could this have happened? The file was proofed and re-proofed and watched by several people. The film was perfect back in the online bay. And the file that was transferred for the screening was called “LOST IN PARADISE NEW FINAL VERSION REVISED”.

And therein lies the problem: The file name. The wrong file was used to make the transfer.

This is a dramatic illustration of the consequences of naming files without the use of a clear emnaming convention.

I don’t understand why so many actual professionals name there files things like:

My_Film_New_Master.mov
My_Film_New_New_Master.mov
My_Film_New_New_Final_Master.mov
My_Film_New_New_Final_Master_for_Sundance.mov
My_Film_New_New_Final_Master_for_Sundance2.mov
My_Film_New_New_Final_Master_for_Sundance2_Revised.mov
My_Film_New_New_Final_Master_for_Sundance2_Revised2.mov
My_Film_New_New_Final_Master_for_Sundance2_Corrected.mov
My_Film_New_New_Final_Master_for_Sundance2_Corrected_Final.mov

Now when there are a bunch of discs floating around the office with various versions of these “FINAL” masters, it is really easy to see how things could go terribly wrong at the dub house when the incorrect file shows up for transfer.

For that matter, with everyone working from servers and hard drives all over the world, it’s super easy to see that a mis-named file in a folder could be mistaken for the correct one. In fact, people accidentally delete critical files all the time on their very own computer for this exact same reason.

So the trick is, ALWAYS NAME EVERY SINGLE FILE WITH A VALID NAME. Here are some excellent ideas to include in your name:

1) The date the file was made. THIS IS ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL! If there is no other info in the file name, you must use a DATE. With the real date in the file name, it is almost impossible to grab the wrong one since an actual date is so easily cross-referenced by invoices, production schedules, and other records of processes. Also, make the date read in reverse European-style syntax: YEAR/MONTH/DAY/TIME (military). That way, the date will always sort in perfect order and it will be crystal clear which file is the latest one.

Example: 2008_12_31_1325

2) The project name or abbreviation. “Lost in Paradise” becomes ”LIP”.

3) The status of the project, such as “RuffCut_No_Music” or “ColorCorrected_Master”

So your wonderful new, final, final, really truly master corrected revised file will end up looking like this:

2008_12_31_1325_LIP_FOR_SLAMDANCE.mov

Ain’t it a a beautiful thing? And if that file name is too long for a given purpose, you can still get by with:

2008_12_31_LIP.mov

God, that’s clean. MMMMMmmm. It’s delicious to behold and to archive. Oh, and by the way, you will be able to actually keep your job if you name files like this.

Kirk

We transferred some footage recently from Hi-8. Actually, I’m guessing the “master” was actually a sub-master from another Hi-8… or worse… (please don’t say it) a VHS master! The footage was absolutely loaded with blurry video noise. It was really important footage for an educational project and the footage was in really bad shape.

Then the thought dawned on me that our culture is losing so many valuable tapes everyday due to video disintegration and poor storage.

Back in 1980’s, movie film ended it’s century long reign as the archiving/mastering format of choice. Producers and studio vice presidents decided that video was here to stay (not to mention 10 times cheaper) and hundreds of thousands of television programs were mastered on 1″ reel-to-reel tape. Often times, the original film negatives were literally tossed in the trash to make room on the vault shelves for the shiny new videotape masters. Giant post houses across Hollywood were churning out telecine film transfers to tape at a break-neck pace.  And the footage actually looked amazing. Plus it was so fun and easy to manipulate, adding color saturation and playing with contrast and compositing all with a couple keystrokes on a computer.

Cut to 25 years later. Every time we transfer one of those 1″ masters to a current format, it makes me almost want to cry because the image has become so soft and noisy.  People worked so hard to make the original program, and much of this footage is valuable to our cultural history and entertainment. But the beautiful 1″ tapes just didn’t hold up to the test of time. It’s like a kind of extinction, the extinction of a whole era of visual gems.

So maybe I wasn’t so surprised to see the hi-8 footage also looking so badly after all these years.  But it makes me wonder if we are on the right course with all this digital media and everything on hard drives. Consider an event like Hurricane Katrina. If your masters were there on a hard drive and flooded with water, that would be that. However, if it were backed up on film, it could be salvageable.

The loss of this part of our culture really strikes a sad chord with me.  One of my favorite documentaries of all time “One Foot”, a 1979 PBS program produced by San Francisco’s KQED is gone forever. Nobody can every see it. That’s that.

Moral of the story… it makes a lot of sense to have redundant masters in different formats and locations. In other words, store a set of important masters in your mom’s attic and another entirely different format in your own closet.

