As usual, I am part of a heated discussion over at DVinfo about video stuff (and you can ignore that note from the admin, who didn’t understand that I was talking about the HV20 format and not their semi-pro cameras when I talked about 3:2 pulldown). The opposing guy this time is the Grammy-winner Douglas Spotted Eagle, who I blogged about before. Douglas believes that 24p (inside a 60i stream, or a real progressive one) is not a consumer format and it should never be one. In fact, he claims that Canon made a big mistake by adding 24p on their consumer HDV camcorders.

Personally, I beg to differ and so do some others. I agree with Douglas that most consumer NLEs don’t have support for 24p yet (heck, not even Final Cut Express does), and it’s a format that looks bad if you try to shoot fast moving action, like sports. However, Douglas forgets a part of the consumers who are actually prosumers. Much like myself. These are users who would like some exotic features, who know what is what, but they are not willing to pay $3000 to get these features. Instead, the “sweet” spot seems to be at around $1500. Oh, wait a second. Isn’t that the price of most HDV cameras? And if Canon made a mistake to include 24p in their HV20, why is the HV20 the best selling HDV camcorder ever, with sales pushed exactly because of its 24p/cinemode support?

His reaction felt elitistic and pessimistic, rather than genuine concern for the consumer. As with any new feature that gets ‘downgraded’ and becomes a consumer feature, there will have to be a time of adjustment. And in fact, we are going faster towards the 24p adjustment in terms of consumer NLE software support rather than AVCHD support. Besides, both the new consumer versions of Sony Vegas Movie Studio and Premiere LE support 24p now (even if unofficially) and more will follow.

I don’t believe that every point-and-shooter should have access to 24p, because it indeed might confuse them, but prosumers should.

Here’s a chart on how I catalog video customers:
1. Cheapos: Digicams and cheap digi-recorders up to $200.
2. Point and shoot consumers: miniDV up to $800.
3. Prosumers: $800 to $2000.
4. Semi-Pro: $2000 to $10000.
5. Pro: $10,000 to $200,000.

It seems that what I enjoy most in the whole videography thing, is color grading. I enjoy that even more than shooting, or editing. Shooting tires me, editing frustrates me (especially because I am good at finding bugs all over the place), and exporting bores me as it takes forever to encode. But color grading, well, that’s fun! Here’s some nice dramatic color grading. I used the footage I shot tonight, which has lots of noise because of the low light in the room, but I think the result shows my point.

As shot

After color grading

How it’s achieved (for these specific light conditions) under Vegas:

1. Plugin Magic Bullet Movie Looks HD: “Bleach Bypass” to 50%.
2. Brightness and Contrast plugin: Contrast at 0.10.
3. Color corrector plugin:
- Studio RGB to Computer RGB template.
- White balance the Mid and Highs.
4. Aav6cc freeware plugin: Jack up saturation to 60% for the most prominent color in the scene (in my case, my yellow t-shirt).

Update: Some more color correcting and grading. Original image by Wonderlane, licensed under the CC-BY-NC license. Used here for educational purposes.

As shot

After correcting & color grading

Plugins used: Magic Bullet Movie Looks HD (”Green Pearl at 50%”), Contrast (at 0.10), and Color Corrector (white balance color correction, saturation 1.200 and Gain at 1.100).

My first ever special effects work. Sure, it ain’t very good (I only spent 10 mins on it), but it was fun.

Next up, be prepared to see me with a Jedi lightsaber. Hehehe…

You know. I am talking about these semi-pro cameras that cost between $2500 to $8500. Usually manufactured by Panasonic, Canon and Sony. These 24p cameras produce a very high quality HD image and are pretty adjustable/customizable to even make their footage look cinematic. And yet, cheap TV series still don’t use them. Only TV news and Indies are using them mostly.

