Nattess Standards Conversion – NTSC DV?

[Alec Gitelman]

oh, and another question.

when i drop an NTSC DV clip into the source clip window in filter settings the picture resizes automatically. with uncompressed 4:2:2 i have to resize it manually. is that normal procedure or am i missing something?

[Graeme Nattress]

NTSC upsamples DV 4:1:1 chroma to 4:2:2, so although it you make the DV look better it would make the graphics look worse, so I’d leave it off.

As for auto-scaling – it should also work for the uncompressed too.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP

[Alec Gitelman]

thanx.

figured out the rescaling. i forgot to nest.

one more question. my media comes from ntsc dv and some stills. graphics are imported into fcp uncompressed. i copy the media into a 720×480 timeline with 8 bit uncompressed 4:2:2 compression, best motion filtering. render and export timeline with current settings. import it into FCP, put into 8 bit uncompressed 4:2:2 PAL timeline and apply the G Converter.

am i doing the best possible quality conversion?

[Alec Gitelman]

also,

after conversion, when i export a quicktime movie with uncompressed 4:2:2 i get some unpleasant interlacing effects on video, although the graphics are sharp. if i export ntsc dv pal the video looks great but the graphics are washed out, as they would with dv. is there a solution?

huh, it’s never simple.

[Graeme Nattress]

How are you viewing it? You should see interlacing from the conversion to PAL as it’s going to 50i. If you’re not viewing it on a PAL monitor, it’s going to show interlacing, due to PAL being an interlaced format.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP

[Alec Gitelman]

I’m comparing the quicktimes side by side. Uncompressed shows fields, possibly flipped, compared to dv which doesn’t. I’m not talking about progressive, it’s just messing up the image. In fact, unless I stick to DV, my overall image quality suffers. But I would like to keep the graphics crisp.

This has to go to DVD, preferably today.

Right now I’m trying to export to MPEG2 PAL straight out of NTSC timeline using Compressor. I will compare it to MPEG2 created from PAL DV conversion that I did earlier. The better one will go to the client.

Yet, I am very concerned.

Alec.

[Graeme Nattress]

Quicktime normally doesn’t display DV video fields even when they exist. If you’re not viewing on a broadcast monitor, you’re flying blind when it comes to fields.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP

[Alec Gitelman]

problem is i don’t have a pal monitor to check. all i can do is burn a dvd and stick it into a multisystem dvd player to watch on an ntsc monitor. so i am in a sense, flying blind, and wasting a lot of time in the process. unfortunately that’s the only method available at the moment.

[Graeme Nattress]

Yup, I know it’s tricky. I had to buy a multi-standard TV just to code this stuff in the first place, and I know that’s a luxury. If there’s any way you can ftp a compressed (but not too compressed as to remove the field structure) I can test here for you though.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP

[Alec Gitelman]

put it in the wrong post 🙂

can you take a look at these?

https://maxf.net/~alichek/ConversionComp/

so far i feel i’m getting the better result going to PAL from NTSC from your converter than from Compressor (in general smoother motion, not the first project doing this). But it seems to work properly only with DV. I would like to make it work with higher quality image. Maybe it’s a general FCP issue I think, because I cannot make render in Animation or None without completely ruining the picture.

btw., compressor switches to upper field first order when converting to pal uncompressed 4:2:2. is upper field first a default for PAL? should i be switching to that?

Thank you very much for your help.
Alec.