Match footage nightmare between HV20 & HF M40 (tapeless)

[fbc]

I'm having a bit of a nightmare trying to match footage shot with a Canon HV 20 and HF M40 - the first one is mini DV, the other is tapeless.

We had both cameras going simultaneously on the same scene, with fairly miserable light conditions.

As you would expect, the tapeless camera gave a pretty clear, sharp image, while the DV camera is a symphony of murk and noise.

One saving grace here, actually several.

I own the noise reduction plug-in from Neat Video, so that helps considerably with the DV footage. Also, the whole thing is ultimately going to be in black-and-white with a high contrast film noir look, so I have free license to beat up the image as needed.

So basically, my task is a) to make the DV footage look as good as possible; and B) to "degrade" the tapeless footage until it more closely resembles the DV shots.

How would you go about approaching this? I'm using FCP X 10.0.4, have a bazillion plugins and lots of horsepower (8-core, 32 GB RAM, 12TB RAID-1) at my disposal and know my way around color correcting enough to be dangerous. I've already tried several rounds of color correction and effects and I still end up with what looks like two different movies. Match Color does NOT work particularly well in this instance.

So let's start from scratch.

Here are 100% uncorrected screen grabs, resized to 50%, saved as JPEGS (about 70k each).

HV20 MiniDV
http://21ca.com/nt/color-fix/01-Clip-1.jpg
http://21ca.com/nt/color-fix/01-Clip-1a.jpg
http://21ca.com/nt/color-fix/01-Clip-2.jpg

HF M40 Tapeless
http://21ca.com/nt/color-fix/02-Clip-1.jpg
http://21ca.com/nt/color-fix/02-Clip-2.jpg

Here are the same shots, full-size, saved as PNGs (about 2.5MB each).

HV20 MiniDV
http://21ca.com/nt/color-fix/01-Clip-1.png
http://21ca.com/nt/color-fix/01-Clip-1a.png
http://21ca.com/nt/color-fix/01-Clip-2.png

HF M40 Tapeless
http://21ca.com/nt/color-fix/02-Clip-1.png
http://21ca.com/nt/color-fix/02-Clip-2.png

Like I said, they're 100% uncorrected, so please try not to laugh.

Any help deeply appreciated.

[Bif]

You've probably already gone this route.

First thing I'd try (on HV20 footage) is "nudge" the gamma just a hair lighter, then start kicking up the contrast and see if that brings image tones a little closer to the HF M40 footage.

But if at all possible, I'd try to get the actors together and reshoot the scenes shot with the HV20 but using the HF M40. I know it will be difficult but you have a real mess on your hands.

On the next project be sure to test with all cameras you'll use before you actually start serious shooting. Know what the cameras will get you.

Bruce Foreman

[Janke]

The HV footage looks severely underexposed - did you perchance have the camera set to manual, and adjusted it? Either for "no gain" - cellphone method, or any other reason? (Or forgot to adjust... )

I'm really surprised at the difference. If you can't reshoot, it's better to degrade the tapeless footage, trying to bring the HV stuff to the same brightness will probably look horrible.

You didn't use a DOF adapter on the HV - hopefully?

[Daniel Rutter]

This is why you set both cameras to the same settings before you shoot. Seriously, set both to cinemode (they both have it) and make sure all settings are as close as possible.