How to get that film look?

[Letricheur]

I would like to reproduce the look of film on my home DV movies and wonder if anyone has a collection of filter settings (change RGB, soften, etc.) that achieves this? I know there is an Adobe After Effects plugin (Cinelook) that claims to do this but it costs a fortune.

[theReal]

There's a movie filter in Cobalt muvee auto producer - I just tried the program for fun (it's an "auto-editing" software, nothing I'd really want to use).

If you can use it without the auto-editing function (though I'm not sure if that is possible), the movie filter looks quite convincing, I think. It's not free, but it doesn't cost too much and you can check out the demo (http://www.muvee.com/website/)

[Letricheur]

Hey, thanks, theReal. I'll give it a whirl.

[bira]

Try this

DVFilm (http://www.dvfilm.com/maker/index.htm)

And tell me if it works!

[theReal]

As far as I read on their site, DVFilm is nothing more than a Deinterlacer. Honestly there are less expensive (=free) solutions to convert DV movies to 24fps progressive scan on Doom9's site :D

[bira]

Sorry!

[Letricheur]

The Muvee Autoproducer makes was a bit of a wash, especially as the demo places an enormous and annoying watermark over most of the frame. The appearance of the video did not look much different from the DV, once given the "cinema" look.

However, the Cinelook plugin for Adobe After Effects (http://www.digidemos.com) is much better. It has a choice of many different preset 'film looks' including black and white, different film types (Fuji, Ektachrome, etc.), antique, night-time (basically blue). Rendering is slow, as expected, and the demo puts a watermark all over it. I'd buy it but it costs $695!

I note theReal's comment about 24fps and progressive frames but I was really after changing the appearance of the frame (colour, graininess, etc.) to reproduce film given that DV always looks so bright, shiny, and harsh.

[theReal]

I just realized that the good effect I thought of in muvee producer wasn't the "cinema" but the "Chaplinesque" effect. It's probably not what you want because it converts the movie to a kind of 1920ies b/w sepia colored movie with a lot of noise, lines and a jumping picture. It looks convincing, I think - but yeah, I'm surely not going to buy that program either (and I agree you can't use files created by the demo - that's pretty normal for demos :))