news

<<<SAGE NEWSLETTER - DECEMBER 2006>>>

In this issue:

<<<GENERAL NEWS>>>

The first Golden Horn Awards Ceremony was held on 27 & 28 October, and SAGE congratulates our members who walked off with an award. They are Megan Gill for “Hard Copy”- best Editor Drama Series, Avril Beukes for “Red Dust”- best Feature Film Editor, and Juli Vandenberg for “Tsha Tsha”- best Sound Design Drama Series.
The Cape Town editors had a get-together on 14 November at the Waterfront Studios. Catherine Meyburgh from the SAGE Exec was there to answer questions about the organisation and put faces to e-mails. Welcome to all the Capetonians who joined as new SAGE members.

<<<TRAINING NEWS>>>

The SAGE training workshops will continue in January: “Avid for FCP Editors” run by Susan Scott, and “FCP for Avid Editors” run by Mike Dicks will be the first workshops for 2007.
Another workshop for the beginning of next year will be: "Onlining and Grading HD Documentaries"
Check your e-mail early in the New Year for more info and final dates.

<<<FEEDBACK from SITHENGI>>>

by Catherine Myburgh

Sithengi was a little smaller than last year. On Wednesday the SABC board had their big report back to the industry. Although many nice things were said, my overwhelming response to a broadcaster who chooses to call themselves the 'producers' of various content that is produced outside the SABC, is not good enough. As long as they see themselves as the 'Producers' I think we have a long battle ahead. They did however recognize SASFED and that the deliberations that have take place with the initial meeting held. Rehad made a great speech and put all the most important issues on the table. Like contracts, payments and the intellectual property debate, amongst others. They have made a commitment to have a meeting with SASFED about these issues.

Generally SABC have taken over Sithengi this year. There is now talk of it happening in Jo'burg in 2008. There was no clear representation of the other broadcasters, M-net or E-tv.

I really enjoyed watching the documentary pitching sessions on Thursday. This is where Sithengi comes together for me. A good representation of international broadcasters and distribution agents are represented. They watch the pitches and then make comments. It is very helpful to get a sense of the international scene. Where many of the SABC policies are lost. The SABC as the local broadcaster, much to my disgust, was not present in the morning session. Which was very embarrassing for all present as there was no local voice. The did however arrive for the afternoon session.

On Friday there were pitching sessions for drama series. Again to international and local broadcasters, this was also interesting. The BBC, Granada TV, Dutch and Canadian, the SABC represented by Kitiwe. Again the responses were very informative but I have to say I felt for Kitiwe trying to justify the SABC position. One of the international broadcasters in response to co-production deals, said in the nicest possible way, that they don't know how we make films on the budgets we have, and further it is quite clear that the production value suffers and it would be difficult to compete on the international market under those circumstances!

On Saturday SAFED had a meeting to discuss a way forward as far as organising the committees, which will take the issues on. A broadcast committee has been formed with a lot of representation from the Producers Alliance. It is uncertain as to how involved the IPO will be. At this point The Producers Alliance has grown into a powerful producer organisation and many IPO members have joined the TPA.

<<<OUT-TAKES>>>

This column is a speaker’s corner for your views and opinions! Jeremy Bense has his say and invites any one to agree or disagree on subjects that matter most in our industry.

The festive season is approaching, Christmas cometh – and with it a message of peace and goodwill to all. Of course, this can only bring one thing to mind – money!

Looking at the price of DVDs, I could not help wondering how local distributors and retailers can justify the figures printed on the stickers. I suspect that even if they halved the price their profits would not be affected, simply because they would probably double their sales. Putting things very simply: I would be more likely to buy two discs at R120 each than one for R200. The situation becomes even more ludicrous when I find that even R220 will not buy me a disc of a black-and-white movie that is almost a century old and has no sound-track.

