EN: Fighting with HDV Compression Artifacts

I knew before I started shooting with HDV that I would face problems in postproduction when it comes to bluescreening and color correction. Just the amount of problem I would face was always in question. Well lets put it that way: If you are doing any filming and plan on doing ANY postproduction forget about HDV alltogether. I have never seen a worse quality movie under my fingertips and I deeply regret going HDV now. All resolution advantages go out the window if you do even the slightest bit of contrast or individual color correction and the image looks like it has been blown up from 160x120 badly compressed webmovie. The whole picture - even with a locked off camera that has minimal movement starts to shift and wobble. I do not understand how anyone would buy such a camera or even recommend it - especially for VJing where you almost always add coloring effects onto the picture. Its bad and if there is gain grain in the picture shots are almost absolutely unusable. Bluescreens have huge edges that even badly shoot DV footage can do better (and it bad there already). HDV is a a technology that can easely be skipped if you are in the market for a new camera get the Panasonic which has twice the compression data rate then the "normal" HDV cameras and hope that this gives you a bit more room. I fully understand now why professionals talk about "doing everything in camera" with HDV because the footage that you shoot is the footage that you get. I am introducing heavy graining to divert from the compression artifacts now and it has cost me 4 days to pull a decent bluescreen. If you have the choice between HDV and something uncompressed normal resolution go with the uncompressed normal resolution you will have better quality after all.

EN: Game Engine with Realtime Global Illumination, SubDs and Displacement

It was just a matter of time - but noone really was expecting it so early. Fantasylab - a california based video game developing company has created a new game engine that features global illumination - in realtime. Why is this so significant? Well Global Illumination enables self glowing objects, softshadows and all kinds of other real world lightning effects and in the end would give a movie making application that sits on top of this game engine a very realistic output that - by judging from the pictures - gives you a quality that comes close to the first Pixar Toy Story Movie - in real time without a renderfarm. On top of GI this render engine can also handle subdivision models and displacement mapping to give the characters unpreceded detail in an realtime environment. The days of the overnight 3d renderers are counted I guess.

More Infos on their site:http://www.fantasylab.com/newPages/FantasyEngineFeatures.html

The Film-Camera Revolution

Crosspost from LifeAsAnArtificialLifeform
Long has it been that indy filmmakers have craved for professional shots just to get DV compression and even more HDV compression over the years while Hobby photographers were outshooting the pros with under 1.000 Euro cameras. Last year panasonic announced the AG-HVX200 to the masses and set out to take over the indy filmmaker market that isn´t falling for the HDV compression hoax Sony and its followers wants to to hype the world with. While competitively priced to the Sony and JVC HDV offerings it sported 4 times the datarate at 4:2:2 (like DigiBetacam the profession broadcast standard) instead of the lousy 4:2:0 of the HDV that shows compression artifacts from ten kilometers away and that virtually kills all post production color correction and keying. On top of declaring war on compression Panasonic also declared war on the tape by including two P2 card slots and an uncompressed firewire out stream - for easy recording to a special firestore (not a normal firewire drive!) harddrive or a computer. It included a MiniDV drive too for recording stand resolution DV video.
Now all this seemed great - expcept for the horribly small and expensive P2 cards and the nondetachable lens (easily circumvented with special filmlens adapters) - the camera has been a huge success throughout the last year.
Now this years NAB was setting out to get boring with no real announcements at all. Yet there comes this company around and trumps a camera that is short of absolutely astonishing - yet a bit more pricey. The RED from the RED Digitial Cinema Camera Company is still in prototype phase but has already a price attached so a market product will follow very soon. First of all it has a CMOS sensor with full 35mm size - think of film depth of field. The sensor is apparently self produced and has no other casing then this camera. Secondly the sensor sports a resolution of 4520X2540. Thats OVER 4K resolution more then traditional 35 mm chemical film can hold. Thirdly it records in RAW format - yes not only is it uncompressed but also sport a higher bit depth for that color correction without limits. It can record up to 120fps in 2k with specific storage option on 60 fps in 4k! On top the camera is completely modular with individual parts to be upgraded individually - like switching out the CMOS censor when a better one comes available. Giving it a new casing that fits your need more (should mount, tripod, underwater skateboard unbreakable) it specifically encourages the community to make mods. Oh and of course it has no tape and sport a HD Raid

Needless to say that THIS is the camera of the future - nothing else can be desired. The price $17.500 for just the body (about a $25k package for a ready to shoot solution). Available for pre-order - no delivery date given yet.

More info at red.com.