DV issues in a 720 x 486 world

[Manny Kivowitz]

I appreciate the HD pov but I should point out that we are in fact seasoned pros, if somewhat new to producing multiple episodes of a national cable series. It’s pretty clear though that we’re not alone as television producers in acquiring our content on dv25, but what’s surprising are the lack of solutions for dealing with workflow problems that one encounters in an effort to put out a quality product. Yes, it’s understood that quality is a relative term when capturing in DV25 especially considering that even the best cameras of the “mini” class have small, relatively inexpensive chip sets and equally inexpensive glass. We’re using the dvx-100’s (7 of them plus 2 backups) and overall we’re quite happy with them. Would we like a better imaging device with prime lenses and less or no compression? Sure, but it’s just not in the cards for now.

Certainly no one would argue that HD is the future for all broadcast content producers but I would bet that most of us thought that some flavor of HD would have been the present by now. The problems we face in making the move to HD are many, starting in our case with the fact that non-subscribtion cable networks are simply not willing to ante up the budgets that would allow the majority, if any of their content, to be produced in HD. Also for our show we would need decent cameras with a small footprint (a requirement for the specialty multi-camera rigs that we’re using), reasonable pricepoints on those cameras (perhaps the pending panasonic hvx-200 will fit the bill)and quite a bit more storage for post than our existing 18tb of san storage supplies since we work on up to 10 1/2 hour episodes at a clip. Sadly, HD’s feasibility still looms in the future for many of todays content producers such as ourselves but I certainly look forward to a time when we can leave SD behind.

[Manny Kivowitz]

I agree, but appreciate the suggestion. We’re using Sony’s DVR-1500a’s which should process the signal better than any intermediary device. In re-working our post work flow we were hoping to eliminate issues that come up from the 6 pixel variance between dv25 and our 10 bit uncompressed gfx and finishing process. Ideally the deck or the kona card would offer an on the fly solution other than canvassing the 720×480 image onto the larger 720×486 canvas leaving 3 lines of black at the top and bottom of the image.

This of course wouldn’t be a problem if we weren’t concerned about what the progams will look like on full scan plasma screens and the possibilty that the content will end up on dvd eventually. On standard home tube monitors it’s not a problem at all. Push slides, which we use variants of quite often, are a particular problem area where the jump between 720×480 content and 720×486 is quite obvious.

Our solution has been to put black masks on the top and bottom of the frame prior to mastering but we’d love to avoid this if we could.

[Graeme Nattress]

Bring in DV over SDI leaves the lines top and bottom black – it does not give you 486 lines as 486 lines were not recorded – it just does the equivalent of what you’re doing in FCP, puts black lines at the top and bottom to pad the image out to 486 lines.

Scaling DV does not work, as you get a really soft image. I could write a filter that does, like a couple of pixel mirror to fill the top and bottom black bars with faked in picture information, if that would help though.

Graeme

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