These days it’s easy to get your films shown to millions thanks to YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Atom Films, and all the other social networking sites out there. But if you want a distributor and want to actually make money from your films, that is an entirely different matter.  Now it’s time to take control of your project’s destiny and self-distribute. If you believe in your show and feel that it has a potential paying audience, you owe it to yourself and your beloved project to post it online as a downloadable quicktime movie or iPod-ready film.  Just compress it down using Quicktime Pro, Final Cut Pro, Compressor, or whatever.  Next build a website to market your film. Finally, post the file at e-junkie.com and let them handle the shopping cart and all the download security for a few bucks a month. It’s an amazing service. You keep your own website and just stick a button on there that says “Purchase Download Now” and e-Junkie handles the rest. You don’t need a major $75/month shopping cart to handle your digital downloads. E-Junkie works perfectly and is affordable enough for a student to use.  You can even put any other digital file on there for sale such as .mp3’s, PDFs, etc.  For that matter, just sell your Grandma’s recipes on there to finance your next movie. Kirk 

Yikes! We’re getting more and more of these crazy PAL dailies! It’s perfectly fine to shoot in PAL and convert to NTSC. No biggie. But PLEASE DON’T DO IT WITH YOUR DAILIES.

Just shoot in the format you intend on finishing in. Really! The cost and headaches of making a primo standards conversion are extremely  high, so doing it with ALL the footage of the dailies (sometimes a 30 to 1 ratio) is about as fun as hitting yourself with a sledge hammer.

The best choice is to finish your film in the original format, THEN do the standards conversion with the final cut material.  That way, every shot can look its best and real attention can be given to the problem areas. Producers will appreciate saving major budget money on only converting shots that will actually end up in the picture.

If you are stuck with doing the conversion from the foreign dailies, then please pay for the editor do a rough cut assemblage in the PAL format (it could be done on a laptop at low rez) in order to make a culled down batch of footage. So instead of a 30 to 1 ratio, maybe it’s trimmed down to about 5 to 1.  Otherwise, do you really want to be paying all this money and time in order to convert the standards for shots like false starts, slates, stupid flubs, camera problems, etc.?

It’s a village. The world is now a village and videotapes and files are flying all over the place via Fedex, CD, FTP, or good old fashioned sneaker-ware (files on a hard drive that are hand-carried to another user).  Years ago, the world adopted its video standards. The world went with PAL and the United States went with NTSC (Never The Same Color). Oh, and the French, had their own standard (SECAM) which was superior to both PAL and NTSC, but has since all but evaporated in the face of it’s heavy-weight brothers. And speaking of brothers, NTSC and PAL are kind of like Abel and Kane.  But unfortunately, since we are now a global village, the two brothers have to co-exist frequently in the land of video. Here’s the deal… NTSC runs at 29.97  frames per second.  PAL runs at 25 frames per second. Many novice editors think that they can merely change the frame  rate and that’s that. Well, it’s not!Let’s say some American dude is sent a commercial from England, Great Britain, the U.K. or whatever you call that place across the pond.  Okay, the American dude (that’s “bloke” to you British) take the quicktime movie and simply changes the frame rate to make the conversion. But guess what? The result is terrible-looking video that stutters and feels jerky. Oh, and it looks a little fuzzy too. The jerkiness is due to the fact that the frames were added blindly across the entire clip.  So anytime there is fast action or panning scenes, the clip seems to stutter. See, the frame rate is only one part of the equation. The placement of the frames requires an elaborate mathematical process to figure out EXACTLY which frames need to be duplicated.  Also,  the PAL image even has different dimensions  and color  space. All that stuff needs to be translated. Basically, you need to use hardware or software that is specifically designed to make a PAL to NTSC conversion. And guess what? You are going to pay for that.  The  hardware solutions are very pricey. And software, such as Final Cut Pro or Nattress are very powerful, but outrageously and unbelievably SLOW! So, at full quality, a render of a 1 hour clip could tie up your computer for many days. Really. It can really take days and days on an ordinary consumer computer built in 2007.  My vote would be to pay for the hardware. Basically, the more you pay, the better the translation between formats. This is a case where you really get what you pay for and vice versa.  Another idea is to buy a computer that is scant on features and full of computing power (forget the built-in DVD burner and fancy video card) and make yourself a little rendering station. Then set up the render and get on with your life on your main computer.Sorry, but these two brothers are just not going to get along on their own. 

