Chris Blair
Forum Replies Created
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Thanks guys. I understand built-in camera stabilization isn’t a substitute for a steadicam and won’t approach the look of one…but the client’s budget may not allow for hiring a steadicam owner/operator.
So the alternative would be to get just a few hand-held shots with “some” movement from the camera op to give it a free-form feel…and I’ve been impressed by the electronic stablization built into many of the mid-range camcorders…so that’s why I put that option in there.
The shoot will also likely involve a LOT of setups, simple lighting and very little chance for blocking shots…and the few times I’ve used a steadicam it always seems to require a lot of blocking, both for the move and the people in the shots. I tend to work VERY quickly and we’re very good at getting good looking stuff in a very short amount of time. In fact, when we hire people out…they usually cannot keep up…even extremely experienced DPs and camera ops.
Hopefully their budget will allow for hiring an owner-operator
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog -
If the Plasma TV is HD…either it or the DVD player are up-rezzing your standard def DVD…that would account for the fuzzy look. As for the blacks looking gray, that very well could occur in your MPEG2 export or more likely it’s an incorrect setting on the DVD player.
For export settings, on our NLE systems, we always do a test export of about 5 seconds of color bars (that we know are accurate), then check the MPEG2 exported version on a waveform/vectorscope. We adjust the color export settings until they match (as closely as possible) the original. Then we save those export settings. You’d be amazed at how different codecs treat colors in terms of changing them. Modern codecs SHOULDN’T require this step, but some still do. We’ve found the MainConcept MPEG2 codec to be the most accurate of those we’ve used.
On the DVD player issue, every DVD player I’ve ever seen has a black setting in the menu where you can set it for one of three settings: passthru, lower black level, increase black level. Each DVD manufacturer will label it something different but it’s basically a setting that adjusts blacks by cutting them by 7.5%, leaving them as they are, or increasing them by 7.5%.
I’ve never understood why this setting is needed on NTSC based players since all NTSC video should display blacks at 7.5%. Most DVD players will have the default at “pass-thru” which doesn’t boost or reduce the blacks in the image. But some will set it at reduce or boost. So check that setting in the DVD player.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog -
In terms of what does FTP mean…we upload to dozens of network affiliates and regional cable systems here in the midwest, including markets like Louisville, Nashville, Indy, St. Louis, Paducah, Bowling Green, Lexington and several others.
We just use a professional level FTP software application (in our case CuteFTP Pro). We encode the spots to the specs of the particular station or cable system (usually MPEG2 or Quicktime H264 but also a few other formats/codecs). Then we log onto the station or cable systems FTP using FTP addresses, user names and passwords they provide. Then we just drag and drop the file to the specific directory they’ve given us (which can be navigated to automatically by the FTP software).
Now if all that sounds simple…IT’S NOT. Just like Todd Terry’s post…we end up going round and round with stations and cable systems about finding the files, even though they’re uploaded to the SAME place time after time. The BIG problem with most stations and cable systems is that the process does NOT involve people. The spots are uploaded to systems (typically a flavor of Telestream) that are setup to automatically grab you’re uploaded file and either place it onto their servers for air (or more typically) re-encode them to their specific playback format and move them onto the playback server.
A human being does NOT look at the file, does NOT check it for quality, or for that matter, check it for content. This is not a good way to do business as many of our spots end up with reversed fields (because Telestream’s software/hardware systems often have to make a guess about the field order if they re-encode and they have a 50/50 shot of getting it right), messed up colors or they’re squeezed or stretched incorrectly for HD playback.
But…as far as the FTP part of it, it’s as simple as using off-the-shelf FTP software and logging onto the station or cable company’s server and dragging and dropping the file. That’s really the easy part of all this. The encoding and quality control is the problme area because if you’re sending to multiple stations and cable systems, you might have to encode one spot into 4 or 5 different formats/codecs. Then…your encoded file will invariably get re-encoded by a machine and/or computer/software combo…not a person.
I will say account execs LOVE this process because they literally don’t have to do anything…except call and email you looking for their files even though they’ve been uploaded to the same directory on the same server for the 35th time this year.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog -
We typically budget that we can get 2-3 minutes edited per day when produce long-form projects. Same goes for shooting a long-form piece, we typically expect to get 2-3 minutes of material shot each day.
However, editing interview based pieces is a little different in that it typically takes a lot more prep time to get interviews down to a form that allows you to edit them….meaning we typically send interviews to a transcription service (typically $2/minute of interview), and spend about a day or two trimming interviews down to what we call “selects.”
So for an interview based piece, we’ll add about 2 days for logging, digitizing, transcription (we send this out) and the “select take” editing.
Of course, if your video is shot in more of “news” style where the interview only consists of a handful of questions and answers, you might be able to skip all the transcription and interview trimming and adhere to the 2-3 minutes per day formula. But if you have 5 or more interviews and each interview consists of 20 minutes of answers, it takes some time to get those trimmed into something that resembles a story.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog -
Good to hear. Older media players are notorious for doing that…and even newer media players will all render colors a little bit differently. The bottom line is to play your resulting encode on the media player most likely to be used by your audience or client.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog -
Aspect ratio for 720×480 DV should be either 4:3 or 16:9…not 3:2. Maybe that’s the problem. Also make sure your field order interpolation in AE and field order in our encode match.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog -
What software program are you using to do the encode? The only thing I can think of is there could be a setting for gamma somewhere in either the source or target settings, or there could be a setting for decoding the source file as RGB or YUV etc.
Those are typically the only things that will affect the color and brightness of your encode file in most encoding software.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog -
Do you have a choice of which MPEG2 codec to use? I can’t imagine that would have anything to do with it…but worth a shot.
The only other thing I can think of is your AE comp has some incorrect settings, either pixel aspect or pixel size etc. Also, are you sure you haven’t somehow scaled in the AE timeline??
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog -
You’ll want to adjust the size so it’s 4:3 with square pixels since a 720×486 image will look stretched on computer screens, but beyond that it’s up to you and dependent on how fast your viewers’ internet connection is.
With H264 nowadays, you can easily get away with 512×384 and it will stream on most decent speed internet connections. You can even get away with 640×480, although that will likely bog down on anything below a cable modem.
We typically stick with 512×384 or 480×360 or 432×324. You also need to consider the web player you’ll be using…meaning Flash, Quicktime etc. If you use Flash, you’ll get better results keeping your sizes as multiples of 16 or at the very least 8.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog -
In your export settings dialogue (on the right), in the comments section it says:
“set frame size to 720×480 in the stretch options in the output module before encoding…”
So it appears to me you need to check “stretch” in your dialogue on the left, then change the aspect to 4:3 there too.
I have no idea why you’d need to do that but the export dialogue is telling you to…so you should do it. Is that Premiere or AE that you’re exporting from? It looks like an Adobe Media Encoder dialogue. I’ve always hated their encoder and it’s always (in my opinion) been a quirky beast, with all sorts of oddities (like this one).
Try doing what it says and see what you get.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
Read our blog http://www.videomi.com/blog