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Black Edges in Footage
I am having some snags finalizing my DVD project and was wondering if anyone had any remedies or advice on how to fix the problems.
The DVD project will be duplicated, etc.
The original footage is crica 1995 NTSC SD amateur Video 8 footage that was captured onto my G5 using a Canopus ADVC-300 Analog-DV converter.
All footage was edited, etc in Final Cut Pro 6. My NTSC monitor took a turn for the worst, so I am forced to burn copies of the DVD and view them on various televisions to check playback quality.
I am running into an issue where the footage almost seems too sharp and in certain scenes, the edges of objects become black, almost as if someone traced them with a black marker. The footage in Final Cut was exported as a Quicktime Movie and brought into DVDSP to be rendered. Previously a user of Pinnacle products on the PC, I am still getting used to the settings in FCP and I am afraid I might be using the wrong settings for video output such as whether to use RGB or 8 bit YUV, Super White v White, etc, and whether I should be exporting to compressor and not letting DVDSP render the Quicktime Movie file.
Any input, advice, etc would be useful and thanks again for taking the time to read and consider my request for help.
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6 Replies
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Dave, thank you for your kind reply. The video looks fine in FCP (as good as amateur Video 8 footage looks). I don’t notice the black edges, etc during playback in FCP. I will check again and look closely. The only noticeable feature throughout is in some scenes, the white is very hot, but I think that was a result of the consumer based Video 8 camera technology back then.
I am wondering, if the A-V capture did overprocess the footage, what would be the rememdy (if any) besides re-capturing (that would not be fun ;).
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Dave, thanks for the tips. I will give them a shot. I will try a few different export methods as well. You have me anxious though about the A-V converter – I am now wondering if maybe it over-processed the footage and made it too sharp/grainy leading to the black lines and halos around objects.
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Good advice guys! Also try compressing your sequence in compressor instead of DVDSP. In my humble opinion DVDSP doesn’t encode nearly as cleanly as compresser.
-Nicholas Bierzonski
Senior Editor/DVD Author/Java Boy
http://www.finalfocusvideo.com
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Nicholas, thanks for the reply! I have been told that DVDSP doesn’t do such a hot job, and that I should encode the QT movie to MPEG-2 in compressor and then import it to DVDSP. It is a 60min piece, so DVD 90min best encode should be fine I assume?
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You are correct Marc. DVD’s have different quality settings much like VHS. A 2 hour mode will fit 2 hours or 120 minutes. Since your project is an hour long the 90 minute encode preset will work. However since your project is 60 minutes long you could bump the bitrate up. Be careful not to set your bitrate too high because older DVD players will choke or have trouble playing back the DVD.
-Nicholas Bierzonski
Senior Editor/DVD Author/Java Boy
http://www.finalfocusvideo.com
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Just an update, I have been going through different scenes and what Dave has mentioned in regards to luminance is correct (Ken Stone also mentioned that is might be causing problems). I had several clips that were far too hot, and thus caused objects to halo and look over processed. I did some color correction as well as capping off the white to safe limits, which helped. I also changed the render settings to 8bit YUV as well. There are a couple of problem scenes that still have black outlines in certain areas, so I am going to go back to the original footage and play it from the tape to see if it was inherited from the original. This footage did come from circa 1995 amateur Video 8 camcorders, so it is very possible it has some gremlins to start with and it was not cause after the fact. This will also expose any flaws with the A-V conversion as well.
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