mixing PAL and NTSC clips in iDVD or DVD Pro

[Rafael Amador]

You can do it al in one rendering-export.
I would do it this way:
– Edit in a NTSC DV sequence.
– Color correction. Then drop the Chroma Smoothing (but set it before the CC filter. Must be the first one).
– Set the graphics and whatever you need to add.
– When your sequence is finished, set it to 8 or 10b Unc (if you set the sequence to render in High precision).
Then you have three options to send to Compressor. The easiest (and the best) is to send from the FC time-line.
Then choose one of the presets for standard conversion.
As I told you yesterday, set the Frame control to ON. And in the Output fields, set it to “Upper-first”. 8 and 10b Unc, are expected to be “lower-first” in NTSC, but “Upper-first” when PAL.
Anyway Chang, build your NTSC DV sequence, and when ready we can workout the problems that could arise.
rafael

PPC G5 2x2Gh 4GbRAM/BlackMagic SD/PMBP 17″Core2Duo 4GbRAM
JVC DTV-17″/FCS2/AE CS3/COMBUSTION/SHAKE

[Alexander Kallas]

[Rafael Amador] “Please try this: Put a DV clip in a DV sequence, make some color grading and apply any of the Nattress Chroma rebuilding effects (Nicer or Chroma Smoothing?Sharpening). Then just change the sequence codec to 8 or 10b Unc. I swear that you will notice the difference.
“

Hi Rafael
As I said before, on the Mac yes, but on your delivery medium, no.
You cannot get real 422 or 444 from 411 material, these numbers refer to the way the material was captured, NOT manipulated.
Your manipulations are what alters the look of the digital data eg color correction, and you can see those changes better in 8-bit, but it’s not the transcoding.
Sure, uncompressed looks better on the Mac, eg a 45 minute NTSC DV file is about 10G
that same file in 8-bit uncompressed is about 50G ! ie much more detail, but get it off the Mac and……it’s 411 with nice manipulation, pushed to 420 for DVD.

Cheers
Alexander

[Rafael Amador]

Alexander,
If you just put your DV footage in a 10b Unc sequence, your movie won’t look better because still being DV (In a ProRess sequence with the 444 Chroma filtering enable, probably would look better).
In DV you have only one sample of color each 4 pixels. in the moment that you apply a Color Correction or a Chroma rebuilding filter, you are getting a different chroma value in each of your pixels.
So if you export with a 422 codec you will end with a color sample each 2 pixels. And if you go back to DV you will get again a color sample each 4 pixels, so the most of the CC and Chroma rebuilding that you have done is waisted again.
This is something that you notice in the very moment that you change the codec and I don’t see that in my Mac, but in a Pro monitor that I use for CC.
Just try.
rafael
PS: if you want to read something interesting about those issues, there are some very good articles:
– Chroma sampling in FC (An investigation). By Graeme Nattress.
– Merging RGB and 422. By Charles Poynton.

PPC G5 2x2Gh 4GbRAM/BlackMagic SD/PMBP 17″Core2Duo 4GbRAM
JVC DTV-17″/FCS2/AE CS3/COMBUSTION/SHAKE

[Alexander Kallas]

[Rafael Amador] “So if you export with a 422 codec you will end with a color sample each 2 pixels”

My point, export to what? To DVD 420, you are only interpreting the origional 411 aquired data, manipulated though it is to “pseudo 422”.
411, 422, and 444 are aquisitiion chromas,
In DV>8-bit you are color correcting in 422. ie re-writing the file, and you may get bizarre results in NTSC

Cheers
Alexander

[Rafael Amador]

[Alexander Kallas] “In DV>8-bit you are color correcting in 422”
Thats wrong. What everything you put in the FC time line, automatically is decompressed to 444. Whatever is the codec of your sequence and whatever is the codec of your footage. Everything is calculated as 444. Then is up to you re-compress or not.
Have you ever used the Nattress filters?
rafael

PPC G5 2x2Gh 4GbRAM/BlackMagic SD/PMBP 17″Core2Duo 4GbRAM
JVC DTV-17″/FCS2/AE CS3/COMBUSTION/SHAKE

