T3i / Cineform Preliminary Notes

Quick Update:

I will have a much longer post in the future about my experiences actually shooting and editing a project with the T3i and Cineform, but here's some of my initial thoughts:

• Cineform has an odd issue where it changes its gamma setting during playback in Adobe Premiere Pro. Supposedly, this is an issue with the video overlay function of NVIDIA graphics cards, but that seems a little strange to me, since no other codec that I've used has this issue. You can mitigate this effect a bit by playing with the image controls in the video overlay section of NVIDA's control panel settings, but it doesn't really go away. A more annoying quirk is that there is a slight pause between hitting the playback button on the timeline and having the footage start playing. This drove me a bit bonkers after a while.
• My computer is not fast enough to edit DSLR footage natively (even if Premiere Pro CS3 could handle it), so my current workflow is a little odd, but seems to work:
• Transfer Quicktime H.264 .MOVs from SD card.
• Convert .MOVs to DV25 ("MiniDV") .AVIs
• Edit project using DV25 .AVI files (cuts and basic transitions only for picture).
• When project is finished, clean up project so only footage in use is in project file.
• Make a note of footage files used, then convert .MOV originals of footage to Cineform .AVIs - into subfolder of project folder (I call it "Cineform Transcodes").
• Move DV25 .AVIs into subfolder of project folder (I call it "DV Proxies").
• Move Cineform transcodes into main project folder.
• Create new Cineform project file in Premiere Pro.
• Import DV25 project file into Cineform project.
• Add all needed transitions, effects work and titles.
• Render out project to Cineform master, Blu-Ray and DVD.

So yeah, I'm essentially doing an old-fashioned offline/online edit. It's not great if you desperately need to save storage space, but the DV25 .AVI files will play back buttery smooth on any computer from the last 7 years or so. In the future, I'm looking to upgrade to a current computer and version of Premiere Pro so that I can do all my editing natively and then export to Cineform for color correction and such. The monthly leasing option for CS6 looks like the way to go for me, but we'll see.


As to the T3i, the 3x "digital zoom" ends up being a lifesaver when you quickly need to switch over to a longer lens; or in my case when I need the image stabilization of the 18-55mm kit lens on a subject that needs more zoom. Do not zoom in any farther than 3X, though, or you will start to see the image artifacts of an actual digital zoom that will be almost as bad as zooming the image in post.

I will also look into renting some better quality (and image stabilized) lenses for my next production, so stay tuned for updates.

T3i Picture Profile Camera Tests

After a bit of trial and error, here are some picture profile tests I shot using the T3i.

I'm having to re-orient my video brain a bit, but aside from the moire/color fringing artifacts, this camera beats my old Sony HDV camera handily (especially as a stills camera :) ).

My next round of tests will focus on adjusting the in-camera sharpening and color within these looks, trying to see if I can "bake-in" the look more so that I don't have the same dire need to color correct in post.

A Long-Expected Update - DSLRs and Cineform

So, I finally got a DSLR - A Canon T3i, to be exact. There are a few reasons for this:

1. It's pretty cheap. For around $1500, you can get a camera with a kit zoom lens, a decent prime lens (I chose the Canon 50mm f/1.4 USM, which works out to about an 85mm equivalent on the T3i due to it's sensor size), a bunch of decent SD memory cards, a bunch of batteries, and a basic filter kit.
2. The T3i has a sort of sensor crop mode that's called "digital zoom', even though it only becomes that (as far as I know) once you increase the zoom factor more than the basic 3x level. This is nice for those of us who don't necessarily want to lug around a big zoom lens all the time, but it's really important if you need to shoot a subject that would normally cause moire and aliasing issues - since the sensor is cropped to 1920x1080 resolution instead of line-skipping from a higher resolution, the aforementioned artifacts are significantly reduced - at the cost of some image sharpness. Also, it's a 3x crop factor, so to keep the same framing and depth of field you might have to change to a wider lens/focal length or back up and sacrifice some of the image characteristics of having the camera closer to your subject.
3. It has an articulating rear LCD display. This means you can see what you're shooting without having to always be right behind the camera. You can even flip the display over for checking framing while shooting yourself (which you might literally consider once you see how goofy you look on camera).
4. It provides an upgrade path to other Canon DSLR and cinema cameras. By getting prime lenses that work on full-frame cameras, you're essentially future-proofing your investment in good glass that you can use on either better DSLRs or cinema cameras with a Super35-sized sensor and a Canon mount/adapter. The C300 seems like a decent upgrade goal, but you can also use Canon (or Nikon) glass on the newer Red cameras with an adapter.

