Have some great cineform avi’s with 4-2-2 color that fail to translate well to 4-2-0 of destination media

[Bob Dix]

Dan,
I think it depends what type of camera you are using, the Canon 5D Mark II,@38.6 mbps, H.264 mov 1920 x 1080p holds it’s colour very well going to Blu-ray in H.264 or (HDV/mpeg-2 cineform avi, and that is not 4-2-2 colour(I think). Frankly I cannot tell the difference ?And, that is using Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 11 and/or Premiere Pro CS5.5.1 on a 1920 x 1080 monitor for comparison ? It is outstanding Export to Tape Sony Digital Master PHDVM-63M. But, I never go underwater, just not game, like looking at the video though, must be fun with all that colour. Maybe worth a look >>>>https://fearlessproductions.tv/canon-5d-passes-green-screen-shoots-with-flyi

Freelance Imaging & Video
AUSTRALIA

[Dan Volker]

I shoot with a canon 5d mark II in aquatica housing with 2 cave video lights by Halcyon….The colors and saturation in underwater video I think are a bigger issue than in “most” land based video…

I can post a youtube link that was a 4-2-2 and was rendered fairly well into a wmv….then Youtube did “some” damage to it, but not bad…Youtube can make it darker, or lighter…I upload it as 1080p wmv at a 18,000 kps data rate , and youtube creates a several versions with progressively lower bit rates and quality….color space stays the same, but I can NOT get the quality on a Youtube video of my cineform AVI’s, not even close….

https://youtu.be/xKUgKhvcELk?hd=1

… is an example of one of my video’s that does ok after the wmv and Youtube conversions, but the avi is still much sharper….
If I tried rendering this video to a h264 file, it would get a yellow color cast, and the areas where the sun shines in to the darkness of the shipwreck, are rendered very poorly in the colorspace translation…

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[Dan Volker]

I forgot to mention two things…first, thanks for taking the time to try and help me with this…and second, I like to use neohd and the 4-2-2 colorspace, because with underwater video, it is often necessary to modify so many aspects in the color and light….there is so much extreme light right next to extreme black, so many “almost lit enough” areas, and then the perfectly lit areas 🙂 , and you often only get one take..one shot at this …

[Mike Kujbida]

Several divers on the Sony Vegas forum gave up on YouTube and post on Vimeo instead.

[Bob Dix]

U-Tube is not very good technically ( depends on the resolution and downloads speed off the internet ?, Vimeo should be better, I agree HD Cineform avi is reliable, transcode out of H.264 to edit if you can to Microsoft avi/Uncompressed even to HDV/mpeg-2 avi tape, there should be no drift ?

I can understand your insistence on 4.2.2 colour space but, there are too many variables. The 5D is not that colour space, but, because of the sensor size it may even be better. H.264 mov is not a good editing codec, maybe in CS5.5.1 but, I would go to my suggestion and then split screen to tell the difference, there will not be much, if any ?I have not seen any color drift in Premiere Pro CS5.5.1 or Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 11 using the original H.264mov clips or to avi ? You may soon be able to test drive Sony Vegas Pro 11.

Freelance Imaging & Video
AUSTRALIA

[Dan Volker]

Hi Bob,
I am in the 4-2-2 color space, because so far, the NeoHD program’s ability to perfectly adjust all light, colors, saturation and contrast massively eclipse any attempts at doing this in Vegas pro 10 or Adobe Premeire ( I have both). Also, NeoHD does this in an instant, litterally, rather than having to render this for each clip over many minutes or hours 🙁
Neo leaves you in 4-2-2 10 bit color and the cineform hd avi…..which is cool on your computer, you can make it look just the way you had hoped for…it is a great extension of what the Canon 5d markII can capture….BUT…
Once you have utilized this bigger color space, you can achieve saturation and lumenosity levels( gradients between them) that so far WILL NOT accurately translate back down to the 4-2-0 color space, which is also 8 bit color I think, the destination specs of the vast majority of delivery formats…the H264’s, the Blu ray, the typical DVD, flash…the vast majority… I have absolutely NO IDEA why the windows media encoding does a fairly OK job of doing this tranlation down…. I would live to know why it is so different for the other codecs, if someone knows…
I would like to find out what the best way is to translate back down to 4-2-0 color space…that is the main thing I am posting about, because I do have to supply videos in multiple delivery formats, and so far tech support at VEGAS has been “entirely absent” for weeks, and I have had no good assistance in this from sorrenson Sqeeze or even cineform ( although Jake has been great about giving me ideas of what to try)…

One question may be, “do I have to use only windows media video as a destination format”, and if so, do I need to play with encoding bit rates as high as 35 megs per second to approximate the HD quality of Blu Ray ( one primary goal)…

2nd could be ” can Vimeo do full 1080p like Youtube can?” when I signed up a year ago, I could swear it was limited to 720p, and this allowed “sharper imaging” in Youtube, although perhaps it may handle the translation and color space issues better…I may have to run some new tests… any thoughts on this ?
Thanks,
Dan

[Bob Dix]

Thanks,
The only thing I can suggest is to set the Exposure compensation dial to -1, to partially eliminate overexposure in highlights, and in RAW stills it definitely does that.That may be giving you slight greys in shadow. It seems to me coming from a professional film background of 25 years that digital cameras tend to behave like the slide films of old and overexpose highlights unless you get the exposure spot on.

It will work also on video.

Just a thought.

Freelance Imaging & Video
AUSTRALIA