Clearly I do not have a head for business – but the situation got me thinking: do we, as free-lancers or contract employees, place sufficient emphasis on ME Incorporated? Do we run ourselves as one-person businesses, with proper attention being paid to matters such as marketing, cash-flow, tax planning and retirement? Business skills often form another lacuna in our training, and while there are workshops for writers and software seminars for editors, I cannot ever remember having a seen a nuts-and-bolts introduction to the business side of free-lancing. Basically it’s something that you learn along the way – or go bankrupt in the process.

I can remember sitting through a day-long discussion of a film-school’s new syllabus and being more than a little disappointed to discover that while “movie production” formed one of the avenues of study, no mention was made of project management, industrial relations, human resources or simply how to prepare basic financial statements of the type required when dealing with the bank manager or SARS. Movies are by definition classic examples of projects, and even engineers talk about the importance of “soft issues” – in other words, how to keep people from wanting to murder each other when placed in a stressful situation. Sound familiar? I would be very curious to know how often budget over-runs in the film and television industry are not the result of poor people management. After all, nobody forgets to book a camera – but “Oh crap, didn’t anyone tell you that we need that re-write/on-line by tomorrow?”

That, I guess, is enough of a rant for one year, but paying closer attention to business issues will be one of my New Year’s resolutions. A few years of relative stability can lull one into a dangerous sense of complacency, and it pays to be ready to deal with problems – and seize new opportunities.

With that, let me wish you a very Happy Christmas and a preposterously prosperous 2007.

<<<HDV extracts from WIKIPEDIA>>>

(HDV can also mean Hepatitis D virus.)

High Definition Video (HDV) is a video format designed to record compressed HDTV video on standard DV media (DV or MiniDV cassette tape).

Overview
HDV was designed to offer existing video production environments a cost-conscious upgrade path from standard-definition (SD) to high-definition (HD) video. Since HDV operates at the same recorded datarate (25 Mbit/s bitstream rate) as DV, HDV recorders share the same physical (MiniDV ) tape transport as existing DV equipment. For the camera, the main expense is concentrated in the optics and imaging electronics. Compared to HD video equipment built on more professional standards (such as HDCAM and DVCPRO HD), HDV enjoys a tremendous cost advantage. HDV camcorders open high-definition video acquisition to consumers, amateur videographers, and low-budget TV production. Although 1080i HDV and DV share the same (DV) tape format and the same recorded datarate, they use completely different video compression technology. The DV codec uses strictly an intraframe (spatial) scheme, whereas HDV uses the well-established MPEG 2 video codec. MPEG-2 applies both intraframe (spatial compression) and interframe (temporal compression) to video-compression, allowing HDV to achieve its higher spatial resolution at the target bitrate of 19.7 Mbit/s (720p) and 25 Mbit/s (1080i). Compared to more expensive HDCAM and DVCPRO HD equipment, HDV suffers from significantly more spatial and temporal (motion) artifacts. As a consequence of interframe (temporal) compression, HDV editing is more complex, and introduces greater distortion at the splice point (due to the interdependence of adjacent video frames.) Compared to conventional SD DV, HDV offers a much higher spatial resolution, so most observers are willing to accept the artifacts in exchange for a higher-definition picture. It is worth remembering that standard definition MPEG broadcasts generally use only 2 to 4Mbits/s, and WMV-HD produces very good results with 6 to 8Mbits/s, compared to which the 25Mbits/s of HDV represents a much lower degree of compression, with much less visible artifacts. HDV audio uses lossy compression (MPEG-1 Layer 2) to reduce the audio bitrate to 384Kbps. DV audio uses uncompressed 16-bit PCM at 1536Kbps. As a result, HDV audio is technically inferior, although MPEG-1 at 384Kbps is regarded as 'perceptually lossless.' Since HDV and DV use the same DV25 tape transport, at the same linear speed, recording times for DV and HDV are identical. That is, a 60 minute MiniDV cassette can store 60 minutes of either DV or HDV footage. As of yet, no HDV cameras can record HDV at LP speed, so the maximum record time on one tape is 80 minutes, as opposed to 120 with an 80 minute tape at LP.

