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DVCPROHD to SD – Interlace and Banding
I have searched the COW for days regarding this issue and haven’t come up with a complete answer.
I am mastering a series of commercials shot on a Panasonic DVCPROHD camera at 720p 59.94. The final output has been on a SD Beta Tape.
I am editing all these spots in a 720p HD 59.94 timeline and use an AJA Kona LHe card for letterbox output to my beta deck with great looking results. However, every fine line in the footage produces horrible looking banding and buzzing when the camera pans or tilts. I have tried all the tricks – flicker filter, adding a second layer with overlay and adding guassian blur… you name it.
I am convinced that the solution is in the settings. Maybe field order? Maybe going from progressive to interlaced yields crappy results all the time. I don’t understand how all of these TV shows and spots shot on HD and mastered to SD look OK.
What has everyone here at the COW been doing in this situation?
How do I upload a sample flash or quicktime file?
Apple Certified Final Cut Pro 6
Mac Pro 3.0 Quad
Kona LHe
Panasonic HPX-2000 -
8 Replies
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Well, interlacing can produce artifacts. What kind of monitor are you watching this on? If you are watching interlaced material on a progressive display, this could account for what you are seeing.
Can you do your downconvert, then capture a bit of a problem area and upload it? To upload something you need to host it on your website or use a service like yousendit or similar.
The banding is an 8bit artifact.
I use my KOna card to downconvert to SD tape pretty often and I am constantly pleased with the results.
Jeremy
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Ah…the lovely MOIRE effect. I had a battle with that myself last year. HD doesn’t do it, but SD certainly does. You see this when people wear shirts with fine lines, or if the venetian blinds are almost closed.
A 2% vertical blur is the best you can do. VERTICAL only…this helps. But this is also a lesson in why it is good to monitor SD as well as HD.
Shane
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Hi Jeremy,
Do you have problems with text on the downconverted SD ?
We’re seeing some ghosting on the edges of the text on the downconverted SD output and was told that it is a side effects of the filtering applied on the downconversion.
-chrispy
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No can’t say that I have seen any ghosting. Do you have an example of what it looks like?
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Hi Jeremy,
Try this. Create a 1920 x 1080 sequence, add a grey background and then a big bold white text.
View it on the SD downconverted output and focus on the outer edges of the text. On my side I can see a sort of ghosting like edge on the outer edges of the text.
I’ve tried this on several machines and they have the same results.
-chrispy
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I will take a look Chrispy. Any particular codec to use?
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I’ve tried DVCProHD, Uncompressed 8bit and 10bit and all came out the same so it doesn’t seem to be codec specific.
-chrispy
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I do not see any ghosting. What kind of monitor are you watching this from? Are you sure it’s not a monitoring glitch?
Also what text plug are you using? I tried ‘Text’ and Title 3D.
Jeremy
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