High Def

Darth-Morpheous
adultdetective.com

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Digital Playground has released a couple of HD WMV discs, including Island Fever #3, and their new much hyped release "Pirates". They are extra discs included in the set that can only be played on a fast computer (2.8GHz Minimum is what they claim, but I've been able to play it successfully on my 2.0GHz machine) with Windows Media Player.

Evil Angel will release Buttman Comics - Vault of Whores on the 17th of this month, and that too will have a special separate disc with an HD WMV version of the movie. This is true high definition.

What ISN'T true high definition is the stuff that claims to be "shot and mastered in HD" but then can be played back on a regular DVD player. They may have shot and mastered it in HD, but it was then converted down to standard definition for the DVD.

I for one, have seen Island Fever #3 in HD. It was absolutely stunning. Vault of Whores is so on my list it's scary, especially since I have access to a DLP projector and a 77" inch screen right now. If I'm any indication, HD porn will take off, especially when the HD DVD and Blu-Ray formats get their foothold on the market. Until then I'll take pretty much any WMV HD I can get my hands on. Like I said, if it's done well (and Island Fever #3 WAS done well) it really is a whole new world in terms of detail and that sense of "being there".

Edited by - MLyons on 11/14/2005 11:24:46 AM

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True HD in a minicam is coming very shortly.

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Buttman Comics Presents... Vault of Whores, which MLyons so kindly referred to was shot on HDV, edited and mastered in HDV, and then encoded to Windows Media Player codec, which is what you will see on the bonus 3rd disc in the set.
The DVD-player discs in the set were shot and edited in HDV, mastered in standard DVCam. Therefore you will be able to see the difference that mastering in the HDV format gives.

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The bottom line is that HD telecine is entire within reach of even a low-budget operation like ours. At the worst, retransfering the negative for Damon and Hunter to uncompressed 10 bit 4:2:2 will cost about $2,000, or about 140-200 copies wholesale. But if we really get our shit together, we could get that down in the $500-$1,000 – as few as 35 copies wholesale.

What we get for that is an uncompressed HD master that not only will allow us to make a higher quality SD DVD, it will allow us to market D&H to broadcasters as shot on film/mastered to HD programing, and when consumer HD discs finally arrive, we'll already be ready. Even on the high side of $2K, it's hard to make a compelling argument against it!

-TC

Comstock Films:Real Life, Real People, Real Sex

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When DV was concieved, it was never imagined that it would kill off vast segments of the manufacturer's industrial product lines. Yet within a few years, the $3500 PD150 had supplanted the UVW100 (at $15,000 Sony's lowest priced BetaSP camera) as the low-end workhorse. Head to head, the PD150 couldn't hold a candle to the the UVW100, but between the $12,000 price difference and the new DV based tools, their were plenty of people who decided the PD150 looked good enough.

And in a lot of cases, it did look good enough. I began making my move to DV (initially in the form of a few PD100s) when I saw that properly shot I could intercut footage from a PD100 with Digibetacam. For the kind of work I do, the overall production impact of 3 or 4 PD100 camera would often beat having just one Digibeta camera.

To preserve Digibeta as it's premium format Sony never offered low-end industrial cameras or decks in that format. Instead they let Beta die, and began pushing DV up the product line in the form of a the 570 and similar. Who could have imagined a $20K camera based on a 5:1 4:1:1 codec (DV, DVCAM, DVCPRO25) replacing a uncompressed camera (BetaSP), yet it happened. Change isn't always the same thing as progress!

Now, in the emerging world of consumer HD, they're rolled out HDV as the consumer minicam HD format. But instead of merely being a 5:1 4:1:1 compression scheme, HDV is a 30:1 4:1:1, MPEG2 based compression scheme. Sure, it will fill up the pixels on an HD display, but with that level of compression, HDV based camera are never going to perform well enough to replace their professional cousins.

Sony, Panasonic, JVC, etc have invested HUGE amounts of money hyping HiDef to the professional market. If you've got the right project, you can get cameras for free, just so they can tell the world "thus and such was shot on HiDef instead of film".

Moore's law marches on, and there's no doubt the technology for a full-blown HD minicam will be here soon, if not already. The question is whether or not Sony, Panasonic, JVC, etc are going to make the same mistake twice. Are they going to bring out a $3500 camera that a significant portion of their industrial market, a market that will pay the premium for real HD right now, will decide is "good enough"?

It's hard to say. As industrial sales slumped, DV was looking like a huge marketing misstep, but in the end the massive volume of the consumer market, fueled by cheap desktop editing and DVD-R turned the misstep into a boom. The way I read it, HDV is the electronic giants attempt to have their cake and eat it too – low-grade HDV for the masses to play with, while pros are stuck paying 20 or 40 times as much professional tools.

-TC

Comstock Films:Real Life, Real People, Real Sex

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If it's a DVCPRO HD based camera, well at least we're talking 4 times the data of HDV, putting it in about the same relationship with uncompressed HD as DV has to uncompresssed SD. DV is 5:1, DVCPRO HD is about 8:1, HDV is about 30:1. (BTW, DVCPRO25, DV, and DVCAM all use the exact same compression, and where image quality is concernd, they're just differnt brands of the same thing.)