HDV compression
Although HDV and DV share the same tape format and the same recorded datarate, they use completely different video compression technology. The DV codec is strictly an intraframe (spatial) compression. Each DV video frame is recorded as an independent picture, with a fixed bit allocation and uniform placement on the videotape. The HDV codec is based on MPEG-2 video compression, which employs both intraframe and interframe (temporal) techniques. Interframe compressors store only a fraction of the frames in a video as independent pictures -- called key frames -- and encode the remaining frames as changes relative to them. Consequently, HDV frames vary in size depending on their prior and future neighbors. In HDV 1080i, one in every 12 (25 FPS) or 15 (30 FPS) frames is a key frame. In HDV 1080p, one in every 12 (25 FPS) or 15 (24 or 30 FPS) frames is a key frame. In HDV 720p, one in every 6 (24, 25, or 30 FPS) or 12 (50 or 60 FPS) frames is a key frame. MPEG-2 video enables HDV to achieve a much higher compression ratio than DV, but at the cost of motion-induced artifacts in scenes of complex motion. The artifacts are a limitation of the compression technology and bitrate allocated to the video bitstream. Motion artifacts are imperceptible for static shots and gentle pans, but may become increasingly detracting as motion complexity increases. For example, a moving riverbed may exhibit regions of picture breakup, depending on its portion of the total screen area. It is important to view these limitations in the proper context. Lighting, chroma content, camera motion, etc all play a role in the potential for artifacts. The television series "JAG" shot many scenes using HDV without any incident, shooting over extreme latitudes of sunlight over ocean water, with dark and light content in the subject matter. For the DV codec to approach the spatial quality of HDV, it would require more than four times the storage space. Encoders are constantly improving; The Sony XDCAM HD format is very similar to HDV. MPEG is the standard of the future, and as encoders improve, the potential for artifacts lessens. Dropouts or errors in the compressed video bitstream affect HDV much more severely than DV. This is an unavoidable characteristic of interframe compression. Since frame data affects multiple frames (and not just the one it originated from), a dropout will impact all dependent neighbors. Frame-accurate editing is also made more difficult by the MPEG-2 codec. Any modifications to the video sequence require the surrounding group of frames to undergo a complete (and lossy) decompression/recompression cycle. However, virtually all professional non-linear editing software is now designed to work flawlessly with HDV. Currently the BBC do not consider HDV to be a broadcasting standard due to the compression and errors mentioned above and they will accept only 25% of a program filmed in HDV only by prior consent. Their preferred choice of format for recording HD is currently HDCAM. For all its limitations, HDV is quite stunning on HD displays. Although free of motion-induced artifacts, DV tends to look fuzzy when scaled up to HD resolutions. Subjectively, most observers are willing to accept HDV's visual artifacts in exchange for a more detailed picture.

Resolution and aspect ratio
In HDV, the video frame is defined to have an aspect ratio of 16:9. Permitted resolutions are 720p and 1080i. HDV 1080i, like other new HD recording formats, uses a pixel aspect ratio of 1.33 to store data in a more mathematically and algorithmically efficient way. HDV 1080i uses a pixel resolution of 1440×1080, but when displayed is scaled to an aspect ratio of 1920×1080 = (1440 × 1.33)×1080. While this reduces horizontal resolution, the loss is less than the numbers would suggest, because the vertical resolution is also reduced by interlacing. The benefit of adding pixels is reduced if resolution in only one direction is increased, while the other lags too far behind. HDV resolution, while falling short of 1080p, is still a dramatic improvement over standard DV. Box area denotes effective resolution, not the intended shape of the screen, which is why the 1080i box is not as tall as the 1080p box. Despite using "only" 1440×1080 pixels for 1080i, the perceived sharpness with HDV is much higher than that of PAL or NTSC DV formats. 1440 is still twice the horizontal resolution of DV and DVD formats. In total 1080i has a resolution of 1,555,200 pixels, which is 4.5 times larger than the resolution of NTSC DV (345,600 pixels) and 3.75 times larger of PAL DV (414,720 pixels). This applies to the brightness information only, because color information (hue and saturation) is always subsampled (4:2:0 for HDV) to reduce data, be it HDV, DVD, DV or a professional video format because the human eye has less color resolution than brightness resolution. The color resolution of PAL/NTSC/DVD and HDV is only a quarter of their luminance resolution. However, colorspace isn't the only value in determining quality. For example, the Panasonic HVX200 records in the higher quality 4:2:2 colorspace, but it is fed lesser resolution from a 960 × 540 sensor that is significantly resampled, and depending on the resolution used, is feeding at a bitrate of only 40Mbps. Therefore, the camcorder is truly only delivering approximately 3:1:1 vs the 4:2:2 that the DVCPRO HD format offers. Additionally, 4:2:0 is the color sampling format of HD as it is deliverable over broadcast, meaning that HDV does not undergo any color conversion as most other formats require in the chain of acquisition, editing, and output. This alone offers a significant advantage to MPEG formats as an acquisition format.