Wow! Life is good when you’re in love. And I’m really in love… with my machines, that is. Two of my Sony videotape machines are so sexy! Not only are they ultra-easy use, but they leave me awe-struck by the huge number of formats they play!! For example, our Sony J30 SDI decks are wildly diverse. The one J30 can play all these formats:

DigiBeta - Large Cassettes
DigiBeta - Small CassettesBetaCam SP - Large Cassettes

BetaCam SP - Small Cassettes

BetaCam SX - Large Cassettes
BetaCam SX - Small Cassettes

And that’s just the formats. Then it has connectors for firewire, SDI, composite, and s-video. See what I mean about “sexy.”

Now it’s way past the “honeymoon” stage and I am still completely enamored by this machine. And when I plug the deck’s firewire into my Final Cut Pro, the stars align and it’s absolutely glorious! They always say the best relationships are the ones that are easy!

But actually, I’m in love with another deck at the same time. Even though I’m not in Salt Lake City, Hollywood accepts me being in love with two machines at once.

My Sony HVRM15U Deck is another piece of perfection. That one single deck handles all these formats:

HDV - small cassettes

HDV - Large cassettes

DVCAM NTSC - small cassettes

DVCAM NTSC - Large cassettes

DVCAM PAL - small cassettes

DVCAM PAL - Large cassettes

MiniDV NTSC

MiniDV PAL

16×9 Anamorphic

LetterBox

4×3

Now that’s a lot of versatility in a single machine. Seriously, it turns out that these two machines handle more that a dozen formats between the two of them. With all these formats going in and out of fashion, it’s so wonderful to be in a stable relationship that has the versatility to cope with a lot of difficult situations.

Moral of the story: True love means having a relationship with a deck that understands your needs.

kirk

We often run into people with Resolutionitis. It’s a disease that makes filmmakers think they must have the absolute highest resolution and quality no matter what. But they forget that content is king. If you ain’t got a compelling story, you ain’t got a film worthy of resolution.

Just the other day, a client came to me asking if we should transfer his footage to HDV or HDCAM. Ummm, sorry, but you’re just wasting your money. You could transfer it to VHS from the 1980’s and it would still get just as limp of an emotional response from the audience.

When filmmakers are new to the process or overly in love with their project, Resolutionitis is almost blinding every bit of common sense they every had. The filmmaker will charge up credit cards, call in all of Daddy’s favors at once, and even mortgage a house in order to get the clearest, sharpest picture available! Nevermind that the acting really stinks… because the writing is pedestrian. Nevermind that the story is a jumbled mess and then the production was shotty (due to not paying for a professional crew).

Films on YouTube can have tens of millions of views and launch entire careers, even though the video quality looks like 1969 Moon Landing footage. Speaking of which, the moon landing was one of the most memorable television moments in all of television. Even almost 40 years later, it’s still holds up as about the most emotionally charged footage a camera has every produced. It looked like pure crap: fuzzy, contrasty, poorly lighted (fire the moon as gaffer). But it was the content that kicked all our emotional butts. Since Neil Armstrong took a giant step for television, the media has been repleat with gigantically successful, but terrible-looking, mega-hits.

Remember the “Blair Witch Project?” That film was shot on crappy Hi-8 video and it still grossed tens of millions! Content is king. The TV show COPS has become television juggernaut, using a dash-mounted consumer camera with a plastic lens and no image stabilization. But damn, is it compelling. The examples go on and on. Content is king. Don’t put your house on the auction block just because you need to see your film in its perfect state of flawless resolution.

And if you’re really in love with your film, send the rough cut to a distributor and see if they are completely blown away by your movie. If not, I wouldn’t spend a giant wad on post production. If the distributor’s socks are knocked off, then THEY will gladly pay for more resolution than the filmmaker could every afford on their own. Case in point is the film El Mariachi, which supposedly cost $8,000 until the studio went bonkers for it and threw a million dollars into the sound production in post. Good movies are good movies regardless of the resolution.

Hey,

Do you have Quicktime movie clips on your website that were shot in 16×9? Guess what, you can save 1/3 of your bandwidth by excluding the (4×3) black letterbox from your Quicktime Movie. Just crop into your Quicktime Movie using After Effects, Quicktime Pro, or similar software and recompress your film without the lame black space that does nothing for your movie except choke the download speed and use up valuable hard drive space. Not only that, but a 16×9 movie looks so much more professional when it is at the right shape and doesn’t have the black bars junking up the composition. And if you think that looks cool, do the same thing with your 1.85 or Panavision Quicktime movies. Welcome to Hollywood, baby!

kirk

If you don’t know what the “A” frame is, then skip this post because it is way too esoteric.
However, if you’re an editor and trying desperately to digitize an HD tape or film transfer that has been down-converted to a digibeta, there are a couple ways to find the A-frame:

1) Digitize the footage with a particular starting timecode. Then check to see if the material looks wonky in the editing system (like an Avid). If it looks wonky, start your TC In Point one frame later and try again. Do this about 6 times and you will find the A frame.

