premiere

Awaking Prophecy

Recently I had the chance to film the first video for Melbourne based Death Metal act ‘The Ophidian Ascension’. Making the most of Magic Lantern’s new raw capability, I decided to use it for the shooting and shot the whole production in a combination of 24fps and 60fps. All footage was captured on a 128gb KomputerBay memory card. Two versions are available below, YouTube and Vimeo. I recommend the Vimeo one if you want the true clarity and colour I selected as YouTube seems to mute some of the tones.

The Ophidian Ascension – Awaking Prophecy (Official Video) from Col B Cadell on Vimeo.

– Col B.

Constructing with Arin……

Recently I got together with a great musician and friend of mine Arin (The Construct) and decided to play around with ML raw and my recently acquired KomputerBay 128gb 1050x card. Here’s what came of it:

Gear Used:
Canon 5D mkIII
Zeiss T*Planar 50mm f1.4
Zeiss Jena Flektagon 35mm f2.4 MC
Schneider filters
Jag35 rails
Manfrotto tripod
SmallHD DP4 EVF

– Col B.

RAW, huh, Good God YES!

So I finally bit the bullet and bought a 5D Mk3 and a couple of fast (probably not fast enough) CF cards (1000x is pretty much a yes). The aim is to start playing with the raw video features implemented by Magic Lantern (www.magiclantern.fm). If your not sure on the process go check out the forums and you will find a plethora of help and instructions on installing a recent build for your camera.

With this hack installed I filmed a couple of shots and put them together to have a day one, out of the box test. It took me about 20minutes to update/retrograde Firmware to 1.1.3 and then write the ML boot to the disk with MacBoot.

Once up and running….. my god is it glorious. I will be posting vids with the h.264 recording mode and some post work as it’s still the most usable and feasible on the job option.  None the less time to experiment. The below features two shots that are video, but just static to show detail (more for me than you guys :P), following that are two graded motion scenes. The first graded in my standard manner of noise reduction, add film grain, work with Magic bullet looks. The second graded shot is using LUT replacement then Colorista II to get a little more complicated.

I will be posting more as I test more. Can’t wait to film a short with this. The below test was handheld (sorry for the shakes, I should have used a tripod or something), shot with a Zeiss 50mm T*Planar at 1.4, ISO100… yes thats right because it’s RAW you can use the photo intervals rather than the digital ones as stills don’t develop noise the same way as compressed motion graphic.

5D Mark3 RAW Video Test – Magic Lantern Hack – First Day Test from Col B Cadell on Vimeo.

Keep checking back for further tests and shoots using the RAW hack.

– Col B.

CINEMA VIEW – 2:35:1 Anamorphic Exporting from Premiere for Vimeo/Youtube Upload

After hunting around on the net and various sources for a simple guide on how to get your DSLR or whatever footage into the 2:35:1 Anamorphic format I have decided to write my own. This method will allow you to export to Vimeo and Youtube without the black bars showing when the video is embedded.

1. Firstly download this PSD file from the following link – https://www.dropbox.com/s/9twrgw4zyr7r50p/CBC235Template.psd

2. The above will be your template/guide for aligning your footage in the timeline. Import the above template into Premiere (if using FCP convert this to a PNG and go from there) and place in your timeline above all video tracks so that it sits on top. Note below that the 2:35:1 marks are not yet turned on, as shown in the program monitor.

Screen Shot 2013-05-19 at 11.00.15 PM

3. Once inserted into the timeline, make the template visible and lock it from being editable as shown below. You will now have black bars top and bottom of your program monitor. Now import and edit your footage as required:

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4. Once editing you might find that you aren’t happy with where the shot lies e.g. the actor’s eye-line is cutoff or an important piece of scene information is missing due to the 2:35:1 crop area. This is now the time to reposition the image to highlight what you want seen. This is one of the great advantages of 2:35:1, you can force the viewer to look at a desired focal point.

Select each individual clip and then select Motion from the effects menu and change the relevant position numbers of the clip. The number you are wanting to effect should default to 540 in a 1080p clip. Simply decrease the number to move the video up and increase to move down. Bare in mind that moving it too far will increase the area of black space at the top or bottom of the screen beyond that of the 2:35:1 framing.

5. Now your ready to export your video. Follow the usual path File – Export – Media. Here you want to setup the export settings. I recommend the following, and it must be done in this order or else the Output resolution will continue to reset to 1920×1080.

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Settings (as above and below):

  • Select custom H.264 as video format
  • Select level from the Basic Video Settings. As a standard it can remain on 4.2 but if your dealing with RED/Arri/BMCC footage you will want use the 5.1 level as it allows for a larger bitrate encoding.
  • Select High from the profile list. The default is main, but high will encode the file with less compression.
  • Change Pixel Aspect Ratio to Square Pixels.
  • Choose your appropriate frame rate.
  • Change the resolution to 1920×816, this will change the output size of the video to meet the 2:35:1 size.
  • Use VBR 2 Pass for bitrate at the bottom of the Basic Video Settings panel
  • For DSLR use a bitrate of 16mps (higher than recommended, but retains more detail)

Screen Shot 2013-05-19 at 11.01.16 PM

6. The final step is the cropping of the video to make sure it meets the required output. While you have already set the output size (1920×816), you will now need to set the crop. Crop your source at the top (132) and bottom (131) to remove the black lines and enable your video to embed in widescreen, rather than with the annoying black bars.

Once the crop has been done and the output view looks to only show the cropped video, then you may export.

cropsettings

So why go through all the effort? Simple if you export a file setup to be 2:35:1 via the normal export route, you will find that it retains black bars, top and bottom even if embedded (as below). Some people don’t mind that, but I personally think it’s sloppy and really effects the embedded view of your videos.

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By completing the steps above you will now have an embedded view that looks like this:

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Simple, clean and ready for Vimeo and Youtube upload without those pesky black bars.

– Col B