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MillimeterHD Slow Mo with Phantom
Jul 8, 2008 10:22 AM
"The drive uses a form of lossless compression," Matlosz says. "It compresses the whole file rather than individual frames, something like a zip file. The drive itself isn't formatted, and so it doesn't fragment like a PC drive would where data is scattered all over the place. It's efficient but the drawback is you can't delete individual files."
As the drive fills up, Matlosz will use his PC and LaCie or G-RAID hard drives to do a direct file transfer to free up the flash drive for more shooting.
"I'm hoping for Ethernet drives at some point," the cinematographer says. "Right now, I'm using E-SATA and FireWire 800 to transfer the information."
The aspect of working with the Phantom, he says, that has frightened some and caused others to come up with disappointing results has to do with what happens next: the postproduction workflow. Like a number of digital cameras that spit out some form of raw file that requires further processing down the line, Phantom HD sends out files in a raw format that must be de-bayered in post and then translated into files that retain all the information the camera is capable of.
"The Phantom HD," Matlosz says, "does have an HDSDI-out port that sends a quickly downconverted 4:2:2 HD signal to any kind of tape deck or DDR with HDSDI-in. People have used that instead of the raw format for their final images, but I would only use it for a monitor and playback on set. If you're shooting 35mm film, would you convert it to 16mm just because you could?"
There are several approaches for converting the raw files to something more standard such as a DPX or TIFF. Vision Research has its method, as do Glue Tools, Iridas, and Abel Cine Tech, among others. Matlosz is tight-lipped about the particular method he's worked out with the post houses he frequents. He likes to keep that as part of the service he offers, but the workflow with all of them involves de-bayering each frame and converting it to a16-bit TIFF file. The raw file is 14-bits. "So it doesn't make sense to then go to an 8-bit TIFF or DPX and lose that information,” Matlosz says. “Once you have your TIFF sequence, you can go from there into whatever tool you need to use—Flame, Inferno, Final Cut, Avid."
Matlosz says that the fact that a labor-intensive post process is involved has an odd effect on people who not long ago would have thought nothing about the even more time- and money-consuming telecine process. For this reason, some either try to bypass the raw workflow by recording the lower-quality HDSDI to tape or avoiding the Phantom altogether. But to him, the fear makes little sense.
"I tell people, 'It's no different than what we'd do in film,' " he says. "They might be so spoiled by video and tape that when they have to go an extra step to get a quality image, it seems too difficult. We shoot film, process it, and then a day or more later, we transfer it and then cut it. That's something we're willing to do because of the quality we get. This workflow has to be done right, but it's still not as expensive as telecine.
"I think that as more people see the quality of high-speed cinematography, they can get with the Phantom and the right workflow, they'll start to realize it's worth it.”