The only problem with getting the T3i is that I have a fairly old computer (built late 2008) that coughs and wheezes when trying to playback the H.264 video footage that this camera produces. It's also a PC, so no ProRes love.

The good news? I got Cineform Neo. Here's why that's awesome:

1. It lets me transcode the 8-bit, 4:2:0 footage to 10-bit, 4:2:2 footage, at a fraction of the disk space of uncompressed footage - just like ProRes. Why is this important when it's not actually increasing the quality of the shot? Two words: Color correction. In general, any post processing that you do on footage benefits from a higher color bit-depth.
2. Speaking of color correction, Cineform Neo has FirstLight, which is kind of the poor man's version of RedCineX. Like RedCineX, FirstLight lets you tweak color and contrast in meta-data. Translation: It lets you do really basic looks and color correction without rendering out a new file, and you can change the settings at any time, and those changes will show up in any program that can play the file.
3. Cineform is a wavelet-based codec, which means that it kind of smooths the image a little, and compression artifacts look more like smears than blocks. This is an aesthetic preference, and it won't solve glaring compression artifacts from the original footage (I'm considering getting the Neat Video plugin for After Effects to help with that a bit), but it's still pretty cool.
4. Like ProRes, Cineform is made to hold quality through multiple recompressions. I have yet to test this, but Cineform says anything at "High" quality or better can do this.
5. It has a decent built-in capture program, so no need to launch your massive video editing program just to do a decent video capture.
6. It has built-in presets for Premiere Pro, which happens to be my video editor of choice/necessity.
7. It has no real image size constraints, so it can work with footage of any size, even 6K Red Epic footage (if you're insane).

There's only a couple of issues with Cineform:

1. To get all the nifty features I've outlined above, you have to pay $300. I think they're worth it, but I could definitely see folks getting turned off by the price. The good news? Cineform NeoScene gives you just the conversion ability for $129.
2. Cineform is about 2-4x larger than H.264 files depending on the source image complexity and Cineform's quality setting, so you'll need a bunch of storage space to convert your footage. Personally, I'm going to try to go for a film-style workflow and only convert clips as I intend to use them.
3. Larger files means larger datarates, and if you're rocking single un-RAIDified hard drives like I am, your realtime capture will be thusly limited to standard definition (unless you like dropped frames).

I've been playing around with picture profiles for the T3i, and have decided that the low-contrast profiles are best for cinema shooting, rather than general purpose. For wildlife videography, I think a little sharpness and baked-in color actually is a good thing, although this is definitely a personal preference rather than a professional opinion.

Next up? Trying out the proxy generation feature of Cineform; which retains the metadata of the parent file, even if you manipulate it after making the proxy. Translation: any color corrections made in FirstLight is automatically applied to both the proxy and the original Cineform files. Also, I'm trying to figure out how to expose outdoor scenery properly. I think a color chart might be in order. Oh, and maybe posting some of my test videos like I promised people ages ago.

Stabilizing footage on the cheap with VirtualDub and DeShaker

So, I recently shot some helicopter footage... handheld. It has a raw feel to it that I like, but I wanted it to be smoother so I could speed it up without it looking like a Keystone cops action scene. I've tried to use After Effects (CS3) to stabilize footage, but it takes forever and produces some ugly-looking moving black borders.

Enter VirtualDub and the DeShaker plugin. Here's my tests:

First time:

http://vimeo.com/19858460

Second time:

http://vimeo.com/20394119

Pretty cool, yeah? So, a fellow Vimeo member sent me a message asking for my settings. Since he was using an AVCHD camera, I directed him here first:

http://vimeo.com/groups/avchdlite/forumthread:8538

And then the rest of the reply:

Stop when you get to the section called "Deshaking :". If your video is now loaded (successfully) in VirtualDub, continue. If not, then you should probably export your footage over to an .AVI format using your usual editing program (Vegas, Premiere Pro, etc.) and load that into VirtualDub.

1) Go to the Video menu, and select "Filters". click "Add", select "DeShaker", click okay. This will get you to the DeShaker controls.

2) Make sure you have "Pass 1" selected. If your footage is interlaced (I think yours is), make sure to select that in the "Video Type" menu.

