Or, put another way, what can you do to make your video appear more cinematic?

Here’s the key differences:

1. Framerate – Film is shot at a framerate of 24 (actually 23.976) frames a second, video is either 25 or 30 (actually 29.97)
2. Progressive vs Interlaced – Film is progressive, in that 23.976 full frames are recorded to film each second. With NTSC video, for example, there are actually 59.94 (ie. 2×29.97) fields that get displayed a second. Interlacing means that only half the picture is shown alternatively. So first the even lines are displayed, then the odd-lines, then the even lines, then the odd, and so on. This “interlaced” appearance is often a big tip-off that you have shot on video.
3. Depth-of-field – Most cinematic productions make use of a shallow “depth-of-field” to focus the audience’s attention on objects and people. This has the appearance of keeping something in focus while the background or foreground is blurred out, leading to a pleasing image. Video is typically shot on lenses that provide a very wide depth-of-field where everything is in focus.
4. Exposure Latitute – Film has a greater ability to represent both very dark images and very bright images in the same shot due to it’s very high exposure latitude. Video, however, is not so flexible. If you have both very dark and light subjects that you wish to capture with video you’ll need to either expose for the dark subject and all the bright areas will be “blown out” and just appear too bright and washed out, or you expose for the bright item, and you lose all the detail in the dark areas.
5. Production Value – Most cinematic features have much higher budgets than television or other video formats. This manifests itself in smooth camera and crane moves, and also much better or artistic lighting than is typically found on video.
6. Aspect Ratio – The majority of television and video is still watched on a 4×3 aspect ratio. Even though more and more television is being released in 16×9 widescreen, most film is recorded these days in 2:35:1 Panavision which is wider again.
7. Gamma – Because Film is a very difference medium to video, it responds very differently to light. This often referred to as the “gamma” of the medium. Film is referred to as having a “cinegamma”.
8. Color – In general you’ll find that colors on film look richer and more saturated than on video.

I you want to achieve this coveted “film look” there are many things you can do. I’ll cover some of the easy “post production” ways in the next part in this series.

In the meantime, you can checkout a comparison between pure untreated video and video that has been tweaked to look more like film by clicking here

Video is available in so many formats, and it is a common requirement to convert from one format to another.

For example, I own a PalmOne Treo 650

And the media player that I use can only play video of certain formats, and more importantly, only certain bitrates.

So, part of the challenge of getting video onto my Treo is getting it into the right format and bitrate (I can’t play files that are too big).

I used to use a program called VLC to do all my dirtywork. But it’s not really set up to be a transcoding program (that’s what changing one compression system to another is called)

But, I stumbled on a bit of software today that IS.

It’s called MediaCoder and from all accounts it is just what the doctor ordered.

You can convert from pretty much any format to any other format.

And the best part…

It’s FREE! (I love that word).

I haven’t given it an extensive test yet, but when I do I’ll do a bit of a review, and post up my pros and cons.

Happy Transcoding!

It’s all shot on professional broadcast Digital Betacam cameras and tape stock, not that you can really tell when it gets compressed for web, but I’d thought I’d give you guys a little sample of what I’ve been up to.

Enjoy!

NB: It was encoded a while ago at 12.5 fps, so it’s not as fluid as the original footage which was 25 fps. It was shot for DVD, so it loses a bit when squeezed down for the web.

You can view a high quality quicktime version here