Vimeo HD now has 720p support. So users with HD cameras can upload their footage in 720p HD format. It looks fabulous, have a look here and go full screen with it.

I have a few problems with the whole thing though: they seem to re-encode at 24fps, even if you shot in 60i. For God’s sake, re-encode NTSC HD video at 29.97 fps, not 24 (unless it’s shot at 24). And I really, REALLY, hope that when they say “24 fps”, they actually mean 23.976, which is the correct IVTC 24p frame rate. Because if I record with my HV20 true progressive 24p at 23.976 (after removing pulldown) and these guys are re-encoding at 24fps instead after I upload my footage, they will mess up the A/V sync real good.

Also, make sure you do the following four things, like YouTube correctly does it:
1. De-interlace the material, if the uploaded footage is not de-interlaced, many users don’t know how to de-interlace (yes, youtube is able to detect and correct that).
2. If the audio is mono (which is very common if the videographer used an external microphone), re-encode as stereo.
3. Support WMV as Sony Vegas Movie Studio does not support any other HD “delivery format”, so users of Vegas won’t have another option.
4. Recognize and respect aspect ratios.

It’s little things like that this that still bring some value to Youtube: actual engineering. Although I must say, Vimeo looks promising to videographers like myself.

Among newbie videographers it’s a difficult concept to understand the difference between video formats that are meant for “video work” and for formats that are meant for “viewing”. So, here’s a quick rundown.

There are times where you need to do things like the following:
* Transfer your already edited footage from one application to another.
* Transfer your already edited footage from one video project to another.
* Insert an originally 50i/60i footage to a 24p timeline.
* Time-stretch your footage more than 4x (at least on Vegas you need to export and re-import to stretch another 4x).
* You shot your video in uncompressed format and you need to make the file sizes smaller.
* You need a format that’s more suitable for editing.
* Archive your edited footage.

For these usages, you need a “lossless” codec format that doesn’t lose quality during the export. Such codecs are: Cineform, Lagarith, Huffyuv, Intel Cinepack, Apple Intermediate Format, plain uncompressed and lots more. Please note that lossless codecs create huge files. For example, a 15 second HD footage will yield a 300 MB file, and although this sounds too much and it’s slow to decode, it is nothing compared to 3 GBs that the “uncompressed” codec will yield for the same HD footage. The slowness and huge files pay you back with no loss of quality. I would suggest you go with Cineform if your NLE has import/export support for it (Vegas ships with a “medium quality” licensed copy of Cineform), or the open source Lagarith codec (to configure Lagarith to create smaller files you will need to follow steps 9 to 11). If you are exporting to something like FFmpeg, Mencoder or Avidemux2, you will need to use Huffyuv (follow steps 2 and 3 to configure it to create smaller files before its first usage).

The final part you will need to understand is that most of these lossless codecs are saved as “avi” or “mov”. These filetypes are not codec formats, but container formats. They are simply file formats that “hosts” inside them different kinds of codecs. This is why it’s possible to have DivX .avi files, and Cineform or Lagarith .avi files and yet, the same media player that can play one .avi format can’t necessarily play another. Just by looking at the file name you can’t tell which format “lives” inside that .avi or .mov file. You will have to use applications that can read these formats and tell you what’s saved inside. Same goes for .mp4, .mkv, .ogg and other container formats. Apple is saving their Intermediate Format lossless codec files in .mov, but so it does for all the other kinds of codec formats, so you will need to open Quicktime’s “inspector” window to find out how these files were encoded. Other container formats are the open source implementations of .mkv Matroska files and the .ogg files (which can host both Vorbis audio and Theora video — Vorbis is the audio codec, Theora is the video codec, and OGG is the container format that can host them both).

Regarding “end user” viewing formats (also known as “delivery formats”), these are, but not limited to, codecs like h.264, DivX/XViD, WMV, plain mpeg-4, mpeg2, mpeg, Theora, 3GP/h.263, FLV and many more. These are all “lossy” codecs and are meant for distribution and user viewing only. They compress very well (e.g. the 300 MB file we talked about earlier can be compressed down to 10 MBs with one of these babies), but being lossy it means that the quality is not as good as the original footage. This is ok though, as most people don’t notice much, and having small filesizes helps with the delivery and easier playback aspects.

The rule of thumb is that you can export in lossless formats as many times as it is required to do your job, but only export to a lossy “delivery” format ONCE. This way, you minimize the loss of quality on the final render — the one that’s meant to reach your viewership.

My personal preferences that are the best bets for compatibility, are: Lagarith for intermediate format usages between Windows applications, Huffyuv for intermediate format usages when I need to export to Linux-oriented apps, the (unfortunately) lossy .m2t mpeg2 format if I need to export for Mac video applications, and h.264/AAC (inside the .mp4 container) for user distribution on the internet and video playback devices. Of course, if you have the cash, you can buy the full Cineform suite that will allow you to use their “best quality setting” for their codec on both PCs and Macs (not Linux though). However, if you only work with a single operating system, then there are free solutions that perform as well.

I want one… So my HV20 footage looks like this, instead of like this. But getting a good one costs $700+lenses (sample footage). Building one from scratch is not easy, and it costs almost as much anyway. Ah… I hope Canon comes up with something like this soon.

Weeeeeeeee…….

Not very smooth I am afraid. Nothing beats a steadycam. But under certain conditions, this is an acceptable product. My review is here.

This is for Mike, who requested a lightsaber video so he can make fun of me. Here you are. I can tell you right now, it’s hard work going frame by frame, so I didn’t do a great job. Special effects will be one reason why movies will never move to 60fps.