Notes regarding specific camcorder models
Many HDV cameras support progressive scan (which they denote by "P"). They achieve this by doubling the horizontal scan rate to scan the interlaced sensor twice in one cycle. This lets them use a less expensive sensor at the expense of some interlacing artifacts. There will be fewer artifacts than 50i/60i, but it will not be as smooth as true 25P/30P. Also, various practical tests have shown that resolution in 24P/25P/30P progressive modes is lower than when 1080i interlaced is selected. The exception to this are the Sony HVR-V1 camcorders which scan progressively and store the resultant data using either 2-3 pulldown (in 24p mode) or PsF (in 25p and 30p modes) techniques, so there's no resolution loss.

Editing HDV
As a consequence of the fact that HDV uses the interframe MPEG-2 GOP (Group Of Pictures) structure instead of a solely intraframe compression system, native editing of HDV footage differs technically from the native editing of DV footage. In DV, as each frame of a video sequence is stored as an independent object, the recorded footage can be spliced at any frame without any loss of quality. When editing HDV's MPEG-2 data directly, a single frame cannot be changed without re-encoding subsequent frames from the same group. Any editing of the native MPEG-2 video, whether it be a complex transition or a simple scene-change, requires a decompression and recompression of the entire HDV frame group. Especially over many generations, this may result in increased artifacting, for example in the next frame group after a splice. However, because HDV's 1080i bitrate is 25 Mbit/s, these should be not as obvious as those seen when lower bitrates, such as those used for encoding clips for download, are used. Editing HDV's native MPEG-2 transport stream files also forces the computer system to work much harder to perform even simple tasks of cutting and splicing as frames that don't actually exist as independent cells have to be re-built by the NLE system on-the-fly. If HDV footage is converted (known as 'Transcoding') to a good Lossless Intermediate format for editing, these considerations will not necessarily apply, and given a good quality intermediate format and codec, gradual degradation from generation to generation of edit may be avoided as well as substantial system performance gains. The Apple Intermediate Codec (which runs out of QuickTime) is an efficient, easily usable codec for editing HDV in systems such as Final Cut Pro but lacks the transcoding and generational quality of some third-party HDV Intermediate codecs and does not offer any realtime performance assistance. CineForm's 'ConnectHD', 'AspectHD' and 'ProspectHD' intermediate codecs and encoding utilities currently offer the best HDV intermediate options which not only give lossless quality but also function within the rendering engine of some software editing systems (such as Premiere Pro) to boost real-time performance without hardware assistance. CineForm products currently work with Sony Vegas and Premiere Pro editing systems. Lumiere HD offers a similar functionality for Mac based editing systems (namely Final Cut Pro) but without any real-time assistance. There are many advantages to editing HDV using a Lossless Intermediate rather than the native Mpeg2 file however the trade off for transcoding to a HDV Lossless Intermediate is that the file size is substantially increased and so large hard drive arrays are required for storage of footage. Avid Xpress Pro can edit using native HDV, and Avid also claim to have the advantage of being able to work with mixed formats in the timeline, without the need to transcode any material, since different formats are coped with seemlessly for viewing and output, with automatic conversion as required. It must be noted though that when DV material, for example, is included in an HDV project, a problem arises because it must be de-interlaced prior to scaling to the HDV format, and then re-interlaced. De-interlacing is generally regarded as a very difficult process to do well. This problem will arise of course in all editing software, regardless of whether a lossless intermediate format is used.

