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  • Editing between 3D CGI clips and live action DV

    Posted by Graham Quince on June 7, 2007 at 3:48 pm

    I’ve been teaching myself Cinema4D and have been rendering out some animations that I’ve been really happy with.

    I’ve prepared a few for a friend and when he edited them into his DV film, it’s kinda highlighted the ‘cartoonyness’ of the CGI.

    Shots that looked great on their own, (very cinematic), when edited alongside (not composited in, just CG, followed by DV, then CG, then DV) made the DV look cheap and the CG like a cartoon. I think the problem is the quality contrast between the two.

    Has anyone got any tips or treatments they could suggest that might bring these two looks closer together?

    Graham

    https://www.quinceweb.com – web design
    ——–
    https://www.shiveringcactus.bravehost.com – Free FX for amateur films

    Steve Roberts replied 17 years, 8 months ago 3 Members · 3 Replies
  • 3 Replies
  • Darby Edelen

    June 7, 2007 at 4:06 pm

    DV tends to have very low color resolution, if you look at your image in YUV color (use Channel>Channel Combiner effect to do this) channel by channel you’ll notice that the ‘green’ channel (Y, luma) has good resolution and the ‘red’ & ‘blue’ channels (U & V, chroma) have about 1/4 the resolution. This might explain some of the difference. I can’t suggest an elegant solution except perhaps applying a mosaic effect and very slight box blur to just the UV channels of the CGI footage. Of course, this is trashing your CGI footage to make it look more like DV, which may not be ideal.

    You should also consider possible noise introduced by the recording of the DV footage and try to match this.

    Then you should try to color correct the CGI footage to match the DV footage using a Levels effect looking at both sources simultaneously channel by channel.

    I don’t necessarily like recommending procedures for dirtying up footage, but when trying to match DV it’s pretty much essential =)

    Darby Edelen
    DVD Menu Artist
    Left Coast Digital
    Aptos, CA

  • Graham Quince

    June 7, 2007 at 5:05 pm

    Many thanks for your advice Darby

    I know hat you mean about bringing things down in quality. I’d rendered out using the Microsft DV codec for similar reasons, but it’s own, that’s not been enough.

    Graham

    https://www.quinceweb.com – web design
    ——–
    https://www.shiveringcactus.bravehost.com – Free FX for amateur films

  • Steve Roberts

    June 7, 2007 at 5:29 pm

    You could use the “match grain” effect to give the CG a similar noise to the DV. It’s quite good — I used to demo for the developers. “Back in the day”.

    This is where training your eye comes in. Once the lighting of your CG matches that of the footage (no mean feat), you tweak levels and hue/sat to match the footage as best you can. It’s not a quick one-click thing, but with practice, you can learn the technique. (oh, that’s a little too magenta, and I need to bring down the shadows.

    Maybe there’s a tut on videocopilot?

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