3) Set "Scale" to "Full (most precise)". Set "Use pixels" to "All (most robust)". Uncheck "Detect zoom". Click "OK", then "OK" again to close the Filters window.

4) Make sure your footage is at the beginning, then hit the F5 key, and watch as the calculation pass runs. :) It may take a while...

5) When it's done, open the Filters window again, select the DeShaker plugin and click on "configure".  Select "Pass 2". Set the "Edge compensation" menu to "Fixed zoom (no borders)". Click "Ok", then "Ok" again.

6) If you have enough hard drive space to use uncompressed video (around 400 GBs per hour), then go to the File menu and click on "Save as AVI". If you don't, make sure you go the the "Video" menu then click on "Compression" to set a different video compression format (that your video editing program can use).

On making an interlaced DVD from interlaced HD, and why it's such a pain in the @#$@#

I hate interlacing. Really, I do. It gives the illusion of greater motion detail than is there - but in the digital video editing realm, it adds all sorts of problems. This is especially true of interlaced high definition video, and doubly true when you want to turn HD interlaced video into standard definition (SD) interlaced video. Just about every method of making a DVD from an HD source assumes that you want to deinterlace the footage at some point along the way, which removes the benefits of shooting interlaced in the first place (and can end up looking very choppy if you aren't careful with your field order settings. Yes, there's actually a field order in interlaced video. Don't get me started...)

I use Premiere Pro CS3 to edit with, which is a very versatile program, but making a DVD directly out of an HD project in Premiere Pro results in crap quality, since Premiere decides to render all the elements at SD resolution (including titles, effects, SD footage, etc.) instead of at HD first and then downconverting to SD. In the past, the only solution to this has been to export out an uncompressed (or relatively low compression) HD movie file, then downconvert that somehow. Needless to say, if you're on a low hard drive budget and working on a huge project, this is a major pain in the ass.

One way to handle this is to take your rendered-out HD video and import it directly into Encore, but that can also create odd-looking results. For best quality, you generally have to downconvert the HD video first by making an uncompressed intermediate (16x9 anamorphic) SD file from the HD file, and import that into Encore. You can also just drop the HD file into After Effects in a new composition, change the composition to the DV widescreen preset, conform the image to fit, and render out to MPEG-2 from there. The problem with both processes is that they deinterlace the video automatically at some point along the way. I've gotten used to just doing this, and it creates a sort of pseudo-film look, but again, it removes the point of shooting interlaced video in the first place.

The HD2SD filter for AVISynth combined with the Debugmode Frameserver plugin for PPro CS3 allows a crazy, hacktastic workaround that essentially serves out a frame at a time of rendered-HD-then-downconverted-to-SD goodness to another program (in this case Virtualdub) so all you need to do is render out an SD intermediate file (in this case, using the lossless Lagarith codec). You can then import said intermediate file into Encore, and render out a properly interlaced DVD that preserves all the lovely interlaced motion...in theory. In actuality, Encore seems to have some trouble properly detecting the interlacing, and so once again deinterlaces the footage.

Also (by default), nothing in the AVISynth process chain is multithreaded, so if you have a multicore processor (or multiple processors, if you're a lucky dog) you will either have to suffer through single-core performance, or config everything in your render chain to be multicore, which is complicated and not guaranteed to boost your performance much (remember, any holdup in Premiere Pro's rendering will negate the advantages of multicore rendering further down the chain.) The upshot? the process is very, very slow. On my Core 2 Quad 2.4GHZ machine, it takes around 12 minutes to render every (one) minute of video... and that's with little to no effects.

So what's the solution? Well, there are basically two:

1. Play back the uncompressed HD footage through some sort of hardware downconverter into another device set up to record uncompressed video. Being that I don't have another computer around with another Blackmagic Intensity card, not happening here. This is by far the easiest, though, and happens in real time. Of course, there's still no guarantee Encore will recognize the SD footage as interlaced, and if you experience a playback skip during the recording, you either end up with two files you have to stitch together, or you have to start the recording over again. So, you probably should have the HD video on a RAID (0,5 or 6) array-equipped system to do this properly.
2. Pass the SD downconvert through a third-party MPEG-2 encoder that will detect the interlacing (or allow you to set it properly). So far, I've only been able to do this with the freeware HCEncoder, and the quality doesn't seem to be all that great - but it does produce properly interlaced video as long as you set the field order properly (usually Bottom Field First).

