My short film. - by witherflower
witherflower on 26/1/2010 at 12:43
Quote Posted by Muzman
Fun with tech talk time:
Your friend is wrong about what dvd players do. Well, depending on what exactly they said of course. There are a few details missing though.
DVD video is standard definition and a widescreen dvd is still using a standard definition frame size and stretching it to 16:9. That's right. But widescreen dvd video is anamorphic. If you were to look at one untouched by the player the image would take up most or all of a 4:3 frame, but it is obviously squished so that when it is stretched out it looks correct.
Now, some SD cameras have a 16:9 mode that will squish the image for you. It's a convenience more than anything since it doesn't increase the resolution of the camera's CCD or anything like that. But there's only one step you have to take to finish on widescreen DVD, and a lot of editors will display the picture correctly while you edit etc.
If you shot with an SD camera and didn't use 16:9 mode, that's the picture you're getting and no DVD player automation is going to alter that (if it did it'd make everything look all distorted horizontally, or maybe uses some no doubt destructive zoom method). If you want a 16:9 finish you still have to letterbox it in the edit, as you thought. This isn't so bad since you get to reframe as you go and perhaps improve things a bit. The trick then is that, to make a widescreen DVD out of it at the highest quality that the player will actually resize for you, you have to crop out the black bars and squeeze the rest into a full 4:3 frame.
It's not that hard once you know the numbers. Some programs can take care of a lot of this for you as well, if you know how. With the automatic-y 'home' ones like iMovie, and Moviemaker it's a bit less straight forward to fool them into doing what you want.
Having a 16:9 camera doesn't get you entirely off the hook either. Unless it's an extremely spangly one it's probably HDV or something like it, which isn't full HD and using the aforementioned non-square pixels (1440x1080 for 1920x1080 display). It's a popular format though and most editing systems are made to handle it pretty well, so if you click the 'make dvd' button or whatever it'll probably be good to you. It's nice to know what changes are being made on the way through though, for when it all goes horribly wrong and you've no idea why.
Phew! That's alot of information to process. But if I understand you correctly, I still have the opertunity to go for cropping the footage. Which would be a helluva good thing since I framed every shot with this in mind thinking I could refine the frame position in post at certain points. Plus the fact that I dismissed a few otherwise good shots because my shadow or some equipment was visible in the frame, but would have been obscured by the black bars.
Thanks for the very informative reply. :)
Muzman on 26/1/2010 at 13:07
In short, yeah (guess I could have just said that really). If you want a 16:9 finished film you pretty much have to.
Some editors have black bar overlays at the right sizes to work with. Otherwise there's usually some facility to make some out of blanks or mattes or imported bitmaps, whichever processes the quickest. Just something to cover the right areas of the screen. Then you can shift your shots up and down to your preference.
Shakey-Lo on 26/1/2010 at 13:16
i would instead create a 16:9 sequence with the same width as your footage, and crop the top and bottom off that way, to negate the need for black bars. otherwise your final output video would (most likely) be a 4:3 video with useless black bars at the top and bottom, and if you viewed it on a widescreen TV or monitor you would likely end up with (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letterbox#Pillarboxing_and_windowboxing) windowboxing.
Muzman on 26/1/2010 at 13:44
Well it won't if you export it properly. But yes, that's another bit of learning that could be avoided by other ways of doing it.
It depends on the editor if you can easily create a sequence like that and how it handles it I guess. And/or if someone knows how. I'd expect most SD 16:9 templates to be for anamorphic by default, which could cause all sorts of confusion.
If the thing is already cut, or mostly cut and you can easily change the project frame size to a 16:9 ratio (but not an anamorphic 16:9), then yeah go for it. If not, bars will probably do just as well but there's a step or two more on export.
Hope you're following along here witherflower ;)
witherflower on 26/1/2010 at 14:30
Quote Posted by Muzman
Hope you're following along here witherflower ;)
To be honest I feel like the dumbest person in the world.:confused:
I thought adding the letterbox would do it. But I understand I have to cut the bottom and top when editing is done... at least that's what I think I should. But how? Can it be done in virtual dub?