We were watching “The Shield” with JBQ the other night and we were put off on how pedestrian the look was. The lighting was minimal (they had to overexpose in many scenes in order to make it look not too dark) and there was no color grading whatsoever apart from the basic white balance. Obviously, a “cheap” TV series. And yet, when we read its tech specs on IMDb, they used an Arri camera. You know, these ones that usually cost between $60,000 to $120,000. And then they have to develop and scan the film too.

My question is: WHY? The look of that TV series could easily be captured with a semi-pro camera without even sweating on it. Why spend all that money when you can do the same job with cheaper tools?

Here’s how I did this video-looking scene:

to look so filmy on Sony Vegas:

Plugin Magic Bullet Movie Looks HD (third party): Green Pearl on 10%
Plugin Color Corrrector: Saturation: 1500, Gamma: 1.100, Gain: 1.100

Sure the blacks are crushed, but it looks so cool…

Last night FOX debuted its new drama called “K-Ville“. Twice, there were shots that didn’t have continuity and this apparently annoyed the hell out of a lot of viewers. The two shots were like this: “The bad guys are shooting, the cops are shooting back. In the next scene the cops are on their car pursuing the shooters”. What’s missing is the “middle” shot of having the cops running towards the car and getting in it.

I am 100% certain that this was an *artistic* choice of the director to cut into action so sharply (rather that time constraints or bad editing). Unfortunately, the trick didn’t work. People are complaining that it was “bad directing”, while in reality it was done on purpose. It just didn’t work though, it felt weird. Perhaps that’s because people are used to a specific directing style, or because it was just that bad…

On other FOX news, “Prison Break” only had 7.5 mil viewers last night. This is going to be its last season for sure, I just hope that FOX won’t cancel the show before there is a resolution.

“This is just my opinion here, but they could all [TV, DVDs] become obsolete. The industry could go straight to broadband downloading, with filmmakers creating their own websites where they have their own material that you can download. I really believe that is the future of television, of all entertainment”, says Star Wars producer Rick McCallum on an interview about the new Star Wars live action series.

You can emulate the “Matrix” look using Vegas built-in color plugins in a way that resembles almost exactly ‘Magic Bullet for Editor’s 2.0′ third party plugin. Here’s how it looks (higher quality version here, 5 MB):

And here’s how I did it (keep plugins in that order):
Brightness & Contrast plugin: Contrast at 0.15 (or 0.20 if you shot in Canon’s “Cinemode”)
Color Corrector plugin:
Low: Angle: 225.0 Magnitude: 0.263
Mid: Angle: 174.6 Magnitude: 0.327
High: Angle: 229.8.0 Magnitude: 0.264
Saturation: 0.500
Color Balance plugin: Green on 0.0250 and the “Highlights” radio button checked.

I tried the trick for smooth panning today. It works as advertised! It’s amazing how a $0.05 item can add so much value and quality to your work! Explanation of the trick here and here. Right click to “save link as” this 2 MB .mp4 video where it shows how a panning looks like when using your hand to move the tripod fluid head’s handle, and how it looks when using the rubber band.

Conclusion: if you are shooting video and you do pans regularly, make sure you bought a tripod with a fluid head and you use that rubber band trick!

There has been a discussion on the Vegas forum that the built-in color tools are “enough” to do just about anything regarding the film looks you are after. I beg to differ. When the third party plugin Magic Bullet for Editors 2.0 charges $400 for the job, it does so because it can get away with it. It indeed does things that are not possible with Vegas’ own plugins or even plugins like the freeware Aav6cc. It is able to apply coloring on specific “similar colors” only and leave the rest unmodified. When I try to do the same with the built-in/freeware tools everything turns orange, including the greens. Here’s a video (.mp4 version here, 5 MBs) with the original footage, my attempt to emulate the CSI:Miami look using the free tools, and how Magic Bullet does it:

In other words: if you need a specific job to be done right, shell the cash. Everything has a price, especially for something that works well and can’t be done otherwise.

UPDATE: Check the eugenia.png image here, it shows how close you can get to the Magic Bullet version. Plugin settings are included (requires Vegas Pro, not doable with Movie Studio because VMS does not come with the CCSecondary plugin).