Super 8 and Hi-def

Post by **disjecta** » Tue Apr 06, 2004 5:04 pm

I see that Sony is soon to release a 3CCD chip HDV camera and I'm wondering how this would work with a Workprinter. The captured Super 8 footage should be better than even the best Rank transfer, don't you think?

Post by **LastQuark** » Tue Apr 06, 2004 5:58 pm

The HDV will not require a Workprinter. Transfer is directly from the camcorder to your PC. If fact, there will be no encoding involved since the files will already be stored in mpeg2 format.

Super 8 is widely known to have highter resolution than DV. It could be a stretch, on the other hand, for HDV.

The real issue is will the new Sony HDV capable of 24P? It doesn't appear it will so far. Regardless, having that film look in camcorders is still a long way to go.

The other issue is obsolesence. Let me guess. After HDV...

EDV - Extra High Definition
SDV - Super High Definition
UDV - Ultra High Definition
UUDV - Ultimate Ultra High Definition (He, he!)

Each of which makes the previous format obsolete!
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Post by **disjecta** » Tue Apr 06, 2004 9:53 pm

LastQuark wrote:The HDV will not require a Workprinter. Transfer is directly from the camcorder to your PC.
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Not sure what you mean by that. You have to shoot from something in order to transfer Super 8 to digital and I wouldn't be shooting off a screen.

Post by **LastQuark** » Tue Apr 06, 2004 10:11 pm

disjecta wrote:
LastQuark wrote:The HDV will not require a Workprinter. Transfer is directly from the camcorder to your PC.
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Not sure what you mean by that. You have to shoot from something in order to transfer Super 8 to digital and I wouldn't be shooting off a screen.

Ok. I'm getting you now. The HDV is a widescreen 16:9 from the ground up. If it can be set to a 3:2, there is no reason why a WP will not work perfectly. The other option is to shoot it at 16:9, then crop the final result in your NLE software.

I heard Rank Transfer is a different animal by itself. There is a wet gate, which WP doesn't have and color correction capabilities. It should be the same argument as the WP vs Rand at present except with a HDV, the resolution will be much greater than DV.
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Post by **disjecta** » Tue Apr 06, 2004 10:31 pm

My intention would be to shoot 4x3 with my Super 8 camera but with widescreen in mind and then use the HDV via the workprinter to shoot 16x9 by cutting the top and bottom off the original frame by zooming in enough. Final output would be widescreen HDTV. Sounds cool...

Post by **francis** » Mon May 31, 2004 5:28 am

there are three levels of HD. any consumer product wont touch the quality of even the lowest one. super8 neg is very high quality and id use it over pro HD. as for transfer, your going to get flicker if the projector isnt crystal synced. id consider single frame grabbing with a digital camera

Post by **zetetick** » Mon May 31, 2004 6:18 am

Though super-8 has a higher theoretical resolution than digital formats like DV, factors such as image stability, optics, film grain, etc, have a counterbalancing effect on perceived image quality.

disjecta's recent DVX100 24p transfer of his own super-8 film looked flicker-free to my eyes.

I will try to repeat his experiments soon with my own DVX100, and will post, for comparison, a RANK transfer of the same footage.

Post by **francis** » Mon May 31, 2004 6:27 am

well, being me i just had to respond.

image stability:

super8 has a problem no doubt. this is largly removed by using a pressure plate or going to double super8

optics:
your cheaper dv cameras have crap optics. you cant even remove the lens and use a prime. the better ones have nicer glass wich may be as sharp as an older cine lens.

as for grain, its that grain that gets you the better image. sure youll get a grainer image in super8 if you use reversals but its lessened on the neg to the point that its not there anymore.

the other thing you can do with film that you cannot do with video is get infinite blowup. what that means is you can blow up film images and get an image, it may be grainy as hell but its an image. digital video is made of blocks. you blow them up far enough and you are left with a picture made of lego. if you dont beleive me, try blowing up a digital pic on your computer 10 times. then go blow up a super8 film frame on paper ten times. i know wich will look more like a picture.