And then render with the 16:9 flag set?
I'm done making films with a zero budget, I'll hire people next time.
I've invested in the canon vixia/legria hv20 which is full HD and 16:9 (crossing fingers that it's true) does that make things easier?
Think I know what to do now... If you concider a single 720x576 frame, letterbox it 16:9 style, then resize the canvaz or frame to fit that new image, resize the entire image back to 720x576. It will be distorted, stretched vertically, but it will show up correctly proprtioned in 16:9 mode, right? But this will still look stretched on 4:3 screens if my brains are wired correctly, but it's a good compromise at least in some instances like mine.
Guess I could put both a 4:3 and a 16:9 version on the disc.
Thanks guys. :) I'll finally get to lay the technicalities aside.
Muzman on 28/1/2010 at 14:02
How much are you doing wth Virtual dub? That's potentially a pretty hardcore route, so it'll probably serve you well.
It's nice if you can afford to hire people though I guess.
Canon HV series cameras (like mine and yours) aren't true HD, they're HDV like I was talking about. I note some of the small flash memory cameras are offering full HD res recording these days, so that's cool (most solid state systems seem to be throwing it in now...hmmm).
I don't know if HDV will cause a lot of hurdles later. It shouldn't if you can handle this. I move all my footage to a gigantic full HD lossless intermediate format before I work with it, which is a whole 'nother can of worms.
You sound like you're getting the hang of it though. Most of the problems are caused by what the DVD authoring program does with the footage. Cropping and reshaping footage is quite doable, you just need software that lets you tell it what to do. And if you're using freeware stuff, that'll let you do anything you please usually(minus nice friendly GUIs and so on)
Quote:
Think I know what to do now... If you concider a single 720x576 frame, letterbox it 16:9 style, then resize the canvaz or frame to fit that new image, resize the entire image back to 720x576. It will be distorted, stretched vertically, but it will show up correctly proprtioned in 16:9 mode, right? But this will still look stretched on 4:3 screens if my brains are wired correctly, but it's a good compromise at least in some instances like mine.
This is close. The process is right, except for the last bit. DVD is an ancient format and designed for 4:3 presentation and it's for 4:3 that the player will reshape and letterbox footage designated 'widescreen'. If the DVD is authored properly a player should never, by default, display a widescreen video without stretching it first (and that's, as you mention, just a matter of flagging the footage correctly).
Widescreen
TVs on the other hand are another can of worms entirely and it depends on the player and the TV itself how they handle displaying your DVD on one. Worst case scenario; you get a letterboxed image in a 4:3 picture on the TV (ie it will be 'windowboxed' as mentioned earlier, a picture surrounded by black bars). This is not unexpected. The main thing is your footage itself is displaying at
its own correct aspect ratio.
I think there are players and/or TVs that will adjust themselves to play widescreen DVD footage at full the frame. But you're at the mercy of whatever people choose to play it on.
witherflower on 28/1/2010 at 16:06
I was kind of half kidding about hiring, I could never afford that. But it would be nice to have people who knew what they were doing.
It's the canon hF20... it uses memory cards- sorry, not sure it makes any difference, though.
I've only used Virtualdub for deinterlacing and the odd effect, so I'm not that familiar with it.
Well, it would seem there is no ideal way to do things so I think I'll just relax and concentrate on the artistic aspects for the time being. But you've managed to make things a lot clearer to me. I've been all over the net looking for information about this, but I've not managed to grasp half of what I've done now- so thanks:thumb:
And I'm not even going to start on the interlaced bits. That still has me stumped too.:tsktsk:
Progressive images sequences seem to me more manageable, though.
The actors are coming in to do some of their lines again over the weekend. And that will be the final thing to add before wrapping it up. Oh, and (this is probably pretensious as hell but...) we have a music video to promote the film as well. It's one of the best songs ever written imo. by my good friend who also wrote almost all the music for the film. Great guy... fantastic composer.
Ko0K on 30/1/2010 at 05:00
I like the part around 1:50 when that chick's ass starts glowing as she turns to walk away.