2) Or, use the magic 9 trick. Start with any tc number you want as long as the non-drop frame TC ends in “09.” So like 01:00:12:09 would be a perfect place to start your digitizing. You will ALWAYS hit the A frame everytime. Why is that? I always stunk at math, but I just know it works like a charm.

This post may seem really lame or rudimentary, but I gotta tell ya… some people just don’t know how to trouble-shoot. Over my years in post production I’ve seen so many editors and other crafts people who can’t seem to trouble-shoot even the most basic problems.

When computer tech support facilities get a call from a consumer having a computer, the first question the tech wants to know is: “Is your computer plugged in?”

Some people are insulted by this elementary question, but 20 percent of the time, that is the ACTUAL problem!! Can you believe it?

But it’s a great illustration of how so many people don’t do even the most basic trouble-shooting.

So whether you are having computer problems, video equipment issues, or whatever, here are the big questions to ask in order to locate the trouble:

1) Has the unit ever worked before?
2) Does the unit function as a result of some other process?
3) Is that “other process” functioning?
4) If the unit is swapped out, does the replacement unit work?

Okay, now let’s take this into a practical situation.

The lamp in my living room doesn’t seem to work. Time to trouble-shoot it.

1) Has this lamp ever worked before? YES

2) Is there another lamp that is currently working and available to swap it out for a test? YES

3) When the lamp is swapped out, does the replacement work? NO

4) Ah ha! This tells us the outlet is dead, right? MAYBE

6) Are there any wall switches associate with this outlet? YES

7) When you flip the switch(s), does the replacement light work in the “bad” outlet? NO

Hmm. Must be the circuit breaker. Has the cicuit breaker been tripped? YES

9) After re-setting the circuit breaker, does the replacement light work? YES

10) Cool, now we’re getting somewhere! Now we swap back to the “bad” lamp. Does it work in that outlet now? NO

11) Okay, now we know either the lightbulb is dead or the lamp is broken. So when we switch the lightbulb over to the working lamp, does it light up? YES

12) Bingo! The original lamp must be broken. When we put the good lightbulb in the bad lamp, does it light up? YES

13) Yes?? What the heck is going on here? Both bulbs work in both lamps.

CONCLUSION… The original bulb wasn’t screwed in all the way. Good thing you didn’t throw that bulb or lamp in the trash! Good thing you didn’t call an electrician either!

kirk

We get a lot of calls from filmmakers wanting to submit their film to a tv station or film festival on BetaSP. This work-horse professional tape format is also known as Betacam SP. It’s the analogue little brother to DigiBeta.

Unfortunately, BetaSP has a maximum running time of 90 minutes. Maybe 92 if the tape has been over-spooled at the factory. But basically, most feature films won’t fit on a single BetaSP videocassette.

The solutions to the problem can be…

1) See if you can deliver on another, longer-running, more expensive tape format such as digibeta or DVCAM.

2) Split your show into two reels (old school though it may sound) and have the tv engineer or the festival projectionist tie them together. Sometimes this is done live, and so you will need to provide the exact timecode of the change-over. The projectionist will probably have two decks and slave the timecodes together for a seamless transistion. The tv station engineer will probably dump the movie to a hard drive and tie the two reels together electronically.

3) See if they’ll allow you to send a hard drive with a GIANT quicktime movie on it.

4) Make a shorter film. Trust me, I’m a professional editor and I can take a three hour movie and make it rock at 90 mins. So you can certainly cut down your 102 minute film to 90 mins. Just take the best, most killer stuff and leave the rest on the cutting room floor. You’d be amazed how little you miss that extra footage!

And by the way, not to just rant here, but I can’t stand when directors make a movie longer than 2 hours. C’mon people! It ain’t that precious. Audiences lose patience and have a limited attention span. Plus, the babysitter costs a hell of a lot more. Oh, and the parking, too. Why is it that cinematic films have always been shorter than 2 1/2 hours? “Wizard of Oz” is 101 minutes. “Citizen Kane” is 119 minutes. “Star Wars” is 121 minutes. “Jaws”, 124. So what changed everything in the 1990’s? For crying out loud, some people gotta pee.

Clever gadgets are fun to play with but not to record your important family events. In fact, just don’t use them. Seriously.

These are the type of cameras we’re talking about here:

Sony DCM-M1, Sony Handycam DCR-DVD108 DVD, Samsung SC-DC164, Canon DC-100, Canon DC-20, etc.

