• Compression Techniques

  Superwhite-Longish questions

  Posted by Tom Brooks on August 1, 2006 at 4:12 pm

  I have shot a typical, well-lit studio interview in SD Mini-DV (Panasonic HVX-200 to tape) which needs to be presented as a decent quality Quicktime Sorenson 3 movie at 640×480. I am using Final Cut and Squeeze 4.3. I’m having a little trouble getting the compressed image to be snappy and bright enough. I’ve used the FCP 3-way CC to boost up the highlights, the midrange, and the saturation very modestly while observing for clipping of any sort on an analog waveform monitor. This helps a lot. In Squeeze, I have added 10-15 to the gamma. With those settings, it’s about the best I’ve achieved so far. I have read Ben’s book, but wonder if I know just enough to be dangerous at this point.
  Couple or three questions:
  Should my FCP sequence be set to process white as Superwhite or White?
  Should I export from FCP with “Current Settings” (DV NTSC in this case), MotionJPEG-A or something else?
  Am I doing anything really wrong in my attempt to exploit the full 0-255 tonal range of digital 8-bit RGB by CC-ing the highlights and raising the gamma in Squeeze?
  I’m also wondering now whether I should have shot the whole thing with hotter highlights, short of clipping, since it’s only presentation is via the Web.
  Thanks a ton for your tips.

  Final Cut Studio, FCP 5.0.4, After Effects 6.5 Pro, Quicktime 7.0.4, G5 Quad 2.5, Kona-LHe V1.2, 4.5 GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 7800-GT, G-RAID 1TB FW800.

  Tom Brooks replied 19 years, 9 months ago 1 Member · 0 Replies
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