Marco Solorio reviews Post Holes Prematted Stock Clips

Let’s look at the common way you normally obtain matted talent for your productions.

• Find talent via talent agency.
• Set up or rent a blue/green studio cyk
• Set up or rent production crew (don’t forget your chromakey technical director!)
• Shoot your talent (on something better than DV25, please)
• Put up with your talent’s “wants and needs”
• Buy lunch for everyone (if you’re nice)
• Send source tapes to editor for capturing
• Send selected clips to your digital composite artist
• Spend time pulling that perfect matte. Rotoscope if need be.
• Send completed clip back to editor for final edit integration

That’s a fairly long list of costly production elements required to get the matted shot you’re looking for. If by chance Post Holes has a similar shot you’re looking for or can fit into your production, then you literally only need to do the final step in the above list. Heck, the price of a Post Holes DVD could be less than buying lunch for everyone at your shoot!

	Technical Stuff

So what kind of quality are you getting with these Post Holes clips? Very good quality for starters. I asked the people at Post Holes which format these shots were acquired in. They told me these clips were all originally shot on a Sony HDW-F900 CineAlta HD camera running at 1080p at 29.97. I’m glad they didn’t do it at 1080i since that would involve messy interlaced fields. It’s obvious that the people at Post Holes really went in and optimized the mattes for these clips. It appears that some stuff was in fact rotoscoped for obtaining the best matte possible.

To maintain the original RGB[A] source and image quality, all the clips supplied on these DVDs use the QuickTime Animation codec at 100% quality. This means these clips are literally what you're seeing from the compositing apps they used to create the alpha channel mattes; a lossless transfer. And since they’re in RGB[A], they’re not adding any additional color-space compression via 4:2:2 Y’CrCb chroma-sampling, or heaven forbid, 4:1:1 sampling for DV25 with 5:1 file compression. So in essence, you’re getting the same exact file that Post Holes team created on their compositing applications. No added compression or image data loss. Post Holes might want to look into BitJazz’s Sheer Video codec for even better file size efficiency in lossless RGB[A]. The decoder is free and works on Mac and Windows.

These files are sized at 720x486. This is nice for us that work in uncompressed D1 in NTSC. For DV25 users, simply crop out the top four rows and the bottom two rows to create a 720x480 size image.

Unfortunately there isn’t a PAL version offered from Post Holes. And although these clips were originally shot on HD, there unfortunately isn’t an HD format offered either. I asked Post Holes about this and they said there wont be a PAL or HD version from these first two series, but future series will be NTSC, PAL and HD.

	Simplicity

Using these Post Holes clips couldn’t be any easier. If your application of choice supports QuickTime clips with alpha-channel support (what doesn’t?), then you’re ready to go. Simply drop your clip of choice in the timeline or layout and you’re golden.

I did find that the clips are fairly flat in contrast, which can be good in some cases so you obtain full image latitude. With my test below, I did end up color correcting the clip a tad, but not much. To add a little spice, I time-remapped the clip as well, ramping the frame-rate speed up and down. Oh and I absolutely HAD to use this clip out of the collection... what a hottie!!! I'm in love.

Original clip showing both RGB and Alpha channel split--click graphic to view movie	Composited clip with background and time-remapping click graphic to view movie

	Flexible Purchasing

Post Holes really made buying these clips easy and flexible. You can either buy a single DVD, the DVD set or individual clips off their website. Buying the clips individually off their website allows you to use them immediately (depending on your internet connection’s download speed of course).

Let’s also not forget that these clips are royalty-free so after you use them the first time, you never have to pay for it ever again. Nada, zip, zilch. Nice.

	Conclusion

There’s no question that the quality of these clips shine through. Each clip has about 30 seconds worth of material, so you should find a useful shot within the clip you selected. I think the images are a little flat, but that can be a good thing in some situations. The only real limitation in these clips is the fact that you’re limited only to what shots Post Holes offers you. If however they have a shot you can use, then you’ve just saved yourself a ton of production budget. All in all, I’d say these are a great buy IF you can use the shots. It’s a bit of a shame that some of the clips are a little too weird to be used. I’d like to see more clips that would attract a larger user-base. But that’s just a personal opinion.

Pros
Great quality
Nothing could be easier to use
Individual clips have good TRTs
Oragnized thumbnail indexing
Flexible purchase options, including instant download

Cons
No PAL or HD versions
Library is still a little small. Would like to see more choices
Duplicated DVD-R instead of replicated DVD (prone to extra wear)

Bottom Line
If they have a shot that can work in your production, then the choice couldn’t be more obvious considering the VERY pricey alternative of production time and matte-generation time. The quality is there and couldn’t be easier to work with. Good stuff.

I give this product 4.5 out of 5 Cows.

Price as tested:
$249.00 – Two-disk DVD set containing 60 clips.

Link:
http://www.post-holes.com/

Marco Solorio is a multi-award winning digital media producer and published writer working in the San Francisco Bay Area. He owns and operates OneRiver Media, a succesful post-production facility focused on bringing the highest level of quality to each and every project in a reality-TV driven era of "cheap, fast and cheap". Marco Solorio is also credited for the internationally recognized OneRiver Media Codec Resource Site, a resource that compares various codecs for the benefit of end-users and developers alike.

::: Page design and layout by Marco Solorio of OneRiver Media
::: Article © 2005, Marco Solorio