The problem with mini DVD camcorders:

1) The DVDs are very incompatible with many computer DVD trays.
2) A simple scratch when handling the disc and your memories are hosed forever. Look out, it’s a toddler with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich!!
3) They usually only hold a miniscule 10 minutes of recording time at best quality! Ten minutes!!
4) Once finalized, the discs are done for. You can’t re-record over them like you can standard videotape.
5) The discs are expensive.
6) Special “ripping” software is usually required to edit the material on the discs.
7) There is substantial compression used on the image. If you try to project it for an audience on a big screen or do any kind of video compositing, the footage is going to have tons of really unpleasing artifacts.
They are really hard to clone for friends and relatives due to the compatibility issues.
9) People try to stick them in sideloading CD slots on computers it jams in there, resulting in repair fees and/or downtime.
10) Watch out for that toddler with the peanut butter sandwich… Oh my God!! he’s grabbing the disc off the table.

Yeah, this format wasn’t the greatest idea of gadgets. Please copy your material ASAP to a different format and dump that camcorder as fast as you can.

By the way, a good way to copy the disc to a better format is to use the factory-provided wire and connect it to a MiniDV camcorder or a standard DVD recorder.

kirk

A great number of our clients want to edit at home or the office but their origina masters are on a professional videotape format such as BetaSp, Digital Betacam, 1″, 3/4″, or DVCAM. The clients usually request that we (www.betasptodvd.com) transfer their masters to DVD for later importing and editing in Final Cut Pro, Avid, Vegas, or Premiere.

Don’t transfer to DVD for editing!! There is far too much video compression. Not only that, but the material has to be “ripped” off the DVD prior to being editable. This ripping, especially on longer videos, can have a sync drift between the audio and video. There are also other artifacts that can pop up depending on the method of ripping used.

Additionally, a DVD makes a terrible archive for this purpose. We can assume that the original professional tape format of the master is fading out of its technicalogical lifespan. While it’s a good idea to archive them, DVDs are not a great format for archiving of professional material. DVDs are suseptable to scratches, warping, and being technologically outdated over time.

We always suggeset transferring to MiniDV tape standard defition editing and archiving. MiniDV tape is very robust as a format. Many people consider the image to be of poor quality these days, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. MiniDV looks pretty bad when shot is someone’s camcorder with poor lighting and a cheap lens. But when you transfer to MiniDV directly from a professional source, MiniDV looks absolutely phenominal. That’s because it is all digital and encoded in good old 1’s and 0’s. we have done blind testing where we show people MiniDV footage and Digibeta footage and nobody can discern the difference. They can’t tell which was played back from which!

The MiniDV tapes are very small, easy to store, and deliver a crisp and vivid image.

It’s such a great format that HDV (the first format for consumer high defintion video) is based on the MiniDV tape.

IMPORT USING A CAMCORDER AND FIREWIRE OR A BASIC DV CABLE!

The tapes import for editing with any standard MiniDV camcorder using the firewire or DV cable that comes with the camera.

Plus, the MiniDV camcorder is the most ubiquitious camcorder ever made. It’s everywhere. So if you don’t have one, call up your neighbor and ask to borrow the camcorder so you can digitize your footage into your editing system. It’s really easy!

Here’s the deal…

The discs you rent from NetFlix or BlockBuster are recorded on a DVD that holds 9 gigs on two layers. A DVD-R that you record on your computer at home is about half the size and usually only records on one layer. Many computer burners can burn dual-layer these days, but the discs are much more sensitive to scratches and dirt than commercially produced DVDs. That’s because the commercial DVDs are pressed from a glass master and literally stamp the image into the DVD instead of trying to “burn” it. In addtion, “Hollywood” discs are burned from the absolute very best possible master and all the compression is done by really experienced professionals.

Dual Layer DVDs that you make at home are also not very compatible with the various consumer DVD players that are out there. Most times it costs about $1000 minimum to create a glass master of a DVD. Sorry, but you just gotta compress your video a lot more in order to fit it on one disc and expect broad compatibility.

Kirk

That’s right. If you’re a kid with a $99 still camera (or a grown-up who’s damn creative), you can make movies that compete with Hollywood!
It’s not just a still camera any more. It’s a frame by frame high definition movie camera.

Take your dad’s high-def still camera and a lot of brain power and go out there and make a feature film. All you gotta do is have a killer story that is really engaging and a lot of imagination and shoot your film one frame at a time. Make sure that the resolution is never less than 1920×1080 pixels and you have high def. Just make sure that throughout the process, no matter what software you use, that you never blow up your image. It’s okay to crop down to 1920×1080 pixels if you shot bigger than that, but just don’t crop into the 1920×1080.

