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Canon XM2
- Thread starter Eddie Rex
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What I was trying to say is that stetching the footage to be anamorphic will look worse than in camera anamorphic unless you have a great resampling algorithm - so precisely what you are suggesting. Bad english sentence construction on my part.
It's not *pointless* - just realize that you won't have as much resolution as with 4:3. Plenty of people do it any it looks fine. I even crop to 2.35:1 quite often. Like all things it's just know what the downsides are so you make an informed choice. Also, a wide angle lens and an anamorphic lens are two separate beasts. The anamorphic is wide angle only in the horizontal direction whereas a normal wide angle lens is wide in both vertical and horizontal which is not what you would want.
Oakstreetphotovideo, yes i have made progress and i shall try the audio 15 sec test later on tonight.
Knightly, shall be making a horror movie for halloween so i shall be uploading plenty of footage, before the end of the month.
Shaw, i shall probably buy anamorphic lens in the near future.
Anyway i shall be trying some test shots now, shooting in low levels of light. Back in half an hour...
Knightly, shall be making a horror movie for halloween so i shall be uploading plenty of footage, before the end of the month.
Shaw, i shall probably buy anamorphic lens in the near future.
Anyway i shall be trying some test shots now, shooting in low levels of light. Back in half an hour...
I understood what you were saying, Shaw. I was just rambling on and on, like I do, in the hope that saying the same thing 5 different ways would help Eddie make sense of all of this techno-jarble.
Back to my point about oversampling, vs. stretching from 75% of a 4:3 frame. I was just reviewing the specs on the camcorder, and it claims to sport 3, 470,000 pixel sensors. In PAL format, with 525 lines of resolution, you'd need something like 380,000 pixels to make up the 4:3 image. If you then used 3/4 of the sensor for 16:9, you'd be using 352K pixels (theoretically, of course), to construct an image of 378K pixels. That really isn't much of a stretch. At least not as much as taking the 378K pixel image and reducing it to 75% in the vertical dimension and stretching, which would be starting with about 283,500 pixels.
So ... it is theoretically possible to get better 16:9 from the camera than you'd get by converting in post; even if you had excellent interpolation software. You will still lose some resolution, because only part of the sensor can be used. The difference in chroma samples would be even more significant, but I don't want Eddie's head to explode (miniDV PAL samples chroma on every other line). Of course, these numbers are all based on theoretical maximums and the final arbiter should be real world testing and subjective analysis.
In laymen's terms: Try it, and see if you like it.
Back to my point about oversampling, vs. stretching from 75% of a 4:3 frame. I was just reviewing the specs on the camcorder, and it claims to sport 3, 470,000 pixel sensors. In PAL format, with 525 lines of resolution, you'd need something like 380,000 pixels to make up the 4:3 image. If you then used 3/4 of the sensor for 16:9, you'd be using 352K pixels (theoretically, of course), to construct an image of 378K pixels. That really isn't much of a stretch. At least not as much as taking the 378K pixel image and reducing it to 75% in the vertical dimension and stretching, which would be starting with about 283,500 pixels.
So ... it is theoretically possible to get better 16:9 from the camera than you'd get by converting in post; even if you had excellent interpolation software. You will still lose some resolution, because only part of the sensor can be used. The difference in chroma samples would be even more significant, but I don't want Eddie's head to explode (miniDV PAL samples chroma on every other line). Of course, these numbers are all based on theoretical maximums and the final arbiter should be real world testing and subjective analysis.
In laymen's terms: Try it, and see if you like it.
Man, we've got to stop ganging up on Eddie!
To reiterate my last post in more simple terms, Eddie ... don't buy any new equipment until you determine, through real-world testing and comparison that it will actually be justified. You might find that a good microphone will do more for your production quality than a slight improvement in sharpness from an anamophic adaptor. A good way to "preview" what the anamophic adaptor will do on your camera is to shoot some video in 4:3 (so you get the benefit of the entire CCD area), then tell your editing software, or playback software that the video is actually 16:9. You should then see the image stretched horizontally, but with the full image quality. Compare that to something similar shot with the camera set to 16:9 and see how much difference there is in sharpness. The anamorphic adaptor would fix the image so it wouldn't look stretched, but it won't provide any more sharpness than the 4:3 image that you forced to 16:9 by stretching.
I hope that makes sense. If it doesn't, let me know, and I'll post some sample images to describe how you can compare for yourself, and make an informed decision. Image sharpness isn't everything, and the difference may not be that great. Your production may benefit more from some other piece of equipment.
