David Esp Video Technical Blog

Discovered:

• Best quality level to use for grading is FilmScan1.
  • The next one down, High, is only for final product, as intermediate totranscode from.
  • The next level up, FilmScan2, is “overkill”.
• Tech Blog (many subjects)
  • http://techblog.cineform.com/?page_id=1288
• HDLink
  • I should make more use of this in my workflow.  It does batch-conversion etc. and people like its deinterlacing quality.
  • http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/cineform-software-showcase/97451-how-does-hd-link-de-interlace-50i-25p.html
    • Q: How does HDLink perform its de-interlacing?
    • A: It doesn’t drop fields, it uses both to extract the best vertical resolution.
      • No elaboration given.  Could it be some kind of smart selection between interpolation (single-field) for dynamic scenes and blending (of each field-pair) for static scenes.  It would be interesting to compare against my standard motion-compensated approach (using AviSynth>TDeint) and indeed the new one explained on the Sony Vegas forum by Nick Hope http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?MessageID=768368&Replies=12.
• Firstlight
  • Does more than I imagined!
    • Has translation/projection adjustments (e.g. frame, zoom, pan)
    • It has “looks” (via LUT’s) e.g. “Bleach Bypass”.  Can scroll through them (e.g. via up/down arrow keys)
    • Can be keyframed hence dynamically changing (e.g. a pan to follow a moving object or adjust level/hue as sun sinks).
    • Can copy & paste attributes between different clips (select-all>Paste to make all clips have the same style)
    • Can “branch” projects to provide a dropdown-selectable menu of alternative grades/looks.
    • Great suggestions for incorporation in workflow:
      • While one person is editing, another can be grading.
      • Tip: store FirstLight projectsin DropBox folders, then everyonbe sees same instant-updates (e.g. extra alternative styles).
  • http://community.avid.com/forums/t/98416.aspx
    • Possible there exists a problem when used with Avid Media Composer 5.5.2 (at least).
    • Conjecture: (if) First Light … is OpenGL accelerated when dealing with Cineform media (then) when it is handed to to other applications, the playback and processing of the LUT (metadata) is all CPU, thus causing a performance discrepency.
• Vimeo: Cineform Examples & Tutorials & Groups:
  • http://vimeo.com/canetoad/videos
    • David Newman’s Videos
  • http://vimeo.com/groups/cineform
    • Created and moderated by Jake Segraves od Cineform.
      • http://vimeo.com/13021420 = “CineForm Tutorial for San Diego’s 48 Hour Film Project”
      • http://vimeo.com/11886542 = “Introduction to FirstLight — Part 1”
      • http://vimeo.com/11887177 = “Introduction to FirstLight — Part 2”
      • http://vimeo.com/10024749 = “CineForm FirstLight color correction through Dropbox”
  • http://vimeo.com/channels/cineform
  • http://vimeo.com/27220198
    • Cineform Workflow in Post Production – Part 1

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 11th, 2011 at 23:08 and is filed under Cineform, DropBox, grading. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.