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Quality Control: FCP to Beta SP
Please help!
I work for a church that has a program on the Daystar TV Netowrk. We shoot our shows using Sony EX 1 HD cameras, edit with FCP on an iMac and master, then drop the shows into an 8-bit uncompressed timeline, reder and export using an AJA IO LA converter box to my Beta SP deck.
My show looks great in HD but when it gets to the deck and then to the network, it looks pixly and of very poor quality compared to the other shows on the channel. Daystar tells me that my levels are low on the vectorscope, and that that may be causing the problem. Any Ideas? I plan to get my beta serviced to see if that will help. Are there settings that I dont know about that should be changed. I master my show in the XD Cam codec, then drop that to my sd time line. Please let me know if you have any ideas, my shows never look as good as they should.Thanks,
Matthew -
7 Replies
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[Matthew Blythe] “Daystar tells me that my levels are low on the vectorscope, “
What ARE your levels? They should be right up to 100 IRE on the Waveform and not exceeding the maximum color points in the Vectorscope.
Oh and by the way, using an AJA Io HD to do the downconversion in realtime from your HD timeline to the BetaSP deck would be MUCH cleaner than what you’re doing now.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
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Just a question, how are you connected from the IO to the Beta deck?
The AJA IO LA has both Composite and Component, with Component being the better of the 2.Victor
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[Victor Perez] “The AJA IO LA has both Composite and Component, with Component being the better of the 2.”
And S-Video actually which is also a good connection if Component was not an option.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
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[Matthew Blythe] “Daystar tells me that my levels are low on the vectorscope, and that that may be causing the problem.”
By low do they mean your whites aren’t reaching 100, or are your blacks too low? Is your IOLA or deck set up to add pedestal/set-up on the way to the deck? BetaSP blacks need to be at 7.5 IRE vs digital 0 IRE.
Also, if you don’t have access to something better, do your downconversion through Compressor rather than re-rendering on the timeline. Be sure to change the resize filter to ‘Best”
Colin McQuillan
Vancouver, B.C. -
Matthew- We found in our workflow that it was best to come out of the camera SD component and digitize in 8-bit uncompressed with the IOLA. We let the camera/deck do the hardware downconversion. Then in FCP we had minimal rendering and it was component out to the Beta deck. As mentioned before the 7.5 ire needs to be there but that can be set in the IO. The system can be easily checked by digitizing bars from the Beta deck and putting them on the vectorscope as Walter suggests.
HTH,
JerryG5 Dual 3GB Ram
FCP Studio 6.02
External 1 TB SATA Raid 0
Kona LH, Second system w AJA ioLA
Sony Z-1
GV-HD700 -
I’m in PAL -land but if I’m not wrong USA-NTSC must set the Black level at 7.5 IRE when going analog.
You don’t need to do it if you are NTSC-Japan.
All this is very well explained in the FC Manual.
Rafael -
Rafael,
Yes, in NTSC land digital video black level is 0 and analog video black level is 7.5. This conversion should happen at the I/O card though. So inside FCP you should be working w/0 and then on output you tell the I/O card to step it up to 7.5.
-A
3.2GHz 8-core, FCP 6.0.4, 10.5.5
Blackmagic Multibridge Eclipse (6.8.1)
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