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DV projects and “good” graphics
the eternal quest for the perfect picture…or at least one that doesn’t jiggle and vibrate. i’ve been mostly doing HD stuff lately, but my last two corporate pieces are both SD (BetaSP), so i’ve cutting them in DV projects in FCP…but just can’t get good looking moving graphics (from Motion) to play nicely in FCP…nor even when i out put to a single QT file. i’ve tried going back and recapturing a few test shots in NTSC 8 bit and change my project to 8 bit (and the Motion projects as well), but they still just don’t look that good. is this really just the way it is? would it help at all to create the Motion graphics in HD then shrink them into a DV or 8bit NTSC project? i’ve tried that, and while it does look a little better the render times are, of course, a bit greater.
oh well, just thinking out loud here and seeing what you guys do to get around this situation…
thanks again!
mh
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6 Replies
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dv is not very gentle to graphics, as you can see.
what options do you have? using uncompressed 8-bit may give you problems because the default standard for that is 720×486 whereas dv is 720×480. those extra 6 fields can mess up things.
my advice is to use the animation codec for your graphics andsequences. since render time is always an issue, edit in dv and change the sequence settings later.
of course, eventually the big concern is your delivery format. however, using a lossless codec will ensure highest quality output.
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What are you viewing the video on?
Don’t let technology get in the way of your creativity!
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still chasing this monster!…
doing some DVC Pro HD tests seems to possibly be the answer…and it will give the client a letterboxed (though still standard def) final project, which looks kind of cool…BUT –
all my footage was captured in the DV codec, so the field dominance is “backwards” (at least, compared to the HD codecs), so i would have to end up re-capturing all my footage. of course, if i merely change the sequence settings (of a current timeline) to DVCPro HD from DV, all my clips go funky…BUT when i drop new clips onto that new timeline, they are adjusted properly (save for the field dominance question).
hard to know what to do. when you mentioned keeping the graphics sequences in the animation codec, i’m not following you on how to keep the graphics in one compressor type, yet having the final render still be in DV – wouldn’t that end product still crap up the graphics?
thanks again!
mh
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i should also add here that the graphics created within FCP (Boris text) look very good, even when rendered in DV and put on a DVD. it is the Motion stuff that ends up getting jerky and pixellated. also, just animating a hi-res still photo in FCP ends up very bad (in DV). i had it slightly rotating on the z-axis as it came forward, but that looked terrible. i deleted the rotation, and just have it move forward (on the z), and it is better, but where there are words on the photo (it’s a scanned image of a magazine cover), it still looks pretty bad in DV.
thanks again!
mh
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i’ve also found that animating a graphic with a shadow in this DV codec causes much nastiness…especially on this one photo i have that grows in size as it comes close to the camera and blurs out. with a shadow, there is a terrible flicker. without the shadow it blurs out fine…
thanks again!
mh
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Viewing on an NTSC monitor…the same as what most of the final viewers will be viewing on, via DVD.
I thought i had a “Eureka!” to report here a few days ago on this. I rendered a QT out of Motion with the field-rendering option selected. After a very short test, it looked like it might do the trick (that is, play super-smoothly in a DV timeline). But, alas, after a 20 hour render over the weekend – for a 24 second QT, it didn’t look much better. Certainly not worth the extra rendering time.
thanks again!
mh
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