Compression or Authoring: Need Help with Final Product

[Tom Brooks]

Are you viewing your work on an NTSC monitor throughout the production process? Is the SD television on which you view final DVD properly adjusted for brightness, contrast and saturation?

Final Cut Studio, FCP 5.1.1, After Effects 6.5 Pro, Quicktime 7, G5 Quad 2.5, Kona-LHe V3, 4.5GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 7800-GT, G-RAID 2x1TB FW800.

[Baileyhaven]

Hi Tom,

I’m viewing my product on a flat screen computer monitor when I’m editing inside Avid Express Pro, compressing in Sorenson, and authoring in DVD Architect. Each stage looks fine (a little clarity is lost after it leave Sorenson but not much) until I burn it from the authoring program. I played it back on 3 different SD televisions and also on my PC through the same monitor. I played with the levels some on the SD television but I guess I wanted the same effortless effect as when I pop in a workout DVD or a training video. The detail is lost at that point. The blacks are too dark and the clarity is lost. Also, I get this wavy interlace issue that I don’t fully understand. When I was troubleshooting it I thought that by playing back the DVD on the computer monitor will show something similar to what I started with in Avid but even that showed some detail that was lost.

I guess what I’m having a challenge with is trying to maintain the same detail throughout the process. I know that is everyone’s goal but I’m having a difficult time. Your thoughts? Thanks for your response Tom.

Peter Bailey

“Bad news is that time flies, The good news is that you are the pilot”

[Tom Brooks]

Peter,
It’s a guess, but it sounds like you have a gamma issue between the display you use for editing and the TV, so that what you see while editing looks good to you but is actually too dark for a normally adjusted TV. That’s why you need to view your edit on a properly adjusted TV monitor as well as your computer display. Can you set your system up with a monitor connected to the AV output of the JVC?

Other than that, I will say that it’s normal to see a quality loss on the final, compressed output to DVD–in terms of detail anyway. Sorenson Squeeze isn’t well regarded for MPEG-2 compression in these parts, so that could be part of the problem. Still, I’d look first at monitor calibration issues. If you can become convinced you’re ok on that score, you can start to troubleshoot the compression settings. Maybe some mild preprocessing for gamma and contrast could help a bit.

Is the interlace problem apparent when the DVD is played on a standalone player connected to a TV or only when played on a computer?

Final Cut Studio, FCP 5.1.1, After Effects 6.5 Pro, Quicktime 7, G5 Quad 2.5, Kona-LHe V3, 4.5GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 7800-GT, G-RAID 2x1TB FW800.

[Baileyhaven]

Initially it was on both (TV and computer monitor). I lower the bitrate and changed the compression settings and that took care of the interlaced issue. So that is one of the beast.

Thanks for the advance on the gamma and contrast. Initially I felt that I had a monitoring challenge but I agree that I should attack that issue before I start on the compression issues. I’ll try it and let you know how it turns out.

Peter

“Bad news is that time flies, The good news is that you are the pilot”

[Charles Simonson]

Sounds like the same old problem: NTSC (Never The Same Color twice).

[Palius]

“The blacks are darker than what I had. The whites are glowing.”

Could be out of bounds color. It’s been so long I really need to check a reference so caveat notwithstanding: NTSC black is 16, computer video black is 0. NTSC white is 240(?), computer white is 255. If one fails to translate/adjust project settings it can generate problem. Superblack (IRE 0-15) contains synch data. Super white (IRE 241-255) contains audio data.

Hope this helps,
/mp