Update: I downloaded and installed TMPEGEnc Free, and that will also work with the SD downconvert - as long as you make sure the interlaced and bottom field first parameters are either detected automatically or set. The video quality is more consistent than HCEncoder for me, but that could also be because i'm not quite sure how to properly set the latter. Note that the MPEG-2 encoding in TMPEGEnc Free expires after 30 days, so use it wisely, and then consider buying the Plus version.

My guess is that most standalone encoding programs would produce similar results. Anyone have any issues with this sort of thing with DVD Studio Pro?

Mounting CDs/DVDs in Dosbox on Ubuntu 10.04

Since Ubuntu 10.04 uses the CD/DVD volume name for the subdirectory it mounts the CD/DVD to, you can't use

/media/cdrom0

as a standard CD/DVD mount directory in Dosbox like you could in the past. This means you either have to change your /etc/fstab file (as detailed here - use at your own risk! I have not tried this.), or you have to make separate entires in your dosbox.conf file for each CD you want to use. For example, if you wanted to mount the Full Throttle CD, you'd put this in the [autoexec] section of your dosbox.conf:

mount d /media/FT1_00 -t cdrom

You could then generate a list of CDs like so:

mount d /media/FT1_00 -t cdrom

mount d /media/DN_3D -t cdrom

mount d /media/SQVI -t cdrom

And use the commenting marks to select out everything except the CD you're trying to mount:

mount d /media/FT1_00 -t cdrom

#mount d /media/DN_3D -t cdrom

#mount d /media/SQVI -t cdrom

A front-end could potentially make this problem a non-issue, but I dislike using them, so there yah go. ;)

Oh, and remember that you can still use .ISO or .BIN/.CUE disk images as well (in fact, they're the *only* way to properly use multisession CDs in DOSBox at the moment.)

CD Ripping under Ubuntu 10.04

Need to rip a CD? Got Ubuntu? Try Rubyripper. Inspired by Exact Audio Copy (Which will no longer run for me under Ubuntu 10.04 using WINE), Rubyripper has the same priority of accuracy over everything else as the former, and after testing it on my quite-scratched Metallica CD, I can confirm it does at least as good a job as EAC, although the interface could certainly be prettier (again, just like EAC).

For ease of install, try grabbing the "GetDeb" .deb file apropriate for your version of Ubuntu here: http://linuxappfinder.com/package/rubyripper. Please also make sure you have the audio codecs you want to transcode to installed as well (You can install LAME for MP3 encoding through the Ubuntu Software Center).

Timidity and DOSBox in Ubuntu 10.04

For those of you who care about this sort of thing, here's how I finally got decent General MIDI playback for DOSBox in Ubuntu 10.04:

(These instructions are somewhat adapted from a post by Malor on the official Ubuntu forums)

1. Go into Synaptic Package Manager and install these packages:

• dosbox
• timidity
• fluid-soundfont-gm
• fluid-soundfont-gs

2. Open a command prompt, and type:

sudo gedit /etc/timidity/timidity.cfg

• The last line in the file says:

  source /etc/timidity/freepats.cfg

  Put a # mark at the beginning of that line to comment it out. We're going to use the soundfonts we installed from the previous step.
  
  
• On the next line, type:

  soundfont /usr/share/sounds/sf2/FluidR3_GM.sf2

• Save and exit

3. If you don't already have a dosbox.conf you want to use, type:

dosbox

and hit enter. Dosbox will pop up. At its command prompt, type:

config -writeconf dosbox.conf

This will generate one for you. Then type:

exit

to quit dosbox.

4. Type

gedit dosbox.conf

• Click the Find button, type:

  mpu401=

  and click Find. You should see a line highlighted.
• Close the search popup.
• The three lines starting with mpu401= should look like this:

  mpu401=intelligent

  device=alsa

  config=128:0

• Save and exit

5. Restart Ubuntu

6. Open a command prompt, type:

timidity -iA -B2,8 -Os -EFreverb=0 2>&1 &

7. Start dosbox

8. Enjoy General MIDI. :)

9. Close terminal window when finished.

Note: You may have to occasionally change

config=128:0

To

config=129:0

in your dosbox.conf. Watch the output when you start timidity and it'll show which to use.

Also, if you get permission errors while installing or running timidity, you may have to add "timidity" to the "audio", "pulse", and "pulse-access" groups in Users and Groups (In the System menu).