I've never worked with myself, but I have friends who are using DVCPRO HD as an 'offline' codec for working with HD and like it very much, and they'd be very happy with a DVCPRO HD camera if it came in under $20K. But if DVCPRO HD is that good, why would Panasonic put out something that would kill a lot of the market for the the much hyped Panasonic Varicam. That would be repeating the DV mistake all over again; offering a "good enough" low cost alternative to their premium product. Is there any offical word on what compression scheme the Panasonic HVX100 will use? I'm searching HVX100 on the Panasonic website and getting zip.

In the end, you've got to shoot the camera and decide whether or not you like it. For us, 24p from a DVX100 uprezzed to HD beats the pants off Sony's weird interpolated/interlaced "24fps" HDV no contest, so that's what we're doing until something better comes along. (Which might be the JVC GY-HD100U. Still HDV, but real 24fps. Pity that camera wasn't out a year ago. I probaby would used a pair of them to shoot our portraits instead of the DVX100s.)

RE: Direct to disc or Solid State storage.

With their hard deadlines, ENG guys seem pretty hot for it. But at the rate I produce films, the speed advantages of not having to digitize from tape are meaningless. Don't know what advantage or cost savings they might yield at a place like ZT.

Edited by - TonyC on 11/15/2005 5:02:00 PM

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I've heard some people liking the Panasonic DVCPro's for practical applications. And certainly the picture is REALLY great.

I am nowhere near as full of technical info as Tony - I just go by what looks good. :)

For what it's worth, I wouldn't consider shooting a really high-budget movie on HDV. I would definitely go Varicam or CineAlta. I have never had my hands on a Varicam yet, but I really felt comfortable with the CineAlta.

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Although she had no previous experience, I gave Mrs.C a chopped ACL with an Angenieux 9.5~57mm (manual focus and zoom) and said "Just try to keep up."

If you've never tried to keep focus while the shutter flutters past the image, it's quite an experience, especially when shooting unscripted, undirected sex. You can't see a fucking thing, at least not until your eye gets used to it (which only took me two or three thousand feet.) The whole rig weighs about 10 times more than the minicams she's used previously. Earn while you learn, baby! (And while you burn film at $.75/foot!)

Was her shooting percentage as high as usual? No, but what she got looks soooo fucking good, and she got enough. Beads of sweat welling on Hunter's forehead just as he blew his wad. Yow!

Here's a link to a short clip of her and our DP/AC wresting through a mag change. My wife is nothing if not a good sport!

Comstock Films:Real Life, Real People, Real Sex

Edited by - TonyC on 11/15/2005 8:05:54 PM

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1) Like Mike Quasar noted the price for a P2 card wtf? 2gs for 8 mins of hd? Gh3y
Until they make affordable p2 cards that will be able to hold 60 mins of hd I am really against this.
2) I don't like the idea of soley recording onto a card. Stuff like that can be very sensitive drop the card and it can shock it as well as a static electricity shock messing up your footage. I like the idea of recording to tape cause after you import it into the computer you still have a solid back up.

Ideally I would like to see sony or panasonic come out with a camera that records to a tape and harddrive/p2 card at the same time.

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Hill Air Y Us

Withholding simple features on lower end products is a time-honored gimmick (witness the Sony UV line), but only a true marketing genius could come up with something like crippling recording time. I stand in awe.

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I know I sound like a broken record, with tapeless transfers Super16 is a very economical way to shoot full-resolution, uncompressed HD. You could easily keep in under $2,000/scene, and someone who really had their shit wired tight could probably get that down to $1,000/scene. When you've got one of those "Oh my God, I can't believe a girl this beautiful does porn" girls on the set, wouldn't it be great to shoot her with the very best imaging technology you can put your hands on!

Comstock Films:Real Life, Real People, Real Sex

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So in theory a 8gb card will cost easily over 2k and only hold 8 minutes?. In my opinion I just don't see it being worth it. Especially when your footage is only on a hard drive with no other form of back up. If your computer crashes or a power outage your movie will be gone. Sounds a little too risky for me. But I am very curious to see the quality of these cameras.

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My personal point of view as a VERY amateur cameraperson is that while while I'm not on the job, I do play alot with manual settings on my cameras, I don't like to do it during sex- especially the focus. Iris, well, I'm more experienced at doing manual exposure, so I have been playing with that more.
I'd probably about have a stroke if I missed something REALLY fabulous going on in a scene because of a soft focus.

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Because I use a very odd and self-invented telecine technique to eliminate 3:2 pulldown from the film transfer process, and work at native 24P in standard definition NTSC, I've spent most of the last three days looking for a telecine house that offers high definition transfers, and also can understand my baroque approach. (It's important, because if I can't find a house that can and will replicate the procedures I used to to my standard def. transfers, I'll have rebuild my entire edit by hand. This would be extremely tedious, and error-prone.)

About half of the places I called actually got mad it me, saying what I want to do, what I've already done (if you've watched the previews on the Xana and Dax DVD, you've already seen it), won't work. The other half said they'd have to talk to their head engineer and get back to me. But one place said "Wow. That's interesting, that's clever."

And then they said they'd do the hidef transfer of Damon and Hunter for free. Well not completely free. I have to buy the tape. We're doing our session next week!

Comstock Films:Real Life, Real People, Real Sex

Edited by - TonyC on 11/16/2005 6:12:15 PM

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