"Club Penton" - Ask questions to Hollywood insider "Penton-Man"

[4K2K]

Originally Posted by Jeff Kleist

Since all European sets can do 24fps, but US sets cannot

Only some of the very recent European sets can accept a 24fps signal, and the US got sets capable of accepting 24fps before the Europeans.

All recent European sets (those sold within the last 10 or so years) accept 60hz (59.94hz? - why are the US sticking to this old analogue frame rate, which causes problems with editing too?), but old TVs won't accept this. Any European CRT TV displaying 60hz will probably be displaying PAL 60 and I think this doesn't give the correct colours. But 60hz should be fine with all European digital TVs eg. LCD/Plasma HDTVs.

I find PAL speedup incredibly intolerable, the pitch shift drives me nuts (i can detect it even in something I've never seen), and if that's corrected, I can still tell because all the cuts have an unnatural rhythmn.

This is why slow-down or other speed changes shouldn't be used to encode Blu-ray titles either.

I still stand by my point that 25fps is no longer necessary and creates more problems than it solves, and should go into the dustbin of history along with the PAL format from whence it came

There's nothing stopping US manufacturers from supporting the native frame rate of all the thousands of productions that have been made, and continue to be made at 25/50i.

Think about all the archive footage that has been shot at many different frame rates (16, 18, 22, 24, 25, etc.). Think of the films that have been shot at 30fps, 60fps or the other frame rates they will in future be using (48fps, 50fps?).

We shouldn't stop film makers from using the aspect ratio that they think is best, and we shouldn't stop them using the frame rates they think are best either. We should be supporting all frame rates. As has been said, 25fps recording is actually better than 24fps because it allows much easier conversion to compatible TVs, and with 60hz TVs you have to add 3:2 pull-down judder when converting from 24fps. Europeans wouldn't be happy with pull-down judder when they didn't have it before. And aren't there more people in 50hz (PAL) countries than in NTSC ones?

If all TV and player manufacturers supported both sets of frame rates there wouldn't be a problem at all (apart from the pause you would get if you need to switch between different, non-multiple frame rates), and according to my poll about 34.48% of all voters wanted US HDTVs to support 50hz sources. I do think it might be a good idea if, in the future a standard TV system could be agreed on (maybe we could all agree on 72hz or 75hz?), though it might cause problems with things like lighting.

But the manufacturers should be supporting the rates of existing content, particularly when there is such a lot shot at those rates (particularly when the manufacturers of the same TVs/players they release to Europe are compatible with both sets of frame rates), as well as looking ahead to what might be used in the future, and support that too.

[Penton-Man]

The best Easter Sunday news a family could ever receive…”The U.S. Captain is freed”.

To Bobby Henderson (from Oklahoma) --I hope that the wildfires haven’t affected you or yourn to any significant extent this weekend.
Give us a shout-out if you can, if everything’s okay.

Now, I’ve got to hide some eggs in the grass and such before the munchkins arrive.
Funniest comment of the weekend was my wife saw me yesterday coloring disproportionately more hard boiled eggs green rather than Blu and she said……
”I thought you were a Blu-boy, why are so many of your eggs green, are you purposely trying to make it even harder for the children to find them in the greenery around our house?”

[Bobby Henderson]

Everything is okay in my neighborhood. But, yes, those wildfires have been really terrible. Luckily, much of what was lost was merely property and livestock. Although one woman who lost control of her vehicle on a smoke covered road in Stephens County is fighting for her life after suffering severe burns. What we've seen isn't like the horror that visited Southern parts of Australia a few months ago.

Nevertheless, much of Oklahoma and North Texas has been dealing with serious drought conditions for roughly half a year. We had some pretty good rains this weekend. Any rain will help. Still, much of the area is tinder dry. High winds are a steady feature of the weather in Oklahoma. We simply had really high winds (some gusts reaching hurricane strength) and humidity levels dropping into the single digits percentile. That's a recipe for wildfire disaster.

