Compression choice in sequence settings

[Graeme Nattress]

Even just interpolation will prodce a visual result that looks better than 4:1:0 though – I guess it doesn’t look as good as 4:2:0, so perhaps it’s 4:1.5:0 it looks like, but that’s better than nothing.

DV chroma should only be smoothed before a) viewing, or b)chroma key.

If you put DV 4:1:1 chroma through a process to DVD, then it never gets smoothed. The DVD player will smooth the 4:2:0 chroma, but it doesn’t know about the 4:1:0 chroma and hence it will look more chunky than it has to. IMHO, you should smooth the chroma before converting to DVD, as nothing else is going to, at least with the Apple DV codec.

You’re right that it’s wise not to smooth DV chroma on a whim, as that will lead to degredation.

As for going better than linear, the G Nicer in Film Effects 2.1 is doing a very good job of chroma reconstruction, and I’ve got a new chroma Sharpen plugin in the works that is also doing a great job of putting that missing data back into the chroma from any sub-sampled chroma source. Drop me a mail and I’ll send them out to you for testing. The only current issue with the G Nicer is that it’s not completely 10bit happy, but as soon as I find that darn bug in FCP, I’ll fix that.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP

[Marco Solorio]

[Graeme Nattress] “As for going better than linear, the G Nicer in Film Effects 2.1 is doing a very good job of chroma reconstruction, and I’ve got a new chroma Sharpen plugin in the works that is also doing a great job of putting that missing data back into the chroma from any sub-sampled chroma source. Drop me a mail and I’ll send them out to you for testing.”

Sounds like fun! Yeah, send it my way and I’ll play with it. Knowing you, it’ll have the best algorithms in town.

Marco Solorio  |   OneRiver Media