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about to give up – any advice would be so appreciated.
Hi all
forgive this long rambly account. if any of you can skim down it and offer ad suggestions it would be a lifesaver
I have a project.. only 11 MINS – you could call it an animation with some live action footage combined… most of the image was made from stills on photoshop with alpha’d out areas for the live actors. I didnt know much about digital editing when i started.. and a lot of love and energys gone into it.
An uncompressed render – producing a 30 GB avi looks beatiful. A Div X render looks grear. And MPEG2 look great played back on a PC…
But an MPEG 2 DVD played back on a DVD player on a television – plasma or old telly looks horendous. To the point that i feel I cant show the film at festivals or give out DVD copies. Its very depressing.
My render settings CBR – 7.5 – quality level 5 on media encoder
the brighter areas of the image look fine
It has a lot of dark areas in every shot… this is part of the look of the film. and it woulnt be the same any other way. But I seem to have created a look that wont encode to DVD for tv playback very well!
and its in the graduation from light to dark.. – detail to darkness -where huge chinky pixelated bands appear streaking around the image.
Ive tried adding slight noise to ramps…
getting rid of fades to and from black – which had horrendous chunky rippling effec…
making sure lacks are completely back -0,0,0
and adding other noise generally. this has helped a bit but its still doesnt look great
Are we really so limited in what we can do visually when having to consider MPEG2 DVD as a target output?
could it be something to do with JPEG artefacts being revealed in the MPEG encoding or something like that…? I didnt think it could be as athough most of the image is from photoshop – it is imported as PSDs into premiere…
ive seen lots of dark conrasty films and anmations that look fine.
IF anyone has any tips or possible explanations – id be very grateful
Kind regards
Stoo x
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10 Replies
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How did u grade this project? Did u use a tv monitor using mpeg-2 renders to see what it would look like on a calibrated tv with colour bars? Or did u work off the computer screen itself? There is a great diffrence in the look and gamma of a computer LCD and a tv LCD. Different white points and gamma.
Mpeg2 does have it’s limits and so does footage not shot uncompressed when graded then recompressed to mpeg-2.
What did u shoot in? What kind of images have u composited from? Original files jpeg?
Hollywood films have expensive hardware that does the compression calculation. With many passes to squeeze the best possible mpeg-2 from the original uncompressed media.
Calibrated tv is the best way to monitor a grade for tv destination.
– Jon Barrie
Jon Barrie
aJBprods
http://www.jonbarrie.net -
Dear John
Thank you so much for taking the time to reply.
Indeed im realising now that the mistake i made was to rely on the monitor and not to check it MPEG2 on a television as it was progressing. This never occured to me. Now Im learning alot by my mistakes. Maybe I have to chalk it up to experience and accept its not showable other than on a pc – you tube or wahtever
If thats what you mean by grading
The images were handdrawn on photoshop and imported as PSDs
The live action – of which there is only a little – was shot PAL SD on a PD170.I am going to have one last try at altering the film to remove or replace things are casing the chunky streaking… getting rid of ramps etc… otherwise to move on to something else.
Many Thanks
Stuart
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I’d like to see the ‘streaking’ u mention. Cam u post a screen grab of the problem? Might be something else that we can help with. Could be interlacing, field dominance… Something else…
Cheers,
jon
Jon Barrie
aJBprods
http://www.jonbarrie.net -
As Jon says, use a monitor to view your work as you go. Big difference than your computer screen.
https://www.youtube.com/graphicsdump
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Hey Jon – thanks again for taking the time to reply.
i dont have the software for a proper screen grab. however, i knocked a very good approximation of what it looks like MPEG2 on a telly here:-
https://www.flickr.com/photos/stoooo/sets/
(compression probs set)
if it isnt something else, then i think i have to look into making these films as graphic novels instead, ive got a whole bunch of work for a next film which is gonna have the same problem. i feel a bit dumb for forging ahead without understanding enough about these things. but i trained in animation when you could do whatever you wanted and it looked fine on VHS. I never envisaged these problems
I wonder if a render farm could help me out and do a better job.
anyway, thanks for looking.
Stuart
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https://www.flickr.com/photos/stoooo/4340701302/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/stoooo/4340701870/in/set-72157623378180148/
sorry the previous link wasnt spot-on x
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It looks like the banding that happens when going from a 32bit on PC to a colour space down to 8bit for tv.
Try using a different vignette. I’d say the colouring is too much of a gradient fortue compression to work in. 8bit colour spac has far less shades than even 10bit.
Experiment with another shade. You should be able to see how it would look in after effects in an 8bit colour space with a render.
What r the settings used for mpeg2. There could be something in the compression settings too.
Jon
Jon Barrie
aJBprods
http://www.jonbarrie.net -
Setting the maximum quality tick in ame could help too. It’s hidden in the little options on the right.
JonJon Barrie
aJBprods
http://www.jonbarrie.net -
thanks again John thats very helpful and i will experiment along the lines of what you suggest.
it also occurred to me today.. and i could have misunderstood this, that my blacks are too black… maybe i need to use levels to bring the blacks of the whole image up to 16, which i believe is a safe level. i was doggedly trying to get them all to 0,0,0 to make sure no unobservable slight variations were exacerbated by the encoding process. maybe now Ive done that bringing them up to 16 will help. or maybe vie got that wrong.
with encoding i followed some previous advice on here and went for 7.5 CBR and setting the general quality slider to 5. now ive had a suggestion to try VBR with 2 passes as its only 11 minutes long – and also advice to get more I frames happening…?
thanks again . Stuart
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Stoo, if you are encoding from Premiere using Media encoder, you might want to “uncheck’ the “de-interlace” option in the top left of the encoder screen. If your footage was interlaced, it’s best to keep it that way or fix it in After Effects (look for tutorial by Andrew Kramer on this website).
A note for people publishing to youtube – the de-interlace default tick has helped me to waste many hours trying to upload footage to youtube, which keeps getting rejected. Why? My footage was interlaced & I thought the Adobe de-interlace tick would be a good thing but youtube doesn’t.
The same goes for png graphic files (advantageous if you want a transparent background). The de-interlace tick in Media Encoder screws them badly. Simply un-tick for clear & crisp graphics.
Hope this helps
Phil
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