yuv422 codec

[Barend Onneweer]

I can’t comment on the grain, but Digibeta PAL should be upper field first, unless they transcoded it to a different field order.

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[Mike Smith]

Sounds confusing.

As Barend points out, PAL is an upper-field-first universe – apart from the DVD codec, which in PAL as NTSC is lower field first. Your Digibeta, going to a YUV codec (not DV codec) should remain upper field first. If using the interpert footage dialog to change to upper-field-first does not fix the problem, you might want to check if you have the same quicktime YUV codec on your system that your facility used – why not call them and ask?

[Marco]

Thanks for the replies!

Its a little crazy because after effects displays it as

720 x 576 D1/DV PAL (1.07) separating (lower)
millions of colors
YUV422 codec.

I usually don’t have this problem. I changed it to upper fields but that didnt change the look.
Do you think if i download the YUV codec it will make any difference to the picture quality?

[Marco]

here is a screenshot.. it looks like the film has been compressed…

but supposedly it hasnt…

https://www.cavazzana.net/yuv.jpg

would love to know whats going on..

Marco.

[Mike Smith]

That jpg certainly looks compressed, though of course from here it’s hard to tell what’s the footage, and what’s any jpg compression you may have applied.

There’s no sign of wrong field order that I can see. The model must be extreeeemely thin .. or is it widescreen footage, wrongly idented as standard aspect ratio? Even so, I can’t see that re-interpreting the footage as widescreen (if it is!) would make any / much difference to what look like compression artifacts.

Unless it was shot in near darkness … did the original digiBeta look clean and nice ..?

If so, I’d be inclined to return to the transfer house and talk it over with them. It doesn’t look like you have what you wanted – which I guess was a high-quality transfer, no compression.

Good luck!

[Marco]

yeah the lighting was great and the tape looked good on the monitor whilst filming.

Do you think it has something to do with the YUV422 codec he used to encode it with ?
that doesnt sound to be uncompressed to me..

i normally deal with uncompressed .mov so i dont get this problem..

thanks for the help.. i will give them a call today.

[Mike Smith]

So far as I recall, digibeta itself uses a yuv 4:2:2 format with (very light) compression, so that shouldn’t of neceessity be a problem. It’s more likely that the encoding person chose a higher compression setting than necessary / desirable, for whatever reason. Should be worth a free re-transfer for you I think.

[Mike Smith]

A couple of other thoughts.

DigiBeta is 10 bits per pixel / channel – hope they are recording in 10 bit for you?

Also, the lower field info from AE suggests a horrible thought.

They are using an SDI interface to get the signal into the computer, right ? They wouldn’t be doing anything silly like feeding an ananlog signal to a DV / DVCAM deck, and then capturing via firewire – which would explain the DV field order … and could be a factor in a big quality drop, if it went through a composite or y/c connectors, rather than a component connector set …

Mike

[Marco]

Mike i think thats exactly what they did!!
thanks so much man! it makes sense.. otherwise the fields wouldnt be lower.. and of course the terrible artifacts..

What would you recommend in regards to transferring the digibeta? component connector set?

you’re legend! thanks for the help!

Marco

[Mike Smith]

Hey Marco

Shame to have all the effort of the shoot wasted in the capture!

Best for you would be direct digital transfer, digibeta to computer, via SDI – a socket / cable interface on the digibeta deck and some capture cards. Capture via analog component to 10-bit uncompressed can also give excellent results, if a good capture card and drivers (from e.g BlackMagic, Aja, others) are used.

Capture to a proprietary codec and then export to your (probably Apple / Quicktime?) YUV422 codec should work well, if the deck / software are truly “broadcast standard”.

My guess, though, is that your facility does not have the kit to do this at full standard, or they would probably have done so in the first place – unless they misunderstood you and thought you wanted it compressed to save disc space ?

Good luck.