[Casey Petersen]

I’ve never used the unsharp mask before…must be the name! Looks very interesting, and I think it would look better than the plain sharpen filter.

What kind of “typical” settings do you use with it….the base settings you use that work on most clips without having to customize it?

Thanks!
Casey

[Casey Petersen]

Hey Peter,

How would you recommend reintroducing sharpness in post? I have Final Cut Pro. Just wondering how you do it, and what settings you use.

Thanks!

[Casey Petersen]

I’m starting to think now that this is more of a progressive footage looking lousy on an interlaced TV issue, rather than there is something wrong with the camera or anything in that part of the process.

Maybe the question I should be asking is how to get original progressive footage to look decent on DVD when played on an interlaced TV.

Thanks!
Casey

[Casey Petersen]

Thanks everyone for your responses!

The thing is, I don’t see the strobey look on anything that’s uploaded to Vimeo or YouTube. I haven’t had time to look at the clips that have been uploaded for this thread, but even with my own stuff in 24p, it looks great on Vimeo…it looks pretty good on my FCP timeline and pretty good on a Blu-ray, but looks lousy on a tube TV set.

I noticed on a thread (perhaps this one!) that someone mentioned changing the settings on the camera to drop the sharpness and chroma. I wonder if that would have any effect on looking lousy on a regular TV. I’m also trying to play to the lowest-common denominator, and hopefully the old tube sets will be out of the picture soon.

Thanks!
Casey

[Casey Petersen]

Thanks Richard…I’ll check that out.

I am shooting 1/50, BTW.

Jason, I don’t think I’m seeing the same thing you are. I see this even with tripod shots and there is subtle movement…like a duck swimming in the water or a birdhouse swaying in a gentle breeze.

Thanks!
Casey

[Casey Petersen]

Thanks Shane for your insight.

There are still a few questions that linger, though.

I can take my same clips and edit them in ProRes and I still get the strobey look. I have done several experiments with different formats and I am still seeing the same thing…even with hundreds of different clips from different locations and conditions…both good and bad…and nothing looks significantly better (or worse), so I don’t think what I’m seeing is a lighting/exposure/composition/color correction issue.

It’s hard to explain what it is I’m seeing (thanks for bearing with me!).

Even on House, a lot of it was “handheld” and had a lot of elements in motion in addition to the camera, and everything (off my Dish Network 1080i DVR) is smooth, and for me, even things that are barely moving appear jerky. It’s almost like there’s a motion blur or some kind of in-betweening that needs to happen with my stuff to make it look remotely like House (just as an example).

Is there some kind of frame rate conversion step that happens somewhere in this process? I mean, you can’t just take 24p footage and it automatically looks good on a SD tube TV that is 29.97 interlaced, right? Even my Dish receiver is set for 1080i, so there has to be some kind of conversion that makes it look good when interlaced, isn’t there. I think this is getting closer to the heart of what I’m seeing.

Thanks!!
Casey

[Casey Petersen]

I tried it…not quite the way it was described…I don’t have After Effects and couldn’t figure out how to do it in Motion, so I tried changing the speed in Final Cut to 50% with frame blending off, then rendering that out to a new QuickTime and changing it to 200% with frame blending on. The end result didn’t look very good.

Is it really going to be that different using Motion? How do I do it in Motion?

Thanks!
Casey

[Casey Petersen]

Thanks Ken, I’ll give that a try.

I also should clarify that I am not testing this on a high quality CRT monitor, but rather an inexpensive tube tv set (I’m trying to play to the lowest common denominator, or at least low).

Casey

[Casey Petersen]

Very nice, Claus!

What did you use for color grading? How about filters?

Thanks!
Casey

[Casey Petersen]

Thanks for looking at it and for your feedback…that’s good to know.

It appears that I’m doing things right…maybe I like the video look too much!

I’ll look into those other encoders…I’m sure that hollywood is not using Compressor. And again…the problem is in the standard def DVDs, not online or Blu-ray.

Casey