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MillimeterShooting for DVD
Jul 14, 2005 1:00 PM, Barry Braverman
DVD sales represented a $25 billion business last year, and chances are if you’re at all successful as a digital craftsman right now you owe your livelihood in whole or in part to it.
Whether you’re an audio recordist, film negative restoration specialist, menu designer or ‘extras’ feature producer, sales of the five-inch discs are keeping many of us solvent, and it looks like that’s going to continue to be the case for at least several more years.
Because DVD is the lifeblood of so many interconnected industries, it makes sense that we adjust our thinking to better accommodate the format’s unique requirements and idiosyncrasies. If you’re a shooter or perhaps a producer who shoots your own material, you need to understand the heart and soul of the DVD-Video format.
After all, we’re not outputting to tape anymore, and indeed, this Christmas will likely mark the unofficial end of VHS as we know it. Most of the major retail chains like Target and Wal-Mart have already announced plans to abandon the twenty-five year old format at the conclusion of this holiday season.
In order to achieve the highest quality DVD images, here are a few practical recommendations from a shooter’s perspective:
SHOOT 24p
Shooting 24p is simply logical and smart since every DVD player is in truth a native 24p device. From the earliest days of the format, movie studios originating on 24 fps film have logically encoded their movies at 24 fps for DVD.
Relying on the player then to perform the telecine conversion to 29.97 fps, the DVD producer can shoot, capture, edit and encode an entire production at 24p, thus averting the most onerous NTSC artifacts while also reducing the size of the finished encoded program by 20%. This is not an insignificant amount in an era when we are jamming everything and the kitchen sink on our DVDs.
Moreover, shooting 24p substantially improves resolution and image fineness by eliminating the 1/60th second temporal artifacts that can occur between fields; the suppression of these combing defects being a major factor in improving the resolution and look of DVD encoded programs produced entirely at 24p.
SHOOT WIDESCREEN
Centuries ago, the School of Athens recognized the power of the widescreen canvas to woo audiences, and you should attempt to do the same with respect to DVD. There is little reason today other than for news and some commercials to continue shooting 4:3, as widescreen TVs are become increasingly common, and DVD players natively support 16:9 playback.
Even the most unsophisticated viewer today now accepts widescreen’s “mysterious” black bars at the top and bottom of the “square” screen display. Storytelling in 16:9 simply seems more modern, more cutting edge, more HD-esque, and thus should be the obvious choice for DVD projects, especially as more cameras (like Sony’s HVR-ZU1) are able to capture in true 16:9.
REDUCE CAMERA DETAIL
Your camera’s detail setting can also significantly impact the look of your DVD images as it places a hard, high-contrast edge around objects. Raising or lowering the camera’s detail level directly affects the thickness and appearance of this edge.
When compressing to MPEG-2 for DVD, this edge may contribute to serious artifacts along the hard unnatural boundary. When detail is set too high, images rimmed with the harsh edge acquire a “video” look many folks associate with amateur productions. When camera detail is set too low, the facial features of your star talent may appear unnaturally soft and lacking in definition.
Some cameras allow reducing detail specifically in the flesh tones, which may be desirable to cover imperfections in complexion. Use care when dialing down skin detail to avoid a ghoulish look. I knew a shooter once who leaned on this gimmick too much, transforming an actress’ face into a soupy undefined blob. That shooter is now selling shoes somewhere in the Midwest.
Thus reducing the detail in your camera should be the first priority of every shooter as the elevated values favored by manufacturers may contribute substantially to a plastic look and ultimately substandard encodes. Apparently one reason that manufacturers prefer a high default detail setting in their cameras is to compensate for inexpensive optics that lack good resolution and contrast.
Some camera makers also seemingly believe (especially in Japan) that many unsophisticated buyers prefer the “sharper” hyper-real look. As a shooter of titles primarily for DVD release, you should seek smoother more natural edges in your images, and thus resist the temptation to augment apparent sharpness by artificial means.
Summary
Shooting for DVD means developing an understanding of the medium that goes far beyond the traditional limits of good craft. Today, we must focus more fully on achieving the best possible DVD images, and that includes paying increased attention in our cameras to frame rate, progressive versus interlaced scan modes and detail level.
In a future installment, I will discuss the benefits of employing various camera diffusion filters to facilitate ultimate encoding and compression to DVD.
Continue the discussion on Crosstalk the Millimeter Forum.