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Anamorphic Masking = not a true black
I added an anamorphic mask to my short film. When I look on my composer monitor, the mask shows up as a dark gray. When I skip to the end credits, the color difference is very apparent. My end credits is scrolling text on a black background, and it ‘looks’ black on my PC and NTSC monitors. The mask however looks a dull gray on my PC monitor, black on my calibrated NTSC monitor.
By and large this is not an issue. But the final cut was viewed on a digital projector and the difference in the ‘blacks’ (end credit black vs. mask dull gray) was very apparent. Also on some TV sets it was apparent.
I checked the effect settings for the mask, and it was set to 0 luminosity.
Any ideas what’s going on?
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5 Replies
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I guess one solution is to make a picture that’s black, import, and use that as a mask. Is there an effect I can add that will crop out the middle of it? From the effects in my palette, I could only find effects that crop from the outside->inwards.
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Do the mask in Photoshop !
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Ideally, I would prefer to use a full black image and resize the non-masked area as needed. I like one-size-fits-all type solutions.
Right now I’m resorting to 2 video tracks, one black image on each with a conceal effect applied so one image is the ‘top letterboxing bar’ and the other image is the bottom. Overnight render here i come :-(.
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Remember that TV black is 16RGB whereas graphics is 0. Go to color corrector and use the color sampler to check black levels for both the matte and the title sequence –
anything 24fps
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Something’s wrong somewhere.
I’d try a 3D PIP effect on the layer above, rezise to 100% and then crop accordingly.
Then I’d go into colour correction and look at that layer and see if the black bars are indeed hitting the black level’s zero (or 16 in the RGB level). That’s making sure you’ve got a Luminance (y waveform) scope up.
Assuming that’s true I’d dump out a small portion to tape and then digitise it back in.
If the re-digitised bars are still hitting the zero then your seq is fine and your deck/camera is fine. If it’s NOT, then somethings’ screwy on output or recording.
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