Colors look bad on TV??

[Mylenium]

How are you viewing your stuff? Apart from the issue of legal colors (too intense colors will screw your image on an electrical level, so they are normally toned down a bit) it sounds like your hardware seriously screwed your stuff. Looks like it is only using half the resolution or interpolating fields.

Mylenium

[Pour Myl

[B_alen]

Hm, I think I might be using illegal colors. I use all colors that AE offers but I don’t know which are ilegal. I have Mac G5, Dell 24″ monitor, connected with firewire on camera (cheap Canon) and on to TV (also cheap Philips, not professional). I’m using full resolution in AE.

[Chris Smith]

Well at minimum to view graphics on an output monitor you should be outputting through an uncompressed card through component or SDI into a decent broadcast monitor.

First Firewire is going to use the DV codec which is murder on graphics and if you are watching the output of your camera through composite video (the usual yellow ‘video’ output) then that degrades the image further.

Non of this has to be expensive. A Decklink Xtreme card and a used Sony broadcast monitor can get you there quick for little cost.

Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com

[B_alen]

Oh no, I’m in trouble now. I have to deliver it by tuesday evening. Not a chance to get additional hardware by then. I’ll have to finish the project, put it on DVD and view it on DVD player. Then make some additional color corrections.

[Chris Smith]

Make sure your DVD player is hooked up S-video instead of composite. And when you render to an intermediate file to be processed into Mpeg 2 make sure it is lossless not DV.

Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com

[B_alen]

Thanks for the help guys, I got into this ad hoc project thinking it’ll be a cakewalk making 3 min video. But it’s my first project for TV, first time on Mac and with obvious lack of knowledge, experience and hardware. I hope client will be happy on wednesday morning 🙂

[Ralph Keyser]

There is also an NTSC color safe filter you can use that will ensure the colors stay in-bounds, although you might not always like the way it gets there. Just one more option for desparate times.

[Filip Vandueren]

I prefer the Limiting Options in SA Color Finesse to get to safe colors.
The “broadcast colors” effect usually shows discrete steps in for example a gradient, between colors it lets pass, and colors it adjusts to make them safe.

Also:
Everyone and his cow is raving about the Scopio Gigio plug-in, I haven’t tried it yet, check it out if you’re serious about broadcast work and colors. It’s a software based scope that analyzes the video signal your graphics will generate, and shows you exactly how offending the illegal problem areas are.

And do follow Chris’ advice on the gear !