[Frameworks] Converting digital video to VHS using Premiere or something else

[Aaron F. Ross]

The level of technical ignorance displayed on this discussion list 
never ceases to amaze me. VHS is much worse than 480p. You're lucky 
if you get an effective resolution of 320 vertical columns on VHS. 
VHS = ~150,000 pixels, 640x480 = 307,200, DVD/DV = 345,600.

It's a commonly accepted industry practice to shoot in HD, then 
downsample to SD, particularly for chroma key work. Most indie makers 
can't afford 4:4:4 pro HD gear, so they shoot in HD, then knock the 
resolution down to lossless 4:4:4 SD before cutting a key. This 
eliminates the color sampling limitations of consumer HD gear & 
formats. This is the optimal pipeline for no-budget VFX work.

Downsampling after compositing will give some relief from the chroma 
sampling limitations, but it's far better to downsample before 
compositing. Just be sure that the downsampled footage is in a 
lossless format such as Quicktime Animation. If you're tight on disk 
space, you can nest compositions or timelines and render the 
composited SD footage directly, with no intermediate.

Aaron



At 8/17/2013, you wrote:
>Aaron F Ross... downsampling it to 480p is not the same as laying 
>off to tape. It's like suggesting he hands out blurred glasses to 
>anyone viewing the film. It's an interesting idea but not what he's asking for.
>
>Jeff Kreines... I agree with you about fixing the mistakes, but the 
>cool part about laying off to tape and then viewing the results, is 
>that laying off to tape and then recapturing the footage creates a 
>copy of the footage, it doesn't modify the original. If he isn't 
>satisfied with the results, he's free to try something else.
>
>
>
>On Sat, Aug 17, 2013 at 8:31 PM, Jeff Kreines 
><<mailto:jeff at kinetta.com>jeff at kinetta.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Hey Im making a stopmotion video using adobe premiere and it looks 
>>terrible because its HD and looks too crisp.  You can see all the 
>>shitty blue screening and whatnot so I want to convert it to VHS so 
>>the mistakes don't look so obvious.
>
>If you want less resolution just to mask the mistakes, why not fix 
>the mistakes rather than make it all look like mush?
>
>Of course if you want it all to look mushy, why work in HD in the 
>first place?  A generation of VHS will do many things, some of which 
>you may like and others you may not.  Choice of format is important.
>
>Jeff Kreines
>Kinetta
><mailto:jeff at kinetta.com>jeff at kinetta.com
><http://kinetta.com>kinetta.com
>
>
>
>
>
>
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Aaron F. Ross
Digital Arts Guild