Post by **mattias** » Mon May 31, 2004 11:20 am

francis wrote:digital video is made of blocks. you blow them up far enough and you are left with a picture made of lego.

only if you do it the wrong way. :-) there are plenty of methods to recreate the original signal from the samples for infinite enlargement of any digital image. genuine fractals is probably the best (http://www.lizardtech.com/), but there's also a free unix tool called pnmleoscale (http://www.students.tut.fi/~leopold/Sha ... mleoscale/).

/matt

Post by **christoph** » Mon May 31, 2004 11:43 am

mattias wrote:there are plenty of methods to recreate the original signal from the samples for infinite enlargement of any digital image. genuine fractals is probably the best (http://www.lizardtech.com/), but there's also a free unix tool called pnmleoscale (http://www.students.tut.fi/~leopold/Sha ... mleoscale/).

thanks for this hint matt.. i've never heard of genuine fractals but scanning through a few reviews this thing really seems to rock.. did you ever use it yourself?

++ christoph ++

Post by **Scotness** » Mon May 31, 2004 12:19 pm

The problem with these programmes though is you can't invent detail that was never in the original - edges and curves etc can be smoothed but I think these programmes advise you only to enlarge so many times (I think it's 200 for s-spline) don't know abuot this one (unless if they're one in the same and I'm getting them mixed up! - it's been a while since I've looked into it -- i don't think these methods are the saviour of blowing up dv or Super 8 -- I think originating on 16mm is

I think as far as it being better than a Rank transfer I don't think it will be - and Roger's stated that WP's won't out perform a Rank a few times - but I think it will be the next best thing! I don't think it's about the extra resolution from going to HD but it's about the way the images are presented and captured in the two different methods.

To illustrate what I mean about the enlargement method - imagine a newspaper in the shot - the headline might be readable but the rest of the text might not be - if you enlarge it by these methods you'll get bigger smoother unreadable text - but if its a photographic original and you enlarge it optically you'll get some increased detail and readability - the biger the neg the better the enlargement will be

Scot

Post by **mattias** » Mon May 31, 2004 12:30 pm

christoph wrote:did you ever use it yourself?

yes, and it works great. only tried it with stills though.

Scotness wrote:The problem with these programmes though is you can't invent detail that was never in the original

well, neither can an optical blowup, so in this context it doesn't matter.

but if its a photographic original and you enlarge it optically you'll get some increased detail

no.

/matt

Post by **christoph** » Mon May 31, 2004 12:53 pm

mattias wrote:
christoph wrote:did you ever use it yourself?
yes, and it works great. only tried it with stills though.

good to know i'll give it a try ...

funny, this got me started into some research and it appears that you can also improve scaling by resampling in small steps... like 100%->105%->110%->...->200% instead of doing it in one step 100%->200%. this is easy to do with photoshop actions or a small script.

somebody from a major digital posthouse here in berlin told me that they use shake for upsampling images for best results... might be a bit expensive for the average super8 filmmaker though ;)

++ christoph ++

Post by **mattias** » Mon May 31, 2004 1:04 pm

christoph wrote:funny, this got me started into some research and it appears that you can also improve scaling by resampling in small steps...

yeah, that gets rid of some artifacts, but sharpness will suffer.

/matt

Post by **Scotness** » Mon May 31, 2004 11:58 pm

mattias wrote:
Scotness wrote:The problem with these programmes though is you can't invent detail that was never in the original
well, neither can an optical blowup, so in this context it doesn't matter.
but if its a photographic original and you enlarge it optically you'll get some increased detail
no.

/matt

So you're telling me pixels can hold more information than molecules?

These kinds of enlargement methods are best suited to pictures for bill boards etc - imagine a medium resolution pic that has to get blown up to a huge bill board add - if you blow it up straight it'll look like crap - if you blow it up with this kind of software from a distance it will look okay - but that's because you view it from a distance and you'd never see alot of detail anyway even if it was there (it would all recede). The beauty of 35mm film is that you can sit really close to a projector screen and see the detail - i remember sitting really close to T3 and having detail reveal itself that I wouldn't have seen had I been sitting further back - if you go up close to a bill board add enlarged with this software you won't see the detail because it's not there. The makers of this software advise you of it's limitations. Maybe it's an unfair comparison using 35mm - and the detail will diminish as you go down the film frame sizes but I'm still definately with film on this one - though I agree I don't think you'd get too far with a Super 8 optical blow up.