Working with HDV for projection at competition. HELP PLEASE

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Tony Grant
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Working with HDV for projection at competition. HELP PLEASE

Post by Tony Grant »

Working with HDV.

I am looking for some help. last weekend my film was entered into a competition and the images on the screen did not represent those I had seen and tested at home.
This is the editing history of the Project. What did I do wrong?

• Images filmed on my Sony HVR-Z1E/Z1P in HDV mode.
• Images down loaded into Edius 5 Editing real time HDV
• Edit. This film had been filmed over a period of 1 year and I have to admit that we had made some mistakes with our lighting meaning we had some very poorly colour matched scenes that could not be shown together with out giving the judges and the audience a very poor impression of our camera work and film making.
• I contacted a young friend who works in a professional capacity in the industry and asked for some basic tips to set me on my learning curve of colour correction.
• Over a period of six months I worked on every scene and produced a reasonable result apart from a little noise that in visual terms on screen did not really cause us concern. The film was projected at the club (HDV on HDV projector) film festival, wining both the judge’s highest points and the public prize. We did have a few comments and noticed that when projected certain scenes needed some more colour work for the next competition.
• I spent another few weeks with the improvements. Having carried out these changes I did the following tests. Down loaded on to tape in HDV (M2T) I then played the tape back through my HVR-M15E tape deck directly to my TV Screen, the results were as I hoped and as reasonable as I could expect. I also made a copy of the tape and gave it to my colleague and he looked at it on his TV using his Sony HVR-Z1E/Z1P. He also thought we had improved the results.
• When we projected the film at the area festival our images were to put bluntly terrible certain areas had lost contrast very badly spoiling the film completely.
• Other HDV films were projected and the results very good a few comments about them being a little dark but no more than is expected at every competition.
• The HDV films projected other than mine had had virtually no computer work! Africa, beautiful sun and natural colour. A few transitions and titles.
• I believe that with all the computer work I had done on the film the digital signal is perhaps weakened and that due to the distance from the projector of the source of the signal (component) and the junction box (splitter) being used. Coupled with the projector being three or so years old the signal to the projector was badly reduced.
• Ok so my film was not perfect but what to the future with AVCHD and even more tools on the computer programmes.
• I have since projected my film with another projector HDV tape deck beside the projector with a good result.
• How are we going to over come this problem in the future? What settings to we use, do we convert down. How can we test the result with out buying expensive projectors or graded monitors?
• HELP PLEASE I AM AT A LOSS
Geoff Addis
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Joined: Thu Sep 03, 2009 4:56 pm

Re: Working with HDV for projection at competition. HELP PLEASE

Post by Geoff Addis »

Tony,

It is unlikely that your Post work 'weakened' the signal as it could do in the case of an analogue system, it is also unlikely that the length of leads would effect the quality or stability your, and others' programmes.

Was the festival projector an HD device projecting full 1920 x 108 or was your HD signal down converted to SD?

When you monitor your HD at home, is it on a full HD monitor rather than the PC monitor that is likely to give an incorrect representation of your image?

It could be that your original lighting was inadequate and not providing the contrast that you would like. I recently filmed in VERY low light - EX1, 360 degree shutter, lens wide open, mid January, overcast day, indoors without any additional lighting and the resulting images were very flat, but by using Edius's curve and blend controls I was able to get very acceptable images, so much so that the video was rated in the top eight of a major international festival.

Hope that helps,

Geoff
Tony Grant
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Re: Working with HDV for projection at competition. HELP PLEASE

Post by Tony Grant »

Hi Geoff,

Thanks for your comments . At home my monitor and deck in HDV, other films shown at the festival in HDV.

format 1440x1080

Tony
ned c
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Re: Working with HDV for projection at competition. HELP PLEASE

Post by ned c »

A question out of curiosity; was the entry at the Festival played from an HDV tape deck or a Blu-Ray/AVCHD compatible disc?

ned c
Tony Grant
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Re: Working with HDV for projection at competition. HELP PLEASE

Post by Tony Grant »

Sony tape decks the same as I tested on.

Forgot to mention in my brief that outside the festival hall was a monitor attached to the projectionists desk the image on that was excellent so say those watching from the bar


Tony
tom hardwick
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Re: Working with HDV for projection at competition. HELP PLEASE

Post by tom hardwick »

Tony it does sound as if the degradation in your images is down to the festival projection because you often say that it all looks ok on your TV, on your friend's TV and the projectionist's monitor.

There's little we can do about this. Years ago I remember watching one of my Super-8 competition entries being projected out of focus all the way through, and these days aspect ratios seem to cause projectionists as many headaches.

You're using a fine camera and an NLE system that allows fast and accurate colour correction. It may be that you'll be more assured of a decent standard of projection if you downconvert the edited timeline and present festivals with DVDs, a format that they're very used to, and which they upconvert very successfully.

tom.
Tony Grant
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Re: Working with HDV for projection at competition. HELP PLEASE

Post by Tony Grant »

Thanks Tom for your remarks, I would love to present in DVD or Blue ray but in Belgium it Has TO BE TAPE.

I am part of a small team who a number of years ago started a bianual competition in Belgium called
"Het Gouden Hamertje" we wanted only to use DVD but this year we have to accept DVD and tape.


See our website it is in Dutch however. This year as well a trophies valued at nearly 2000 Euros we will be awarding some 3000 Euros worth of equipment from our sponsors

http://www.guliver.be

Tony
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Dave Watterson
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Re: Working with HDV for projection at competition. HELP PLEASE

Post by Dave Watterson »

If you go to http://translate.google.com/#, set it to translate from Dutch to English and then copy and paste in Tony's website address into the box you will get a reasonable machine translation. You need to use a little imagination here and there, but I bookmark that google address and use it often.
-Dave
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