The part of it that gets my anger sparked is that some fires were set intentionally, such as one really huge fire that blazed south of Duncan, OK (home town of Ron Howard). Some people just have a sick sense of humor that they need to light the country side on fire for shits and giggles. And that's just perverted. Such people really need a serious ass kicking. I don't have any tolerance for knuckheaded morons who throw lit cigarettes out of a car window.

I was listening to a DJ on a classic rock radio station out of Wichita Falls, TX. He put it very well about these fires. This area is famous for tornadoes. If a twister hits your house there's still going to be debris left afterward you can sort through -and you'll be able to recover at least some of your stuff. When a fire engulfs your home you lose everything. Some people in towns like Velma, OK lost all their valuables and sentimental possessions. Even a few of these folks didn't have insurance on their property. It's pretty tragic how the lives of these people have been irreversibly upended. My prayers go out to them.

[Penton-Man]

Although the Scots I’ve been referred to on *scientific* forums, often like to speak authoritatively when they are just plain wrong………
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showp...&postcount=464

or, to be kind, are *wishful thinkers* with no real past evidence and/or credentials to back up their boastful self-proclaimed ‘expertise’ (other than being good online thread accountants)……..
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showp...9&postcount=43

the reality of the matter is, that without knowledge of the history of the acquistion device(s) used during the principal photography, many times, even for professionals, it is indeed difficult to visually differentiate film grain from noise when evaluating a particular scene because there can be so much over-lap in their appearances.

Consider the above accounting ^ to be ‘payback’ for those who are aware of and followed the deletion shenanigans over on AVS this past weekend.
I’m happy at least that I was hiding Easter eggs in our backyard apparently at the time of the censorship of true science.

Anyway, attention to all those Blu-ray.com Scots that hail from the city where the Rangers and Celtic play and who don’t think, claim or imply they are experts in lighting (which directly affects the appearance of grain and noise) as the news of this upcoming event may be of interest to some serious cinema types for considered attendance, even for a day, as it only occurs once every four years, namely………

http://www.showlight.org/

b.t.w., Roberto Schaefer (the D.P. for Quantum of Solace) will be one of the speakers.

[Penton-Man]

To all the winners of my recent giveaways……………
Your freebie Blu-ray movies are in the mail!

Special Note to Secret_Smile, please excuse the funky packaging that arrives with your set, as we ran out of our normal generic packing materials and my A.A. used whatever she had available on her desk at the time to get your stuff in the mail ASAP.

[Penton-Man]

Also, in regards to contests, I was wondering if any Blu-ray.com members or lurkers successfully made it to the Second Round of this………….
http://www.sweepstakesmag.com/cars-p...ation-contest/

or, better yet, any potential winners?

Here’s a teaser trailer of the movie for those who may be interested in attending the theatrical presentation next month…………….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcE8QaKiTGk

[Penton-Man]

Which reminds me (speaking of trailers), have ya’ll seen the second trailer for Public Enemies (staring Johnny Depp) which previewed on the internet last week?
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=94654

I wouldn’t be surprised that when this feature film arrives on Blu-ray, some will throw a royal tizzy as to Michael Mann’s choice of ‘look’ for this 1930’s gangster period piece. Quite the departure from his vision for Miami Vice.
You can say one thing for sure, Michael marches to the beat of a different drummer.

Anyway, after the grain ‘experts’ have viewed the theatrical presentation of Public Enemies, I would enjoy hearing from all those *scientific* cinematographer grain gurus who can readily differentiate grain from noise on Blu-ray, to tell me specifically which scenes in Public Enemies were shot on film, as that information is not forthcoming in the imdb tech specs………heck, imdb doesn’t even list a film camera as one of the acquisition devices, when in fact, film capture was used in a very limited capacity.