Eddie, I have no idea what you just said. I know I've probably confused you, but now we're even.
If you do want 16:9, you should try some experiments. Your experiments should probably go from camera all the way to DVD and into your set-top DVD player. That way you are sure you have an end-to-end solution and a complete understanding of where you're going to end up.
Do not assume you can make the decision after you start shooting a feature.
Finally, I'm sure Adobe Premiere Pro can handle anamophic and/or crop and resize to create anamorphic video. Someone who uses Premiere Pro can verify that. I know that Premiere 6.5 on the Mac could do it. What you can do, and how well it turns out, is going to be more dependant on your understanding of your tools.
I hope you're happy, now that we're both confused and some lady flipped you the bird!
I'm not confused. I think with all the new techniques i have learned i have moved on from being just the enthusiastic amatuer i once was.
The footage i shot of the woman giving me the bird was a bit unclear being fairly late at night when i was filming, and i have not seen her since. However i will be doing some more test shots and am quite interested in taking a shot of the full Moon, which i think is quite photogenic.
The footage i shot of the woman giving me the bird was a bit unclear being fairly late at night when i was filming, and i have not seen her since. However i will be doing some more test shots and am quite interested in taking a shot of the full Moon, which i think is quite photogenic.
Ok, heres an interesting question. A filmmaking buddy was telling me that the Brad Pitt movie Se7en had a very blue colouring to the picture. I always think that light blue gives a "very cold" look to the picture (certainly does with my stills photography) so would you agree this effect can be created by using a light blue sheet of paper to the lens during a white balance test, instead of white?
We need to get Knightly a wizard's hat. I think he's got to be one of the most knowledgable people around, and he has links for everything, that he can produce with only a moment's notice!
Just to add to what Knightly said, there are white cards you can buy (but they are sort of expensive for a piece of cardboard!) which will give you a warm, or cool white balance. You do use the reverse color, because you're telling the camera to make that color white, which means the camera is counter-balancing the color, or moving away from it. The point I'd like to make is that you use a very subtle color shift. Too much will be a disaster. This is another effect that you'd better test.
I prefer to shoot for perfect white balance and add my color correction as the final step in post. Fixing bad color balance is harder than adding a color cast, in my experience. Also, if you are going to composite your footage with stock video, or you do some shots on green screen and add those to background plates, or do any CG work, adding the color correction in the final pass will insure that everything matches up as well as possible.
Just to add to what Knightly said, there are white cards you can buy (but they are sort of expensive for a piece of cardboard!) which will give you a warm, or cool white balance. You do use the reverse color, because you're telling the camera to make that color white, which means the camera is counter-balancing the color, or moving away from it. The point I'd like to make is that you use a very subtle color shift. Too much will be a disaster. This is another effect that you'd better test.
I prefer to shoot for perfect white balance and add my color correction as the final step in post. Fixing bad color balance is harder than adding a color cast, in my experience. Also, if you are going to composite your footage with stock video, or you do some shots on green screen and add those to background plates, or do any CG work, adding the color correction in the final pass will insure that everything matches up as well as possible.
Thanks Knightly and OSPV. The colour wheel sites are very interesting for translating which colour creates another colour in the picture, and i suppose i could buy a white card for a purely white balance. However trying out different colours would at this stage be experimental, depending on the mood of the scene i want to create.
p.s. I wasn't suggesting that you buy a white card. I was just pointing out that this is a proven technique, and they have specific cards that will give you a warm, or cool look. The warm cards are used by wedding videographers. If you're shooting hours of [event] video and you know you want a certain look, then it's worth shooting for that look. Don't waste your money on a funny colored piece of paper!
FWIW, the first link you provided knightly is incorrect. 
Though the picture with the green and yellow plant is fantastic! Part of the issue arises from the fact that painting is subtractive in nature (in which case CMY would be your primaries - I know knightly is well aware of this) as well as being due in large part to the opponent processing that our visual system utilizes.
Like OakStreet I prefer to add a color cast in post. It's a lot easier than trying to get the hue just with a colored card. Sometimes there just aren't nearly enough accurate cards for the right hue.
Though the picture with the green and yellow plant is fantastic! Part of the issue arises from the fact that painting is subtractive in nature (in which case CMY would be your primaries - I know knightly is well aware of this) as well as being due in large part to the opponent processing that our visual system utilizes.Like OakStreet I prefer to add a color cast in post. It's a lot easier than trying to get the hue just with a colored card. Sometimes there just aren't nearly enough accurate cards for the right hue.