anamorphic transfer from non-anamorphic footage?

[b4bob]

Hi guys,

Question for you. I want to shoot on super 8, and then directly transfer to miniDV. I also want to shoot for anamorphic enhancement, but I don?t feel like buying Century Optics? $900 anamorphic conversion lens that will fit my Cannon 514XL.

Can conversion labs, like Moviestuff?s, do an anamorphic transfer for something not shot anamorphic? It?s basically just a 133% vertical squeeze of the image.

Or does anyone know of any anamorphic lenses that will not cost ten times the price of my super 8 camera?

Thanks,
bob

[lightfeat]

If they were to squeeze your image, it ould look ridiculous. All you can do is introduce black "barn doors" to block out half of your frame. This will seriously reduce definition as you'll only be using part of your frame.

Yes, you can squash your image during transfer, but not without flattenning everything so that it looks stupid.

Either go for a more subtle barn dooring (to 16:9, say) or else shoot anarmorphic to start with.

Also, bare this in mind - transferring with a camera with native 16:9 shaped chips with give you better definition if you are to edit in 16:9 mode

Lucas

[technicolour]

ive seen you can get squeeze lenses that compress the image by 1.5x or whatever , I shall quote a website on the matter.

"ABOUT SCOPE LENSES
Scope lenses are also known as anamorphic or squeeze lenses. In AV circles they are known as widescreen lenses. They squeeze or expand a picture in the horizontal direction only, Thus a film released as a squeezed print can be expanded with a Scope lens to approximately full CinemaScope format by using a x2 squeeze ratio Scope lens in front of the normal projector lens AV enthusiasts tend to use x1.5 ratio lenses as 35mm slides are a wider format than a motion picture frame.

We sometimes have second user Scope lenses in stock. A few new lenses are available but they are very expensive! Why not give us a ring to see if we have a Scope lens in stock, a suitable bracket will then be available from stock, or on short delivery"

From (http://www.spondonfilms.freeserve.co.uk/cine.htm)

Sorry if you already new about the technical bits but it also shows you that you dont need to clean out your piggy bank to get hold of a squeeze lens.

Lucas is dead right about the other stuff [img]cool.gif[/img] , you cant just apply vertical compression to it or it will look stupid, and you could matte it but you'd then need to blow up the image and that would dramatically reduce your resoloution.

[b4bob]

Thanks for the answers guys.

I guess I still don?t get why squeezing it at the telecine phase wouldn?t work. My Sony miniDV will record in 16x9 or just crop a 4x3 with a letterbox. But the 16x9 mode actually vertically squeezes the image so when it is played on a 16x9 monitor (or a 4x3 with a 16x9 mode) the image will be in letterbox, but all the lines of resolution are still in the image and not in the letterbox bars. That?s basically the concept of DVD?s with anamorphic enhancement.

If I shoot with a so-called ?scope lens,? the image will appear too tall and thin, unless displayed on a 16x9 monitor (or, I guess, projected on a projector fitted with a similar scope lens).

So if I DON?T shoot with a scope lens BUT at the video transfer stage, the digital video cam is set to true 16x9, why wouldn?t that work? Wouldn?t the transferred footage be corrected when viewed in a 16x9 TV?

Help.

[lightfeat]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><table border="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#333333" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FF9900"><tr><td width="100%" bgcolor="#DDDDDD"><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by b4bob:
Thanks for the answers guys.

I guess I still don?t get why squeezing it at the telecine phase wouldn?t work. My Sony miniDV will record in 16x9 or just crop a 4x3 with a letterbox. But the 16x9 mode actually vertically squeezes the image so when it is played on a 16x9 monitor (or a 4x3 with a 16x9 mode) the image will be in letterbox, but all the lines of resolution are still in the image and not in the letterbox bars. That?s basically the concept of DVD?s with anamorphic enhancement.

If I shoot with a so-called ?scope lens,? the image will appear too tall and thin, unless displayed on a 16x9 monitor (or, I guess, projected on a projector fitted with a similar scope lens).