It’s awesome for post production effects and color correction because the resolution is so high.

The film can be pixelization, creative story-telling, claymation, stop-motion, or whatever you can dream up. It would really lend itself well to the horror genre too.

Okay, so maybe this technique is not just for kids, but it does take someone equally free-thinking!

The whole aspect ratio thing is way too big to tackle in a single post here, so let me break it down for you to give you (almost) all you need to know.

There are different screen shapes like 1.78 (16×9), 1.33 (4×3 - also called “academy”), 1.85 (the shape of normal theatrical movies), 2.35 (the shape of Panavision movies), and on and on. In fact, when Edison invented motion picture film, he experimented with all kinds of different shapes to see which was the most useful and pleasing. Other folks even toyed with round screens. Whatever.

The there are square pixels and non-square pixels, each of which affects the image presentation shape.

Chicks hate it if they were shot in 1.33 and squeezed down to 1.78. They hate it because it makes them look fat. This is a common site at sports bars when their monitors are high def 16×9 and then the commercials are in 4×3.

Chicks love it when they were shot in high def 16×9 and squeezed into the 4×3 shape; they look tall and skinny like the supermodels they are inside.

So rather than give you all the ways to solve these issues here’s the tip for always getting it right:

1) In photoshop (or using a scanner and construction paper) Make a perfect circle the that is the same height as the original image footage.

2) Do whatever process you intend to do with the real footage, whether it’s converting it, exporting it, burning it to DVD, making a dub or whatever.

3) Check to make sure that the finished test circle after your processing looks exactly like a perfect circle. If it looks like an EGG, then you messed up somewhere. Go play with the settings until you get a perfect circle.

4) Forget reading endless blogs and wikipedia about all the things that could be causing the problem. Just test it a couple times with different settings and behold… A BEAUTIFUL CIRCLE. Kiss it.

Remember back to the days when the “I Love Lucy” was in its first run and we were all so excited about the brave new video format Hi-8? Well, maybe it wasn’t way back in the Lucy days, but it was an exciting format and great buzzword at video cocktail parties. Yeah, it had the word “Hi” in it so it must be some AMAZING quality and resolution. Cut to today, some 15 years later, and Hi-8 really looks like crap when compared to modern video formats.

Anyway, if you ended up shooting all of your home movies on that tape, or worse yet… recording a professional project on that tape, then you need to back it up right away! Because the tape itself is quite thin and delicate, the cameras and decks had a history of eating tapes. It’s even worse these days since the cameras are so old and deteriorating. They love to eat tapes.

Shortly after Hi-8 was invented, we dove headlong into the digital age!! Hi-8 was only on the market a couple of years before it was eaten alive by its offspring, Digital 8 (sometimes called Digital High 8).

Digital 8 delivered so much more quality and it was actually DIGITAL! This paved the way for the world famous MiniDV format which quickly overtook Digital 8 like jet airplanes did to propeller planes. There was no turning back.

Here’s the rub, now it’s all these years later and your original camcorder, which busted five years ago, was unceremoniously pitched out. You have all these tapes in a shoe box but don’t know if they are Hi-8 or Digital-8. So you don’t know which camera to buy on ebay in order to transfer the footage to a contemporary format.

Since the tapes look identical, here’s a couple hints to help you:

1) Hi-8 tapes will NEVER have the word “digital” written on the cassette labeling.
2) If the tape labeling says, for “Hi-8 or digital recording”, trust me, it’s going to be a digital signal on that tape. Nobody would every consider spending the extra dough on a digitally capable tape unless they meant to use it for digital.
3) Hi-8 will play on a Digital 8 camcorder, but Digital 8 will not play on a Hi-8 camcorder. So go with buying the Digital 8 camcorder and then you’re covered both ways.

And one last thought… If you see video “snow” on your tapes, do NOT throw them in the trash thinking all your memories are lost forever. You are most likely looking at a DIGITAL-8 tape on a Hi-8 Machine the you purchased by mistake.

kirk

Aspect ratio is merely a fancy way to describe the shape of the image. Is it a long, thin rectangle or more like a square?

Think of it as a measurement of the sides of the shape. So 16 x 9 is the same shape of a piece of paper that is 16 inches by 9 inches. Or it’s mathematical equivalent is 1.78 by 1. This is a nice balanced rectangle shape.

Standard definition TV is more like a square. It’s 4 x 3. But not really. It’s close to 4 x 3 so people call it that, but it is actually 1.33 by 1. It’s much more of a square than the 1.78 : 1 rectangle.

Many theatrical motion pictures are shot in 2.35 by 1. That is a really long rectangle called Panavision.