The Interlace Dilemma and Web Compatibility Problems
Although interlaced video has been heavily criticised by many, including the EBU (who express the hope that in future all original material will be shot in 1080p 50 for easy conversion to either 1080i or 720p); the fact is that it does work well. HDV (25i UK) viewed on some plasma screens (such as Panasonic) retains both sharpness and smooth motion while having much less motion judder than a movie (which is of course 25p). The motion judder of movies, though regarded by film enthusiasts as a 'desirable feature' that adds to the 'feel' of film, is actually only as acceptable as it is because film directors know that they must restrict themselves to slow pans. Hand-held material shot in 25 or 24p can look very juddery and confusing. The fact that HDV works as well as it does, and gives smooth motion on plasma screens, which cannot produce a true interlaced scan, suggests that these use good deinterlacing in hardware, and that they do in fact deinterlace every field to produce a 50p output to the screen. PC's do not currently support interlaced video properly, and the Windows media player, though it makes some attempt to deinterlace if presented with interlaced files from HDV, fails and produces vertical ripples that appear to be dependant on the size of the output image, and other factors. In general, good deinterlacing provides quite good results, if the de-interlacing option is turned on, but the fact that most laptops use a screen refresh rate of 60Hz and many workstations use 75Hz means that there are inevitable clashes with 25 or 50 fps material (UK experience). Ideally, UK users should use a video refresh rate of 50Hz or 100Hz and media players should be capable of de-interlacing from 25i to 50p, though this still leaves problems given that material on the Web is likely to be in both 25 and 30 fps. Currently the preferred approach seems to be to de-interlace edited material for the web, but this is problematic. Avid Xpress Pro currently appears to fail to do deinterlacing on its export options such as WMV HD, which results in unacceptable 'mice-teeth' on moving vertical edges. Although good quality de-interlacing is possible on HDV files, using third-party software, it tends to take a very long time (all night for half an hour or so). HDV has the potential to look extremely good on the Web, using 6 to 8Mbits/s as demonstrated on the Microsoft WMV HD showcase site, many have tried and failed to get comparable quality on the web from HDV because of the interlace problem. It is not impossible to achieve good results though, if the correct methods are used to deinterlace the footage.

Specifications
Media: DV or MiniDV Tape
Video signal: 720/60p, 720/30p, 720/50p, 720/25p, 720/24p, 1080/60i, 1080/50i, 1080/25p, 1080/30p, 1080/24p
Video sampling frequency for luminance: 74.25 MHz (720p), 55.6875 MHz (1080i)
Video Chroma subsampling: 4:2:0
Video sample quantization: 8 bits (both luma and chrominance)
Video Compression: MPEG2 Video (profile & level: MP@H-14)
Video compressed bitstream rate: Approximately 25 Mbit/s for 1080i / 19.7 Mbit/s for 720p
Audio sampling frequency: 48 kHz
Audio quantization: 16 bits
Audio compression: MPEG-1 Audio Layer II
Audio compressed bitstream rate: 384 kbit/s (192 kbit/s per channel)
Audio mode Stereo (2 channels): optional 4-channel MPEG-2 Audio Layer II at 96 kbit/s per channel mode
MPEG Stream type: Transport Stream Packetized Elementary Stream
Stream interface: IEEE 1394a Apple FireWire 400 or Sony i.LINK (MPEG-2 TS)
File extension Usually saved as .m2t