Highlight banding issue with HDV

[Ben Holmes]

One question – did you import the HDV in the HDV format? With your setup, you could capture it via the Kona as a 10-bit SD file (if you only need SD) or even DVCProHD (if the frame size matters to you).

HDV is a rubbish format for post, and perhaps the banding you’ve seen is as a result of its tiny colour-space.

Ben

Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd

EVS & FCP specialists for live broadcast.

OB Server 1 HD – Mobile FCP editing done right.

[Walter Biscardi]

[fearless] “We’re having a highlight banding issue with HDV in an SD timeline”

That’s the nature of HDV. It’s a heavily compressed 4:1:1 format and you will get banding in large areas of gradated color, like a sky or an area with an especially bright light source. Capturing it 8 or 10bit SD does not eliminate the banding in that format.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi

[Peter Barrett]

Thanks, I agree HDV is rubbish. We need both SD and HD outputs, which is why I’ve avoided ingesting as SD. The workflow requires direct ingest, which means it all arrives in glorious HDV, as Sony intended…

I’ve worked with HDV a fair bit, either directly or using AIC. Now I know AIC has its detractors, but I’m not a big fan of DVCPRO HD transcoding either – 4:2:2 colourspace perhaps, but the material suffers. It’s HDV native or uncompressed for me. I’ve successfully got HDV in and out before and this is a new issue as far as I can tell – that I think originates in the camera – there’s evidence of it there, though it’s not that pronounced…

Quad G5/NVidia Quadro/Kona LHe/Infortrend RAID/Final Touch HD 2.6.1/FCP 5.1.2/OS X 10.4.8

[Ben Holmes]

Geek alert. Actually HDV uses 4:2:0 colour subsampling, like PAL DV (but unlike the 4:1:1 compression used in NTSC DV).

At any rate, both imply that the chrominance resolution is a quarter of the luminance resolution overall, but HDV does it by only having colour info on alternate frames…

That’s why it sucks in post.

;.)

Ben

PS – I recommend this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDV
particularly the section lower down on editing HDV and the ‘interlace dilemma’ (some of which may be out of date now.

Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd

EVS & FCP specialists for live broadcast.

OB Server 1 HD – Mobile FCP editing done right.

[Ben Holmes]

[fearless] ” I’m not a big fan of DVCPRO HD transcoding either “

Not transcoding. Capture as DVCProHD. You’ll find you have a better quality, faster rendering, mastering quality output that exceeds everything you can get out of native HDV editing.

Please try it.

Ben

PS – Please disregard other post with Wiki link, I can see your beyond that, but we get asked about this a lot…

Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd

EVS & FCP specialists for live broadcast.

OB Server 1 HD – Mobile FCP editing done right.

[Walter Biscardi]

[fearless] “I’ve worked with HDV a fair bit, either directly or using AIC. Now I know AIC has its detractors, but I’m not a big fan of DVCPRO HD transcoding either – 4:2:2 colourspace perhaps, but the material suffers.”

Neither option would get rid of the banding issue anyway. You could bring that in 4:4:4 HD and you’d still get the banding as it’s native to the format. No matter what you do, the banding will be there.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi

[Walter Biscardi]

[Ben Holmes] “Geek alert. Actually HDV uses 4:2:0 colour subsampling, like PAL DV (but unlike the 4:1:1 compression used in NTSC DV).”

Ah that’s right. It’s even worse than what I said! 🙂

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi

[Peter Barrett]

Alternate frames or alternate fields? DV 4:2:0 skips a line between samples – which is why I’ve heard the argument that ingesting 4:2:0 DV at 4:2:2 Uncompressed actually results in a LOSS of chroma information – the lines with chroma are half-sampled, from those without it’s totally absent… not sure if I buy it but it’s an interesting paradox…

Quad G5/NVidia Quadro/Kona LHe/Infortrend RAID/Final Touch HD 2.6.1/FCP 5.1.2/OS X 10.4.8

[Ben Holmes]

Did I say frames? Meant fields. Geek police coming for me – have…to…hide….

Not heard that theory about uncompressed capture. I can tell you it’s the practical experience of many people here (Walter included) that using component HD to capture HDV is a great solution, especially when coupled with DVCProHD as a codec. Uncompressed HD would be overkill, and unwieldy anyway – and you’re not going to magically make HDV look better – but it’s such a great post codec.

I know Walter has more experience of this than me (I use DVCProHD with Uncompressed sources on the road more often) and especially with Final Touch (aka Color soon) so I’ll leave a more detailed decription of the benefits to him.

Ben

Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd

EVS & FCP specialists for live broadcast.

OB Server 1 HD – Mobile FCP editing done right.

[Peter Barrett]

Sure, what I struggle with is that the banding is absent UNTIL the render takes place in the timeline. It suggests that it’s something FCP is doing during the process – formerly distinct, bright clouds vanish behind venetian blinds…

Quad G5/NVidia Quadro/Kona LHe/Infortrend RAID/Final Touch HD 2.6.1/FCP 5.1.2/OS X 10.4.8