Additionally, since Public Enemies demonstrates some of the ‘modern look’ of shoot ‘em up type movies (meaning shaky camera movement), I would also be interested in hearing from all *scientific* post production people as to exactly how a technologist, during post, could remove jerky camera movement from the film footage, if in retrospect, the Director had second thoughts and felt that he and the DP got a little carried away with the run-and-gun shots. (Yes, it can be toned down in post…..the big decision comes in regards to whether the technologist should also do a follow-up motion blur reduction on the now stabilized footage but, the tradeoff to that is that it may significantly increase the noise of the imagery thusly potentially requiring……. oops, dnr , to tone that down, so it’s seamless with the other footage that you didn’t have to digitally manipulate).

Heck, you can even add imagery shake to stable footage in post, if desired…..and rather successfully I might add, as it seems to be done more and more often these days.

[Penton-Man]

Originally Posted by Bobby Henderson

Everything is okay in my neighborhood....

Glad to hear you’re okay.
You were the first person I thought of while I was watching all the wildfire footage from Oklahoma on the TV news the past few days.

Later.

[cjamescook]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

...Now, I’ve got to hide some eggs in the grass and such before the munchkins arrive. Funniest comment of the weekend was my wife saw me yesterday coloring disproportionately more hard boiled eggs green rather than Blu and she said……
”I thought you were a Blu-boy, why are so many of your eggs green, are you purposely trying to make it even harder for the children to find them in the greenery around our house?”

You, too, can share in the joy of accidentally discovering a missed egg next Fall while gardening. <crunch> Phew!

-Jim
ex-Eggutive Producer

[4K2K]

Originally Posted by Penton-Man

Additionally, since Public Enemies demonstrates some of the ‘modern look’ of shoot ‘em up type movies (meaning shaky camera movement), I would also be interested in hearing from all *scientific* post production people as to exactly how a technologist, during post, could remove jerky camera movement from the film footage, if in retrospect, the Director had second thoughts and felt that he and the DP got a little carried away with the run-and-gun shots. (Yes, it can be toned down in post…..the big decision comes in regards to whether the technologist should also do a follow-up motion blur reduction on the now stabilized footage but, the tradeoff to that is that it may significantly increase the noise of the imagery thusly potentially requiring……. oops, dnr , to tone that down, so it’s seamless with the other footage that you didn’t have to digitally manipulate).

Heck, you can even add imagery shake to stable footage in post, if desired…..and rather successfully I might add, as it seems to be done more and more often these days.

That's easy. They could just select the stabilize option That might be an option in their editing or effects packages. They might have to track some points in a layer that they want to stabilize around (eg. points in the scene that should be stationary), then analyse the movement, then the software might allow that footage (video layer/track) to be moved in position, rotation or scaled in each frame so it is stabilized - eg. by the software automatically adding keyframes for the stabilized motion. They might have to zoom in a bit on the footage afterwards if the software puts a black border around the stabilized footage - so by stabilizing footage afterwards you'd be losing some resolution, and not just because of the motion blur in the original footage that wouldn't have been there if they had shot it stable in the first place.

Adding artificial camera shake in post would also lose resolution too, because you'd also have to zoom in (scale) the new footage because if they moved the footage in post (as part of the artificial camera shake) to the left, they'd have a gap where it used to be on the right of the frame so they'd have to zoom in or scale the video and lose resolution.

[SquidPuppet]

Rossi is 2 seconds down on Stoner....but matching his lap times...shaved a tenth 2 laps in a row.....watching live timing...

[SquidPuppet]

Ohhhhhhhh...Stoner just pulled .5 secondsof his lap....11 of 22 done.

[SquidPuppet]

Cappirossi is out.

[Doctorossi]

He let Stoner get away.

[Doctorossi]

Not shocking to see Lorenzo in there.

[Doctorossi]

Maybe The Doctor's comment about "the only way to stop Stoner" will prove true.

[Doctorossi]

Pedrosa's doing well.

[SquidPuppet]

Edwards surprises

[SquidPuppet]

I KNEW dovisioso would do well on a factory ride. He's tall. If they sort the bike for him instead od Pedrobot, he can contend.

[Doctorossi]

No 100% this year.