So if I DON?T shoot with a scope lens BUT at the video transfer stage, the digital video cam is set to true 16x9, why wouldn?t that work? Wouldn?t the transferred footage be corrected when viewed in a 16x9 TV?

Help.</font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>

OK Bob, try to get your head around this...

Super8 is a 4:3 image. Period.

With an A-lens, optically squashing an elongated image onto this 4:3 frame, will give you lots of tall thin people etc., so that when projected onto a screen, or a telecine machine through the same lens, they will be normal shape again, but in a widescreen image, from the 4:3 frame. This is true anarmorphic film projection.

If you only do the second part of that, you will get squat, fat people. Get it?

If you film without an A-lens, but don't want 4:3 image on video, you can either video the film in 4:3 mode and then black bar it in computer to whatever size and shape you want it, or you can shoot in 16:9 mode, which effectively crops out part of your Super8 resolution, obviously, but will give you a 16:9 image for widescreen tv.

The first method is optical squeezing, which is more sophisticated and preserves definition better, but is more expensive and complicated.

The second method is digital, and is not really "scope" and it's not really that wide, 16:9, but yes, this is probably what you want to do. It is easily possible at the telecine stage.

Lucas

[b4bob]

Okay. So. If the video camera that is performing the telecine process is set to true 16:9 (not cropping) and it is capturing non-squished footage, the resulting video image will be tall and thin, right? What area of the super 8mm frame will be lost then? The sides, or the top and bottom?

bob

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ April 07, 2003 01:50 AM: Message edited by: b4bob ]</font>

[b4bob]

Okay, Lucas.

I just used a 3d animation program to test my theory. Having the video camera in 16:9 mode at telecine stage on non-squished footage will result in losing roughly 1/6 off of the top and 1/6 off of the bottom. So I have two new questions.

1. How bad would super 8 look enlarged like that?

2. Can and will a telecine service, like moviestuff, do such a thing?

It seems just getting a 1.85 squishing lens for shooting would be easier after all.

bob

[jukkasil]

Hi Bob!

Here are couple answers to your questions:

1. I tested that about couple months ago, here are still captured frames of same frame, first one is a normal 4:3 version:

http://www.sorb-i-tol.com/1.33.jpg

The second one is the frame now captured in 16:9 mode with my Sony PC-100 and Workprinter:

http://www.sorb-i-tol.com/1.78.jpg

2. All Workprinter owners can do it

And then there are other ways to do that same thing without losing so much resolution:

File the film gate of your super 8 camera and then capture material in 16:9 mode. Here are couple examples of that (mpg-files):

http://www.sorb-i-tol.com/super8widescreen.mpg

The camera I did that was Lomo Aurora "point and shoot" model.

Much better image quality (shot to bad Kodak cartridge), don't mind about that jitter frames:

http://www.sorb-i-tol.com/169test.mpg

That same footage after using deshaker-plugin in virtual-dub:

http://www.sorb-i-tol.com/testdeshake.avi

Some info about my Anamorphic-lens-tests:

http://www.sorb-i-tol.com/super8cinemascopetest.html

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ April 08, 2003 12:50 AM: Message edited by: jukkasil ]</font>

[b4bob]

Thanks, jukka.

The first two video files look great. Can you explain again how you achieved that? I don't quite understand "file the gate."

bob

[jukkasil]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><table border="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#333333" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FF9900"><tr><td width="100%" bgcolor="#DDDDDD"><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by b4bob:
Thanks, jukka.

The first two video files look great. Can you explain again how you achieved that? I don't quite understand "file the gate."

bob</font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>

Well I filed the film gate (removed that sound track part of it) and then you can expose wider part of super 8 film than normally (about 1.6:1 aspect ratio).

After that I just transfer the footage with my Workprinter to 16:9 ratio.

Note: you need to do some cropping also in this case, but not such much like with normal super 8 camera. Be careful doing this moddification. I recommend you to buy one sparepart camera from same camera producer you can file the film gate from it and keep your original gate untouched.