• Wondering which camera, gear, computer, or software to buy? Ask in our Gear Guide.

help please. first indie film

N

Noam_gr

Guest
hi, I'm 17 years old and im working on my first independent film. im animating and editing and directing the whole thing and it looks REALY AMAZING. but i'm making it all in digital format and then exporting it into a dvd (the whole project will be done in about 2 years).
I am self tought and never took any film production classes, i've already won some awards with some of my past shorts. but i've noticed that some of the bigger film festivals don't accept dvds, they ask for "35mm, 16mm, Beta SP NTSC/ PAL or digiBETA NTSC/ PAL". does anyone know if it's possible to transfer a dvd into those formats and how much it would cost me to do so? \
thank's for your time.
 
You want to go from an uncompressed media to tape, not DVD to tape. You would be safe with BetaSP.
 
PS. You can wait until you are accepted to see what you need. Just be prepared to get it when accepted.
 
Well, I don't know anything about transfers to film from DVD let alone festivals...

Just wondering if you have a website or similar, for people to check out? Always fun to read about successes and works in progress. :cool:
 
i dont have any of them online. but ive presented a couple to some student film festivals and people real enjoyed, thisd producer from new york (im from canada) REALY liked it and now theyre going to show one of them at a children's film festival (it's an educational video with an "edge". it's like southpark meets the discovery channel).
right now im working on a real ambitious project thats going to be about 30 mins when its done and so far its realy awsome (at least for me, im realy proud of it, its like nothing ive ever done before)... when its done (in bout 2 years) i will try to get it online.

when you say uncompressed media, what do you meen? i usualy export my files from final cut express in mpeg-4 format and from there burn it into a dvd. but sinse it was filmed with a home digital camera (res 720 x 480) the dvd doesnt lower the res.
so can i still put it into a betasp from the dvd or is there a different reason why i souldnt do so? where do i go to get it transfered? and how much would that cost?
thanks for helping me out, i realy need to know all this technical stuff.
 
when you say uncompressed media, what do you meen? i usualy export my files from final cut express in mpeg-4 format and from there burn it into a dvd. but sinse it was filmed with a home digital camera (res 720 x 480) the dvd doesnt lower the res.

Now *this* I can help with :)

This is where codecs come into play. There are two types of codecs (short for "Compressor/Decompressor"). You have "lossy" and "lossless".

Mpeg-4 is "lossy". That means sacrifices are made in video quality upon compression. The end result may still look rather good (depending on export settings), but rest assured that a *lot* of raw data has been dropped during the compression.

Other codecs are "lossless", meaning they retain every single last bit of video information... and these lossless files tend to be a lot bigger than a "lossy" file set to 100%.

Going back to your original premise of "it was originally DV, then MPEG'd to DVD... quality must be the same". That is just not the case. Your very raw "uncompressed DV"* will take up roughly 13 gigs, per hour, on your hard drive. That same footage compressed to an MPEG format suitable for DVD burning must be no larger than a 4 gig DVD disc total. (And a DVD will play for much longer than one hour) What happened to those additional gigs of data? Well, some of it may have been squished in size... but the a large chunk has been tossed. (The end result still looks pretty darn good to the human eye, though.)

_______

Now I don't know much about transferring from video to film... but I would suspect that using an uncompressed source would yield far better results in the transfer. Especially as real film doesn't have actual "lines of resolution" to compare to. The more information in your original source, the better the blown-up film image would look... and by compressing that in MPEG/DVD format, there is a lot less to use.

_______

* "uncompressed DV" - actually even that's not quite accurate, as DV is its own codec technically.

Here's a quick look at some codecs and a brief look at how they work, too. (and what to use some of them for)

Edit: Here's another link... which has different ideas on what codec is an abbreviation for, too. :cool:
 
Last edited:
Transfer

When you are done with your project in Final Cut make an uncompressed movie out of it and print to tape (in your case DV), then if you don't have a deck take the dv and get it transfered to Beta SP or DigiBeta. Most festivals will screen in these formats. I would check submissions guidlines, most festivals will accept submissions in VHS and DVD, but only screen in 35mm, 16mm, Beta SP or DigiBeta. So submit on VHS or DVD and if you get in then cough up the cash for the transfer (Beta SP would be the cheapest, but DigiBeta would look better). Film transfers are really expensive, and unless you are getting theatrical distribution are not worth the cash. Good luck.
 
Back
Top