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Am I out of luck with HDTVs using miniDV footage?
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HD is just that though – lowering the viewing distance at which you see the pixels. Pixel for pixel it’s not higher quality than that which went before it. Take a 720×486 centre crop from your HDCAM and guess what, your native DigiBeta will look better (mostly due to larger pixels in the chips on the cameras, + 10bit very low compression recording). Or take an HD source and scale down to SD rez, and shoot again on the HD source zoomed out so that a centre crop matches the FOV of the scaled version. Again, although the scaled version is from HD, pixel for pixel it will look better. All that the HD version gives is a nearer viewing distance before the pixels get nasty.
If an SD source on an HD monitor looks less than you’d expect viewing a SD monitor at the same distance, it’s got to be down to something that monitor is doing with it’s processing circuitry as in the SD test, there’s a 1:1 relationship that gets lost with the HD monitor. I’m guessing crap processing is surprisingly common.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP
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[Graeme Nattress] “If an SD source on an HD monitor looks less than you’d expect viewing a SD monitor at the same distance, it’s got to be down to something that monitor is doing with it’s processing circuitry as in the SD test, there’s a 1:1 relationship that gets lost with the HD monitor. I’m guessing crap processing is surprisingly common.”
I have yet to see quality SD on an HD monitor, no matter if we’re talking about pro monitors or the home consumer brands. What HD monitor are you using that gives you a high quality SD image? I’d love to get a model in the shop and see it because that would a nice thing to have.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi
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When I’d borrowed a JVC CRT HD monitor, SD looked fine on that.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP
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[Graeme Nattress] ”
When I’d borrowed a JVC CRT HD monitor, SD looked fine on that.”
Let me guess, it’s a 4:3 monitor that can also display 16:9 HD in letterbox format like our Sony PVM20L5/1 does. Those can display SD just fine.
If you look at the original post, he’s talking about a widescreen HD display which is more than likely not a CRT. For big client displays, it’s widescreen and probably no smaller than 42″. That’s what I was talking about. I’ve yet to see any HD widescreen display that can show SD cleanly.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi
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Nope, was 16:9 but what I’m getting at is that it’s not the display, or the resolution, but the processing circuitry that does it. Most displays don’t handle interlace right, or they screw up the scaling or, there’s always something they don’t get right. That’s why I was trying to get to the bottom of “is it the image, is it the display, or is it the display’s processing?”
Say you’ve got one of those cute terranex boxes – if you feed the DV through there and out to any HD display, it should look a tad blurry compared to HD, but it should look more than fine.
LetItWave were doing demos of their uprez technology at NAB, and their HD from SD looked fine on an SD monitor, as were the demos I’ve seen on previous years by Snell and Wilcox and Terranex.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP
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[Graeme Nattress] “Say you’ve got one of those cute terranex boxes – if you feed the DV through there and out to any HD display, it should look a tad blurry compared to HD, but it should look more than fine.
LetItWave were doing demos of their uprez technology at NAB, and their HD from SD looked fine on an SD monitor, as were the demos I’ve seen on previous years by Snell and Wilcox and Terranex.”
Yeah, for $5,000 the mini terranex does do a good job and I guess if you want to spend that money for DV to play back good on a wide screen display, that is an option.
Just curious, what size was the JVC?
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi
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Understood it’s expensive. What I’m getting at is that it’s most likely a processing issue rather than an inherent flaw in the SD quality.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP
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[Graeme Nattress] “Understood it’s expensive. What I’m getting at is that it’s most likely a processing issue rather than an inherent flaw in the SD quality.”
I think that’s what I was saying all along. DV looks like crap on an HD monitor. I said it looks fine on my Sony SD/HD monitor, just lousy on a widescreen HD display. If you process it prior to the image getting to the display, then yes, you can improve it OR if you keep a CRT SD display around.
[walter biscardi] ”
Even uncompressed standard definition does not look good on HDTV monitors. That’s the nature of these displays. They are incredibly high resolution so low resolution material looks really bad. That’s why we keep our Sony PVM CRT monitors around, SD looks fantastic on those.”Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi
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Methinks we go around in circles… 🙂
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP
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thanks for all the responses guys, i will look into getting a scaler, or see what changing the G chroma will do. We did try feeding the raw footage right from the DV deck into the TV, no effects and still looked fuzzy. i will let you know how this works out.
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