Topic: #56 - Film Gear

What about y'all? Any fun toys?

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Re: #56 - Film Gear

I started as a 35mm still photographer in high school with the idea of eventually moving to 35mm motion film. So I collected a large number of good, prime Nikon lenses over the years.

I didn't want to waste those lenses, so I bought an HVX200a with a redrock M2 lens system. I shot the homepage video and Calvin and Hobbes mostly on that. I also used my HPX170 for the jib shots.

I also own a jib - extends to 14 feet and it has the automatic head and all that fun stuff. A couple Lowell light kits, a skate dolly, had a 519 fluid head & tripod, had an NTG-3 shotgun mic, boom pole, a Nagra... those are the main toys.

I seriously love the HVX200. It's really versatile, you can pull off cool shots, and there is a HUGE database of online support for it. Since it's the standard you can find a thread that will answer virtually any question. Great starter camera.

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Re: #56 - Film Gear

Hey Teague, could you edit your main post here to include links to the sites and materials mentioned in the episode? I think it would be really helpful for folks to have all that info in one spot.

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Re: #56 - Film Gear

Sure, if someone ends up writing them all out. I don't have time to listen to the episode at the moment, myself.

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Re: #56 - Film Gear

Was that the sign-off that Brian did a Ryan impersonation...?  big_smile

"Life is about movies; anything else is a bonus!"- Me   cool

6 (edited by Sam F 2013-03-04 14:29:32)

Re: #56 - Film Gear

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Re: #56 - Film Gear

I'm actually interested in what you all have to say about Post now.  I always thought offline editing was the best way to handle Red, BMCC, and other 4k to 5K footage.  Just offline, cut the footage, and than online the final cut and export for a day or two.  Bear in mind, this is all theory and speculation on my part.  I've never actually worked with footage of that kind.

  I am interested in the "image sequence" discussion though.  You guys kinda briefly touched on it.  Do you always cut in image sequences, or only for special situations?  I've only worked with image sequences one or twice for effects related stuff.

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Re: #56 - Film Gear

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Re: #56 - Film Gear

Not to my knowledge, but about half of the editing I've done in my time is makin' demo reels, which is something you typically have to do with frames.  big_smile

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Re: #56 - Film Gear

Aside from FX shots which often involve frames, I use image sequences as my final output format - at least for projects that I think will have any shelf life at all.    A directory of individual frames plus a soundtrack audio file makes the project more future-proof.   You don't have to worry about your master file becoming outdated because of the codec you used, etc.   

Whatever format I need my project to be in, I just load the original frames and output as needed.    I've lost count of how many times I've exported the Pink Five series to keep up with new codecs and formats, but all the versions have been generated from the same set of original master frames.

Re: #56 - Film Gear

Ah, that makes total sense. I guess JPEG is gonna be around a lot longer than today's standard video formats. Maybe I'll start doing that.

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Re: #56 - Film Gear

I doubt JPEG is much used in this situation. TGA would be the standard. Right?

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Re: #56 - Film Gear

I use TGA usually, although PNG seems to do the job as well with smaller file size.   

Whichever, the point is to use a format with as little compression as possible.   Any video version you spawn from those will add its own flavor of compression, but at least you're always starting with the best possible source resolution.

Re: #56 - Film Gear

Typically I'll use tga's for most stuff, although I find myself use png more lately, but I haven't been doing a lot of vfx stuff lately.

ZangrethorDigital.ca

Re: #56 - Film Gear

Gotcha, thanks. Now, for the audio format... wave? aiff? Something else?

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Re: #56 - Film Gear

All audio I use in projects goes in as aiff.

What ever you use, never ever use mp3.

.mp3 in AE for example gives this clicking track when rendered.

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I would never lie. I willfully participate in a campaign of misinformation.

Re: #56 - Film Gear

Exactly -  the same argument applies there.   mp3 is designed for small file sizes for internet streaming and so on, but brings with it a lot of compression artifacts that can cause trouble if you try to export the file again.

.wav or .aiff at maximum quality are my usual choice.

18 (edited by Sam F 2013-03-05 12:50:59)

Re: #56 - Film Gear

Sweet, thanks.

Yeah I learned the hard way that mp3 had import issues in FCP7 a while back. Steered clear of them ever since (or at least made sure to convert them first).

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Re: #56 - Film Gear

Re: #56 - Film Gear

what about exporting the image sequence in the DPX file format?  Is that format uncompressed?

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Re: #56 - Film Gear

Re: #56 - Film Gear

I usually export to .TIFF cos it's what Stu Maschwitz put in his book way back when  smile

Re: #56 - Film Gear

Heard once that targa does some annoying thing where it writes a gamma into the file header and some applications will do a combination of recognizing it, ignoring it, doubling it, or just generally make a mess.

Gamma. Ugh. Let's collectively step off these wax cylinder file formats and just use EXR sequences like civilized people.

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Re: #56 - Film Gear

I think we need a 5-hour DIF discussion on file types.

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Re: #56 - Film Gear