I just hate it how the same video file looks so different on TV and on a computer screen. After lots of trial and error, I was able to get with Vegas a picture that looks good on my TV (playing h.264 via the Sony PS3), even if it looks weird on the PC screen. Vegas already has a “Computer RGB to Studio RGB” template under its “Color Corrector” plugin, but this was not enough to make my footage look good on our Sharp rear projection CRT TV.

So, you bring up the “Color Corrector” plugin, and you change the following:
Saturation: 1200 to 1250 depending on the scene.
Gain: 0.750
Gamma: 0.950
Offset: 16.0

Basically, you just need to f*ck up the RGB histogram by narrowing it down, and making it look completely unnatural and warm on the PC screen in order to look normal on (my) TV. Your mileage may vary, so you will have to do your own tests.

I wish more people were color grading their digital pictures.

Picture by schizoform, released under the CC-BY license:

Picture by foxypar4, released under the CC-BY license:

Graded under Sony Vegas:
Contrast: 0.05
Saturation: 1500
Gamma: 0.800

The most popular HV20 sample video is Solomon Chase’s “Rainy Day“, which I have blogged about before (720p version here). He never revealed exactly how he color graded his footage, so tonight I got to work and tried to reproduce it. Here’s my result:

And here’s how I graded it.

I tested the Kodak Z1275 digicam tonight, which has the unique ability to record 720/30p video. Video comes out ok, although there is no image stabilization, autofocus when zooming in/out is problematic, and the on board microphone is not good. But as long as you use a tripod, you are interested in sceneries with background music and no voice, and you don’t zoom too much, it can substitute for a camcorder (it records 15 mins of HD video on a 1 GB SD card — that bitrate could have been better too).

I also posted a review of Cineform’s NeoHD over at FreshDV.

I mentioned last week that it would be nice to have a consumer camcorder geared towards the amateur filmmaker/artist. Here are some specs of the envisioned product:

* A body like the JVC Everio HD7. A hybrid between a consumer camcorder and the Canon GL-2. Painted dark red, mmm…
* 2/3s CMOS chip (or at least 1/2″) which enables a good amount of background blur and adjustable DOF. CMOS is preferable over 3CCD because in order to get the same amount of background blur with 3CCD, the chips will have to be 3x the size, and that would make the camera and lens way too big for the kind of product I am talking about. CMOS quality is good too.
* Enough dynamic range.
* Wide-angle built-in good all-around lens, that allows for 52mm filters.
* No more than 5x optical zoom is required for this kind of targeted product (especially because with the 2/3s CMOS it would be difficult to offer anything more than 5x, or the lens would be huge).
* Optical image stabilization.
* A focus ring. This is a must have. Preferably controllable by the remote control too.
* A removable lens hood.
* 80 GB non-removable iPod-sized hard drive (good for 7-8 hours of 1080p AVCHD). An additional SD slot just in case you run out of space.
* Two rocker-style dials for controlling aperture and exposure (they don’t have to be rings on the lens but they have to be easily controllable without the need of software menus).
* A focus assist and turn on/off manual focus button.
* An HDMI, USB 2.0, headphones jack, RCA-out, and component-out.
* An on-board stereo mic with included wind muff (I don’t care if it would look like a hairy vagina).
* A 3.5mm microphone jack (no reason for XLRs).
* An easy to reach button that immediately brings a special screen where you can quickly adjust: aperture, exposure, shutter speed, gain, white balance and audio levels — independently.
* An easy to reach button that immediately brings a special screen where you can quickly adjust: contrast, brightness, sharpness, saturation, ND filters etc.
* Shutter speed up to 1/4000th (HV20 only goes up to 1/2000th, and that’s not enough for some scenes of rock music video clip look). Zebra support.
* A basic flash light. It’s not a very useful tool for filmmaking-purposes anyway.
* A big enough, comfortable viewfinder.
* A battery that lasts 120 mins.
* A 3″ widescreen LCD with some controls on it, and the ability to FLIP the picture (so we can use 35mm adapters).
* A kind of zoom control button as found on the Canon semi-pro cameras.
* Ability to record progressive full HD 1920×1080 at 30p and 24p, at 24 mbps (AVCHD’s maximum quality). 30p/24p must be TRUE 30p/24p, without wrappers to 60i or needed [inverse] telecine. We had enough trouble with that pullup/down shit already all these years and especially with the HV20.
* Ability to also record anamorphic 1440×1080/60i at around 18-20 mbps. It would also be nice to not have different camera models for PAL and NTSC, but let the user decide the frame rate he/she wants to use.
* A CINEMODE preset, as found on the Canon HV20 (which has a better dynamic range and film look).
* A tripod locking pin in addition to a tripod hole.
* ND filter control (if the lens has any).
* A hot shoe.

That camera is within the reach of Canon for $2000. I would call it the “Mini” and it would be geared towards hobbyist artists (which are one step below true indie filmmakers). Kinda like how the D200 and 40D DSLRs are, geared towards hobbyists who know a thing or two more than the mass market and their point-and-shoot no-background-blur digicams, but yet, they are not true professionals. Know what I mean?

Then, throw some XLRs, 120 GB laptop drive which is removable, ability to also record in the Lagarith or Cineform lossless formats (an 120GB drive will fit 60+ mins of lossless HD in the YUY2 colorspace), removable EOS lenses, a bigger body, better built-in mic, more buttons and custom presets, and sell that “pro” version for $4000 and go against the RED camera by wooing the real indie filmmakers in.

Currently, neither Panasonic, Canon or Sony have anything comparable to RED regarding the film-look. Their semi-pro cameras don’t have big-enough sensors for the film-look purpose. Only Panasonic comes close with its DVX/HVX series, but these cameras are still far from ideal. I hope Canon listens, because there is such an unsatisfiable market right now. Check for video samples from that underground scene here and here.