Bill Stephan
Forum Replies Created
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Bob,
If you want to go with LCD displays, go with the faster response time (LCDs really don’t update quite fast enough for full motion video). You want the best contrast ratio you can get, but don’t go by just the specs. Look at the monitor you are considering to see if it can produce a good deep black (most cannot). Brightness shouln’t be too much of a problem. Most monitors can produce 120cd/m2, which is the spec.
The big problem with flat panel displays are in the area of color balance and gamma. Make sure the monitor you buy has a preset for 6500 degrees, which is video color temperature. But most don’t have any way to adjust the color balance of the monitor beyond a simple hue adjustment. Also flat displays all have linear gamma, where CRT tubes have non-linear gamma. Since all cameras have gamma compensation, you will notice a difference here.
All of this means that LCD displays may work fine for you provided you don’t use them for color correcting purposes.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City -
We do thermal color printing on about a thousand DVD-R discs per week. The technology does work and can do a nice job on most artwork. Thermal printing does have a problem reproducing subtle light tones, but there are ways of fussing with that.
It is very important to use DVD-R stock with a high quality thermal print surface.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City -
What version of Mac O/S does Avid require to run Avid XpressDV 3.5? I believe it runs only on O/S 9.2, but check Avid’s web site for the real answer.
You can’t install Avid software on just any version of O/S you happen to have. Non-linear edit software requires specific capabilities to be present in both the computer and the operating system. That’s why you see very specific configuration info for running Avid software.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City -
Install a copy of Mac Opener on your PC and it will read Mac discs with no problem. There are 2 or 3 other utilities that also let you open Mac files on PC.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City -
Seems to me that it’s just a DS Nitris Editor with a slightly more editor-friendly inteface. So basically it’s a new name with not much else new. (A version upgrade with lots of hype?)
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City -
A third method is to dub the DATS to DVCAM or DVCPro tapes. If you go to a tape format that has 48KHz locked audio, you won’t lose anything.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City -
If your DAT machine has RS422 remote control, you can bring the timecode into the Avid over RS422 and you can use your digital box.
Another way to do this is to feed the digital audio from the DAT machine into a VTR that has both SDI/AES-EBU and Firewire capability built in (such as in higher-end DVCAM VTRs). Just go E-to-E through the VTR into the Avid.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City -
1. Are you exporting both fields when you create the image sequence? If not, you are throwing away half the image data.
2. Have you tried exporting a Quicktime movie, animation codec at max quality? Do you get the same or better results?
3. Is the problem only with the HDV footage, or with other footage as well? Have you tried the same workflow using non-HDV footage? Since HDV is recorded as MPEG2, I would be extremely careful about using anything in your workflow that compresses the picture again, as the image quality will degrade fast.
4. Could the HDV footage be soft? Focus is extremely critical in all Hi-def work, and the HDV cameras are not the easiest to focus.
I hope this gives you some food for thought.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City -
Use the “Character Map” accessory in Windows. You can find any character in a type font, copy it to the clipboard and paste into title tool.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City -
You need to be working in DV25 or 1:1. I believe that Xpress Pro can’t do motion effects on 1-field media.
Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City