#1K over 2k live footage
11 messages in this thread
Yeah, I thought it looked great too. I think with Johnny we could get
away with a little less resolution because it was PURE CGI, it might
have been a different story if we were compositing 1k CGI elements
over 2k LIVE footage, although I'm not sure. My education is
continuing. Some of the guys at E-FILM were telling me about a
"trick"; if your compositing CGI with live, render smaller and scale
the CGI up to the LIVE plates. They say it softens it up enough to
take the edge off the CGI.
I HATE working at 2k.
T.
BLUR
Tim,
>> compositing 1k CGI elements over 2k LIVE footage <<
I'll be facing this dilemna shortly. I'll probably go the 2k CGI on 2k film
plates, but I'll give the 1k CGI interpolated approach a try. It may be quite a
pleasing look, who knows.
There may be a 10-bit log cinesite reader/writer available soon for
3ds which will be a cool thing to have. You could do great comp's in
video post even if you had to dither down to 24-bit. Won't work with
Solitaire's which I believe only take .rla format (8bpp) but if
you're going out to a cinesite (cineon) equipped bureau it would be
useful.
Martin,
Pardon my stupidity, but what would you use this for?
We recently got some scans from Cinesite and just used the
shareware PCTAR to get them off exabyte, and then used Elastic
Reality to convert from .cin files to .tga. Some color info is lost,
but you've got to lose it sometime……, and besides, not to many
people can tell between 10bit and 8bit. A .cin reader for 3ds would
save the conversion step though. (David found the PCTAR prog., and
figured it out, He's a wonderboy)
Tim,
>> Pardon my stupidity, but what would you use this for? <<
large gradients on film can quickly use up the available 256 levels of
_luma_, in particular, available with 8-bit. It's not so bad in
video, but on film with 2000+ lines you'd see some banding. For
example, if you had an obliquely angled light across a surface done
in CG and it was a full screen effect, you don't have any more the
256 levels at 8-bit to adequately represent the falloff of light from
bright to dark. 10-bit log would have more than enough to levels to
deal with this situation and avoid banding. 10-bit (logarithmic) is
supposed to be equal to 14-bit linear which would give 16384 levels
of luma for this situation.
I think the idea would be to keep scans at better than 8-bit
throughout the process (import – render – composite – export). This
is apparently possible according to Martin Doudoroff, since video
post works at 16-bit per pixel internally. If you need to use Elastic
Reality I think might be out of luck.
BTW, I'm by no way an expert on this. I'm just breaking new ground for
me and I think it would be beneficial to discuss the issues. The
above information is loosely paraphrased from discussions with other
MetroLight people who have quite a bit of film output experience and
also from the Cinesite documentation.
Martin
Martin,
I'm curious: If you digitized a 35mm film frame in its complete resolution, how
large a file would it be?
Alec Jason
Alec,
>> I'm curious: If you digitized a 35mm film frame in its complete resolution,
how large a file would it be? <<
Full aperture 35mm is typically scanned at 2048 x 1556, which is close
to 1.33:1 aspect ratio. Not all that area is actually used, though
when projected. Also, you could scan film at at higher resolution,
like 4096 x 3112, but that isn't done too much for multiple frames
because of the amount of data. A 2k plate is about 9mb, but a 4k
plate is about 38mb.
That's it exactly Mr. Foster. The whole point of the Cineon process
is to scan/manipulate/print at full emulsion fidelity. I spent the
better part of a day with Don Miskowich (he is now with E-Film) when
the original Cinesite opened up, going over the technology and thier
reasons for doing things. Yes Tim, there are easier and cheaper ways
to this stuff and most people would never notice. I've got deep
admiration for what Kodak has done. I'm very glad to hear that Martin
D. has taken note of these discussions. Now that 3DS is proving its
worth in motion picture production you high end guys need access to
zero compromise solutions to make sure the money ends up on the
screen where it belongs.
Bruce,
>> The whole point of the Cineon process is to scan/manipulate/print at full
emulsion fidelity. <<
well said. I'm fortunate to be co-operating with Martin Doudoroff on a way to
make this work in 3d Studio.
I'd like to see the results of the blown 1K work at 2K… I'm a big
fan of softening CG up, since 'reality' is never polygon-crisp.
– G
Next film effects job……
Tim
BLUR
>> since 'reality' is never polygon-crisp.<<
Time to support NURBS…
Alex, Video International…