About Chicago HD
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News 2004
Markee Magazine, July 2004
HD Unmasked excerpt: Is HD Post Tried and True or Are the Tools and Processes Still In Their Infancy?
"The hurdle in HD post isn't the hardware," notes video Editor Steve Panning who co-owns Chicago HD which offers HD and SD postproduction services. "The biggest variable is the people doing the post: Are you working with an editor who has HD experience? Is the post house able to take the HD ball and run with it? NTSC standards haven't changed for years; there are a lot of editors out there who have been doing great work on high-end SD equipment. But HD is a whole new ball game with a new set of rules."
While there are no real missing links in HD post technology today, the ability to integrate the pieces takes special know-how. "You'll never find everything you want [for HD post] in one box," Panning says. "So you have to find people who can bring the technology together for you."
Chicago HD has been doing HD post for three years editing and finishing independent films such as Bloom and The Climactic Death of Dark Ninja, commercials, and the monthly sports series, Nike Training Camp, broadcast on iN Demand PPV. Chicago HD's toolset includes Apple's Final Cut Pro 4.5 with uncompressed I/O plus HDCam, DVCProHD, D-5 and various SD decks. "We're still improving the processes and workflow; we're still learning," Panning reports.
A key piece of advice, borrowed from the SD world, is to involve the HD post house early in the project. "The mistake some people make," Panning says, "is to assume it's easy to do HD post on Final Cut, Avid, or whatever the case may be. They may not understand the complex steps, the many little details that are involved. Ultimately, they create a mess for themselves, come to us afterwards and say, 'Help! Can you fix this?' Of course our answer is 'Yes.'"
Markee Magazine, January 2004
Editor Steve Panning, co-owner of 18-month old Chicago HD Corp., would like to see a bigger shift to HD post in the Windy City. "Perhaps economic reasons are holding people back, but once they try HD they're sold on it and stick with it if their budgets allow," he says.
Like his Great Lakes colleagues, Panning says independent filmmakers and corporate producers are driving HD post. Client Image Base created an eight-screen HD plasma kiosk for an upcoming Las Vegas trade show with jaw dropping images for attendees to enjoy, he reports. There is also a burgeoning demand from cable and broadcast: the company just began posting a half-hour sports series for cable's HD iNDemand network.
Chicago HD recently conformed the documentary, Edith Piaf: Her Story, Her Songs, the first HD feature from Director George Elder of Chicago's Luminair. Footage had been downconverted to SD for the off-line, and Chicago HD was hired to do the conform. But during editing a few unanticipated issues arose. "We've seen this with other clients," Panning says. "The SD downconverts can mask critical flaws in some shots that aren't seen until you go back to HD. With Piaf several shots had a nice glow about them in SD but in HD we realized they were out of focus! It was a challenge to re-edit, replacing or minimizing those shots; some we just had to live with."
Panning utilized Apple's Final Cut Pro with CineWave and Sony HDCAM decks for the documentary, tapping a Teranex Xantus to upconvert vintage PAL clips of the songstress. He delivered a partially color corrected 24p master in two versions: one in 16:9 with subtitles and one without so subtitles in other languages can be added, and a 4:3 format extracted.
"Having a 95-minute HD show with over 300 subtitles meant a lot of extra steps to get it right," Panning notes. "We rendered out practically the whole show which required lots of drive space." Luminair produced a Dolby Surround mix at Skywalker Sound in Northern California and the final color correction and film out in LA..
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