[Chang Dek]

I am previewing full screen still JPG images in the FCP Viewer and then the same images from the rendered timeline in Canvas, which gives me a considerably inferior quality image (unusable) I have tried various pre import options in APS to optimise the JPG image, which appear fine in the Viewer window but look bad in the Canvas, even if the image is alone in the timeline, with no scaling or effects. Any ideas? Thank you

Chang

[Rafael Amador]

Hi Chang,
If you have now your sequence as DV, is normal that the stills look bad. They will look much better when you change it to 8 or 10b Unc.
rafael

PPC G5 2x2Gh 4GbRAM/BlackMagic SD/PMBP 17″Core2Duo 4GbRAM
JVC DTV-17″/FCS2/AE CS3/COMBUSTION/SHAKE

[Chang Dek]

Hi folks, I did a quick test exporting from FCP NTSC DV timeline to Compressor 8 bit Unc PAL (no, I didnt open any frame rate or other parameters) and the comparison to an export made in PAL DV setting was very noticeable; not only in the still JPG logos that I had inserted, but the general quality of the original DV footage was much sharper in the 8 bit Unc version, even though I made no colour corrections or any changes to the DV footage apart from a tiny amount of cropping ( 2 % in a very few places) and adding JPG logos.

And yes, Alexander is right, a 700 MB file became a huge 3.65 Gig file, which I dont know if going this way will be useful when I compress to DVD, though the differences in the test were signifiacant, I will be adding hard disk space to achieve this better quality even if it is only to save a quality version to tape. My test is only preliminary as I am only viewing through an MBP 15″ laptop screen.

Thank you both for your valuable input.

Chang

[Alexander Kallas]

[Chang Dek] “I did a quick test exporting from FCP NTSC DV timeline to Compressor 8 bit Unc PAL (no, I didnt open any frame rate or other parameters) and the comparison to an export made in PAL DV setting was very noticeable;”

Chang, just so you know,
8-bit always looks better on the Mac, but that’s not your delivery mode.
Now you should really use the frame-controls tab to get the best format conversion (forget about the 8-bit vs Dv debate, I’m talking conversion here now)
To convert standards from NTSC to PAL: Import your NTSC footage to the Batch window. Set a target preset, and make sure you alter it so that it specifies PAL as the standard. Don’t worry. Go to Frame Controls and, again, set it to Custom. The main magic is on the bottom: set Frame rate conversion to “Better” or “Best”. Both are Motion compensated (optical flow) and, depending your source and computer power, it could take DAYS to encode. If you can’t trade quality for time in such a large scale, set it to “Good (frame blending)”. This is the method DVFilm, JES Deinterlacer and similar tools use. It’s fast and the quality is, well, more or less like others which use frame blending. Not that bad. You can also choose a setting for the resizing filter in Frame controls: don’t go too high or the wait will never end. A Quad machine will take much less. Or, if you have another Mac around, Compressor 2 has distributed encoding to make two or more machines work together. That really accelerates things.

Cheers
Alexander

[Rafael Amador]

[Chang Dek] “a 700 MB file became a huge 3.65 Gig fil”
That’s the trade. If you would have chose 10b Unc, would be even bigger. The difference in quality is worth.

[Chang Dek] “exporting from FCP NTSC DV timeline to Compressor 8 bit Unc PAL “
That is the correct way. When you send to Compressor from the FC time line, you are sending un uncompress 444 signal. Whatever is the codex of your sequence. No DV compression again.
If you would have export as NTSC DV and then sent to Compressor you would have got something much worst.

[Chang Dek] “even if it is only to save a quality version to tape”
Chang, you will not be happy with what you will get in a DV tape. You will be more happy with your DVD. If I’m wrong, I’ll pay the meal and the beers in BKK.
rafael

PPC G5 2x2Gh 4GbRAM/BlackMagic SD/PMBP 17″Core2Duo 4GbRAM
JVC DTV-17″/FCS2/AE CS3/COMBUSTION/SHAKE