Any way to “dither” Sony DV(NTSC) color subsampling?

[John Rofrano]

[Rick Anvican] “Without changing the export format or the content within the project, is it possible to “dither” or smooth out the colors so that the calligraphy retains visibly its original red appearance?”

You can try adding a Gaussian Blur at about 0.002 to the text event but that’s about it. Thin lines and NTSC DV video do not go well together due to the interlacing and the low 480 line resolution.

Not sure how you plan to deliver this but if you further deliver it on DVD it will only get worse because DVD MPEG2 will use 4:2:0 sampling and your 4:1:1 becomes 4:1:0. Just something to watch out for.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Stephen Mann]

Also, gently inform the client that red on black is probably the worst color combination for text on video.

Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com

[Rick Anvican]

Thanks for the tips guys, I’ve heard about the Gaussian blur trick some time ago, was thinking of applying linear blur (horizontally).

[Stephen Mann] “Also, gently inform the client that red on black is probably the worst color combination for text on video.”
Stephen, I have informed the client about the color combination, but I’m just doing what was requested. We’ve negotiated and opted for red but with slightly less saturation than before which reduced the color bleeding a bit, and as everybody knows, DV does not like overly saturated reds.

The final delivery format was to be DV(NTSC) but I’ve tried rendering to DV(PAL) first then re-rendering the DV(PAL) version to DV(NTSC), reds were retained in the calligraphy in exchange of more color bleeding on the black BG, not a good idea but the calligraphy did visually appear in red more often than if rendering straight to DV(NTSC) where at least half of it was gray…

[John Rofrano]

[Rick Anvican] “Thanks for the tips guys, I’ve heard about the Gaussian blur trick some time ago, was thinking of applying linear blur (horizontally).”

The nice thing about the Gaussian Blur is that the horizontal and vertical are separate parameters so if you only set the horizontal blur then you will just get a linear blur in that direction. I would actually use a vertical blur since your problem is probably caused by this horizontal scan lines so you want to blur in the direction perpendicular to the problem so that it blurs across scan lines.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Rick Anvican]

Thanks John, this blur trick kind of reminds me about Reduce Interlace Flicker in Vegas…

[John Rofrano]

[Rick Anvican] “this blur trick kind of reminds me about Reduce Interlace Flicker in Vegas”

Yes, it solves the same problem. Interlace Flicker is caused by lines that are only 1 field thin and a vertical blur helps smear the lines so that they are a bit thicker and appear on both fields.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Rick Anvican]

I’ve heard somewhere, probably on the forums that Reduce Interlace Flicker doesn’t always work as expected, the Guassian blur tricked worked well anyway, thanks again John.