There are so many presentation formats and TV signals and so a lot of re-sizing has to be done to fit all these different rectangle shapes in their destination format.

kirk

HDV is the little brother to broadcast High Def such as HDCAM or D5. It shoots/records in the 16×9 aspect ratio which, for the math inclined is the same as 1.78 : 1 But standard def television uses an aspect ratio of 1.33 :1

So in down-converting the HDV to standard, you basically need to force the shape of a longer rectangle into a the shape of a regular TV which has a more square shape. (see examples below)

The two ways of doing this are to hack off the sides of the rectangle (also called a “center extaction”), which still provides excellent resolution . But in that case, the sides of the picture will be gone. For example, if there is a dinner table scene and one of the actors is far to either side of the frame, they will be cut off.

However, if you want to see ALL the image, then the long rectangle needs to be shrunk down to fit inside the square. This means there is no image at the tops and bottoms of the frame in the standard def tv. It’s letterboxed. The black bars at the top and bottom are just “empty”areas where there is no picture because it has been shrunken down.

Letterbox is widely accepted on broadcast tv these days. Many network shows run this way due to the complications of trying to have different versions for high def and standard def. People are used to it and the filmmaker’s compositions are preserved. So shoot/record/ dub your HDV into letterbox when you put it on a regular tv. It looks cooler, and the dude at the dinner table isn’t cut off.

kirk

I will get into deeper discussions of Dropframe Timecode (DFTC) and Non-Dropframe Timecode (NDFTC) later, but for now, just think of them as Miles vs. Kilometers. Mmmm kay?

If you drive 10 miles to the store to pick up tapestock the odometer will say one “10″.
But you drive the same 10 miles in your French buddy’s car that uses a metric odometer, it will say “16″ kilometers.

NOTE:
1) The distance can be driven by either car (Like DFTC and NDFTC can be played on any machine)

2) The trip to the store takes the exact same amount of time as measured by a stop-watch.

3) Both measuring systems have nothing to do with the ACTUAL trip to the store, but merely measure the trip.

And here’s a tidbit that is totally unrelated, but interesting…

Dropframe timecode uses semi-colons like this: 01;16;22;21
Non-Dropframe timecode uses colons like this: 01:16:22:21

And here’s some more unrelated trivia:
VITC timecode and Linear Timecode call the same frame the same timecode number. VITC and Linear are merely different ways of recording the timecode itself. It’s kind of like having an AIFF file on an Audio CD or a DVD-R. The file is always the same but just recorded differently.

As you can see, I am the king of analogies, lame though they may be.

Here’s a little trick for the economy-minded indie filmmaker/television producer… whether you are shooting your tv show or independent film on 16×9 high definition (1.78 : 1 aspect ratio), 35mm Film (1.85 : 1 aspect ratio).

Your project needs to edited. So have your dailies transferred to letter-boxed digibeta. Have all your source timecode and feet and frames count placed as a window burn over the black part of the letter box.

Then edit the heck out of the show.  Lock it down for time, polish it with an “online” pass in the Avid or Final Cut Pro. Then layback your mix into the timeline. Then create a new digibeta master of your entire show, taking careful attention to make the most professional master possible. Of course, don’t forget to mask out the timecode in the letter box area (but don’t worry, those valuable numbers are still in your timeline sequence.)

Now you have a pristine 100% digital master for making DVD screeners, uploading to the web, or any other presales formats.

You still haven’t blown a zillion dollars on an onlined HD master or a film conform, two processes that can literally make you bankrupt in the final stages of a production.

Take your digital betacam “master” and market the living hell out of it. Send it around, make your calls, have screenings, and basically exploit your film.

Then, if you make a sale to standard definition TV, just clone the digibeta master and collect a check for the rights to your film.

If you make an HD or theatrical sale, set up a reasonable delivery date, get an early check from the buyer, then race down to your nearest online joint (or film lab) and create a new high-resolution master for distribution.  Then go home, pour yourself a nice beverage and think of how great it is to have someone else paying for the finish of your film.

And by the way, if you don’t make any sales at all, at least you still have your house because it wasn’t repo-ed by the bank.

Filmmaking my be tough, but finishing your film doesn’t have to be when someone else is footing the bill!

MiniDV is the most under-rated and maligned standard definition video format!

Many people think of miniDV as a low-grade, consumer “home movie” format, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.  MiniDV is the most ubiquitous standard format out there.  If you’re not shooting high-def in your home camcorder, you’re shooting MiniDV. Most people shooting MiniDV aren’t professionals and know little about proper lighting, exposure, stabilization, pleasing camera angles, etc. So consequently, most MiniDV footage looks terrible.  Also, the cheapo lenses on the front of your average home camcorder exacerbate the problem.

