Monitoring Question

[David Roth weiss]

Okay, I’ll try to guide you…

First, I need additional information

1) what are the pixel dimensions of the stills?
2) what video codec are using in AE and Vegas?
3) what’s the difference you see between the original stills and your video?

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Mike James]

Thanks David.

The stills are usually twice as big as the target video res.- sometimes a lot bigger.

I’m seeing the problems even when I’m looking at stills from PS using the Xena card, so the codec really isn’t the problem (I think). However, I have a fast enough machine (8 cores, 16GB RAM) where I can watch uncompressed video. Same problems.

The resulting video image is overly bright, overly saturated, and the slightest jpeg noise (undetectable on the PC) looks like a gravel road.

I’m also seeing a lot of new edges in high contrast areas — dark banding.

I’ve tried lowering the contrast, the saturation and the brightness. This helps a bit, but the noise is still there. I applied a slight Gaussian blur to the image to help with the noise but the picture gets too soft — nothing like the beautiful PC version I’m getting.

M

[David Roth weiss]

I repeat, what codec are you using? It makes a substancial difference.

Instead of a gausian blur, use a directional blur, set to vertical, at about two pixels. Instead of defocusing the entire picture, directional blur softens only the horizonal lines and lessens their judder across scan lines.

As far as your luminace levels, that sounds as if your monitors are not calibrated properly. You should use color bars to properly calibrate your broadcast monitor or TV through the Xena card, then set your computer monitors to match.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Mike James]

Hello again,

I’m using H.264, QT MPEG, Xvid and a few others.

I think you’re absolutely right about calibrating the monitor. This is my challenge for the next 24 hours: learn how to set up an LCD video monitor.

Your horizontal Gaussian blur is a great idea. I will try this.

I am also seeing that a nice 1920×1080 digital still does not necessarily make a nice 1920×1080 video still. You can see every pixel — and if there are any jpeg artifacts, they jump out at you. I’ve got to start with a much higher resolution image and let After Effects decide how to scale it down so it looks smooth.

Thanks.

Mike

[David Roth weiss]

[Mike James] “I think you’re absolutely right about calibrating the monitor. This is my challenge for the next 24 hours: learn how to set up an LCD video monitor.”

Use color bars, and make certain to set the pluge bar properly so you can establish proper luminance. Check out the following details from Wikipedia:

The pluge (short for “Picture Line-Up Generation Equipment”) pulse is positioned within the black rectangle, below the red bar (it is present in the illustration but may be hard to see). It comprises three small vertical bars, a rightmost one with intensity just above the saturated black level, a middle one with intensity exactly equal to saturated black, and a leftmost one with intensity just below saturated black (or “blacker than black”). The pluge pulse aids in adjusting the bottom of the luminance range to avoid either washing out the black tones into grays or collapsing picture information into the signal clipping that occurs a small distance below the saturated black level (known as “crushing the blacks”). When a monitor is properly adjusted, the rightmost pluge bar should be just barely visible, while the left two should appear completely black.

[Mike James] “Your horizontal Gaussian blur is a great idea. I will try this.”

That’s actually vertical and it’s called “Directional Blur.”

[Mike James] “I am also seeing that a nice 1920×1080 digital still does not necessarily make a nice 1920×1080 video still.”

Well, if you don’t zoom in at all it should look just fine. However, sharp edges and lines do tend to have interlace issues. The Directional Blur should take care of those.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Mike James]

Hi David,

You are my Hero.

I got the monitor calibrated as much as possible using the THX process on my granddaughter’s Monster’s Inc. DVD. I had to crank the brightness and sharpness way down, among other changes.

The whole problem with the pixel distortions went away. Areas of solid colors are nice and smooth now. Amazing.

I’ve been looking at a FCP tutorial on color correction for broadcast on the Lynda.com site. It’s been very helpful teaching me about software scopes and how to use them properly. I’ve got similar scopes in Vegas, and I’ve found that they are available as plug ins for After Effects.

The vertical blur was a nice tip.

So anyway, unless you have any more ideas for me, I want to thank you for your generousity and time. I’ll make sure that the karma heads back your way.

Best regards,

Mike

[Archie Cruz]

I just had to comment on this:
“Re: Monitoring Question
by Mike James on Nov 28, 2008 at 8:46:28 pm

I’ve been scouring the Cow trying to find someone who knows about this pretend computer-land video to real broadcast video video business. Please don’t send me away when I finally found experts who know the Answer!
PS. No I don’t use Premiere Pro… :)”

I’m about to give up celebrating New Years Eve 2008 to write a short paper on this, so I thought I’d get some feedback from Pros & Rookies alike. I’ll keep it brief:
– The fundamental facts are known to the ‘Pros’. Only the highest caliber of calibrated broadcast monitors can be reliably used as reference so as to match delivery footage to an ideal that will display with no color, contrast, brightness or gamma anomalies whatsoever.
– The use of any monitors less than the top tier will not guarantee that output footage will be free of anomalies.
– The above statements assume that the ‘client’ is therefore responsible for also calibrating their monitors to take advantage of cleanly broadcast material.
These fundamental facts have been so since the beginning of calibration capable authoring and viewing monitors.
These assumptions were pretty easy to cope with up until the floodgates of content media distribution burst open with many new client-side viewing platforms.
If one considers that one cleanly calibrated program may now (Assuming Digital TV) be distributed in one or more of 7 key media formats (Broadcast Digital Cable TV,Narrowcast Video, print to Film, Web,DVD,Blu-Ray & Handheld… AND this content flows to a plethora of client screens of all stripe…
The classic assumptions have therefore changed by force.
What I’m saying is that unless there’s a reliable auto-calibrate button on every client platform that magically aligns client monitors to the SAME standard as that used by authors, the difference in probable quality between content that’s been color graded on top tier monitors and content that’s been graded on lesser screens will statistically be narrower than in the past when the viewing options were FAR fewer than today.
Eventually the Top tier CRT Color grading monitors will loose relevance as CRT’s vanish. Eventually, we’ll just be discussing HD over LCD or LED or O-LED displays ( of all sizes) – period!
With some effort, client side displays will be manufactured to closer tolerances- all but eliminating the need for user-calibration completely. THEN we’ll have a much easier time grading as the likely range of client side variances will have diminished.
The utopic vision is one of monitors metaphorically like Triconderoga #2 pencils- always delivering the same dark gray line, no matter which Triconderoga #2 pencil you use! https://www.prang.com/
I fear that day is a long way off.