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

I finally broke down and installed it, and here's some initial thoughts:

The Bad:

-The "Default Keyring" thing is still around, and it must die. Now.

- There should be an option to install "forbidden" codec support and encrypted DVD playback during installation. Given the amount of people who need to play MP3s alone, this should be a no brainer. I'm sick of having to explain to potential Ubuntu users why they can't do something every other operating does out of the box without jumping through hoops.

- No volume control on the top bar without the mail/messaging control? Really?

- Adding the Medibuntu repository is still a necessary evil if you want to use Handbrake or FFWin to convert Flash video to another format... like for your iPhone or PSP.

The Good:

- Snappy boot performance, slightly better than before.

- I thought I'd hate the new cosmetic changes, but the left-side window controls are actually kind of handy, and the new default theme is actually pretty cool looking (salmon accents aside).

- Overall better performance.

- New Thunderbird and Firefox. The former especially is a major upgrade.

- Ubuntu Software Center. It's almost to the point of being the easiest package manager ever made.

It feels more like a non-Long Term Service release, but still worth upgrading IMHO. My issues may not be the same as yours, so take my comments accordingly.

A note on burning DVDs in Ubuntu

If you have issues with DVDs burning far more slowly than the burner is rated for (and you know the blank DVD+/-Rs you're using are also rated for the same speed), here are some suggestions:

• Make sure that your PC can keep up with the data rate. Disable hard-disk intensive programs while burning (usually the burn would fail if this is the case, but just to be on the safe side...).
• Install K3B. It's the best overall disc burner in Ubuntu anyways.
• If you're still getting low burn speeds, go into the settings menu, K3b settings, and the advanced tab. There, check "Force unsafe operations". It should now burn substantially faster.

Please note I'm currently running Ubuntu 9.10. On other versions, your mileage may vary. Also, please don't hold me responsible for a hardware failure if something happens. When in doubt, double-check your settings and documentation before trying anything.

Film vs. "Digital" - the myths of reliability

There are a lot of myths in the film industry, and some of them are harmful to newcomers trying to enter and learn the buisness. One is that getting a new camera (film or digital) will automatically make you a film director. Another is that going to film school and getting a degree means you are now by default a filmmaker. The answer to both: although a new camera and a film degree can be helpful, you become a filmmaker by making movies, and the stories you tell are vastly more important than the technology.

However, there still continues to be a debate over which tools are superior to use, and the myths that crop up as a result are becoming perhaps the largest point of confusion for people entering the film business.

On the one side, you have people who believe that image acquisition using "digital" (video, DSLRs, or special-purpose cameras like the Red One) is inherently superior because the image is captured and processed right there on the set, then backed up in safe, secure hard drives or tape backups.

On the other side, you have film lovers, who argue about film's superior latitude and resolution, and the virtue of having a real, physical copy of the image you can always go back to.

Here's a dirty little secret: neither is really all that safe. There are films less than ten years old that have to be restored because the prints have degraded so badly. Digital acquisition is even worse. In an interview with someone at a major studio who handles data archiving, they basically admit that they have to be constantly backing up old data onto new devices to avoid drive failures.

I'm working on a film called Doggie Boogie right now as a data wrangler. The film is shot using the much-hyped Red One, which has an entirely data-centric workflow. We have some of the most reliable external hard drives available on set to back up to. We back up to two drives, mirroring each other, and each drive is actually two disks set up in a mirrored RAID. We are safe as houses. Except last week one of the drives died. No warning, nothing. We still have the one drive as a backup, but it just goes to show: digital is only as reliable as the medium you store it on, and none of the mediums out there are safe enough to trust on their own.

Why not just use film, then? Because at different points in the process, film is even more unreliable. You can't see imperfections in the image until the film is developed (usually) the next day, but even more crucially, even small amounts of light leaks in the camera or the film canister can cause your image to get washed out or completely erased in a white blur. Then there's the mechanical issues with film cameras, like frame stuttering or scratches from minute particles of dirt. All of these issues can be minimized by hiring a crew that knows what they're doing, but again: Film is not a quick fix for reliability. It needs to be handled with lots of care.

So, to reiterate: there is no "safer" medium. Learn the strengths and weaknesses of each, and plan your shoot accordingly.

Update - Here's a video from the Library of Congress about the "home" side of this subject: http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/videos/digipres/index.html