But the actual technology of MiniDV is quite remarkable. Not only can it easily import into any computer via Firewire, but when properly mastered, the footage can knock your socks off. It’s the old “Garbage in equals garbage out” adage.

Here at BetaSp To DVD.com we have transferred some really stiking footage to MiniDV. For example, we had a high-end music video that was shot on 35mm film by one of the greatest DP’s (director of photography) out there. The video was editing, color-corrected and mastered to a pristine Digibeta tape. The digibeta master looked absolutely phenomenal.

A few months later, the client wanted to create a demo reel for their company using the video. They had Final Cut Pro in their office but they didn’t have a digibeta deck. I suggested they just transfer all the footage to MiniDV and then import it directly via firewire into their computer. The client was resistant, due to the amateur reputation of MiniDV.

So I told them that transferring to MiniDV from Digibeta is done entirely as 1’s and 0’s, completely digital.  It’s also a really robust and CHEAP archiving format that looks fantastic.

The clients wanted to see a test. So we transferred the Digital Betacam to MiniDV. Then we all sat in dark room with a large Sony standard definition television and played the MiniDV and Digibeta tapes in a blind test 5 times. After 5 viewings in random order, we took a vote and asked people to guess which tape was which.  Low and behold, nobody in the room came up with the same guess consistently. In other words, in a blind test, nobody could tell the difference between MiniDV and Digital Betacam.

Digital Betacam is far superior to MiniDV in it’s technical specs and it Digibeta is a much better choice for the first digital master in the chain of post production. But ultimately, if the audience can’t tell the difference in later processes or editing, then why spend the money to stay in the digibeta format?

Further more, if you are submitting a film to a festival that accepts MiniDV, then everyone is going to be watching MiniDV anyway.

We often run into people with resolutionitis. It’s a disease that makes filmmakers think they must have the absolute highest resolution and quality no matter what. But they forget that content is king. Films on YouTube can have tens of millions of views, even though the video quality looks terrible. Remember the “Blair Witch Project?” That film was shot on crappy Hi-8 video and it still grossed tens of millions! Content is king.

MiniDV is cheap, easy to import via firewire, and makes a great archive tape (that doesn’t take up a lot of shelf space). And since almost every standard def camcorder out there is a MiniDV camcorder, it couldn’t be easier to find one to borrow to import your footage for editing in Final Cut Pro or Avid.

If you’re shooting a wedding or event and don’t want to run out of MiniDV tape during the event, do not use LP mode on your camcorder!  Just don’t do it. The compression is pretty substantial for LP mode and your footage will have many undesirable video artifacts, especially if you plan to use video effects with this footage.

And if it’s about saving money, fuggettaboutit. MiniDV tapestock is the cheapest item on the production budget, weighing in at a whole $2.95 each.

Okay, so how do you record a 90 minute wedding without LP mode and only using 60 minutes worth of tape?

Here’s what you do. Before the wedding, have one tape in the camera and a second tape unwrapped and sitting on the box under the tripod.  At the exact moment where the wedding guests are falling asleep as the pastor goes on and on about the joy of the marriage, quickly eject tape #1 and insert #2.  And yes, you are going to lose about 30 seconds of the ceremony, but I don’t think the people watching the tape are going to be too bothered. In fact, I think they would thank you.

Make sure the bride and groom know in advance that 30 seconds of the wedding will not be recorded… either that… or they can have inferior video quality. Believe me, the want the best!

Just a quick note about inkjet printing. If you want your disc to play on the the most DVD players without problems (like skipping and stalling) then never use the discs that are hub-printable. Sure, they look neat and everything, but that extra coating that goes right down to the small center hole throws off a lot of older DVD players. The coating is heavier and thicker than the older DVD players are expecting. The servo motor in the DVD player wasn’t calibrated to handle that extra weight and thickness, so the result can be DVDs that skip, stall, or have video glitches during playback.

Don’t use the full-coat hub printable like this one:

Use the non-hub printable like this:

Count down leader is meant for technical purpose only!

It is used for projectionists and dubbers to let them know exactly when to go “live” with the show.  The audience is NEVER meant to see the count down.

If you put “fancy” count down leader on your show, you run the risk of looking like an amateur. Even more so, if you actually include the count down leader as part of the actual program.

Put count down leader on your show, but be a pro about it:

1) No cute or fancy numbers or animation.

This also detracts from the impact of the first image of your film.

2) Only count down to the first frame of #2. Put the audio sync pop on that frame.

3)  Obviously, never include the #1 either.

4) Af