Std def, Film Effects and LCD monitors

[Bouncing Account needs new email address]

SD can look absolutely TERRIBLE on an HDTV LCD monitor.

If you want to know how SD “actually” looks… a good CRT is still the way.

[Slim Simon]

Right, but is there a way to prep the SD footage so it looks better on an LCD?

[Mark Maness]

I’m sorry but your only hope is that you can watch it on a standard def LCD monitor. HD LCD monitors only magnify the problems of standard def video. It will show you your compression very very well. And no, rendering to uncompressed isn’t going to make it better. Sorry! I have those same issues at my facility.

_______________________________

Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions

[David Roth weiss]

Slim,

Go into the menu on the LCD TV and see if you can turn “auto scaling” off. The TVs scaling engine is uprezing from 480i to 720i or 1080i and doing a lousy job. If you can turn it off you will probably see a dramatic improvement. Most, but not all TVs have a toggle allowing internal scaling to be switched off.

DRW

[Don Greening]

David,

Would an LCD television’s auto-scale toggle be known as anything else? I would like to try your recommendation on my own BenQ 26″ but I can’t see anything in the on-screen menus that looks similar.

– Don

[David Roth weiss]

Don,

Unfortunately all TVs are not created equal. Some have this feature in easliy accessible places in the menu, others bury it in the factory level settings that have to be adddressed with secret codes. I’d contact the manufacturer.

DRW

[Sean Oneil]

[slim] “I took some std def footage in FCP, and added the Nattress Film effect. Very basic 3:2 pulldown. I played it back on a regular NTSC monitor, and it looked fine. Footage was played back on digibeta, and DVD. When I walked it down the hall to show the boss, we watched on his new Sharp Aquos 45in. LCD HDTV, and it looked horrible. Lots of aliasing, and visible interlacing.”

If “jaggies” are the problem, the problem has nothing to do with scaling. Whether it’s on an SD or HD LCD makes no difference. In fact, there’s no such thing as a SD LCD. Standard def is interlaced, non-square pixels. LCDs are always progressive scan, square pixels. If this is film based footage, what’s possiby happening is that your cadence is off, so the monitor can’t figure out how to deinterlace it.

But if this is video-based 30fps footage, and you’re trying to make it look like film, I think what you want to do after you apply the Natress effect is to place it on a 24p timeline. Then export the sequence as a self-contained 24p Quicktime file. Then import that file, place it on a 60i NTSC timeline, render it, and output to digibeta.

[Don Greening]

Thanks, David. Insightful as usual. I’ll contact BenQ.

– Don

[David Roth weiss]

[Sean ONeil] “In fact, there’s no such thing as a SD LCD.”

What would you call one of the many 4×3 LCD TVs on the market that only display stand definition???