Graeme Nattress
Forum Replies Created
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HDV is to HDCAM SR, as DV is to Digital Betacam. HDV has more resolution, but more compression, and you’re still with a 1/3″ imager. To get to the next level of picture, you need to go to a big camera. HDV is just like what you’ve got but with a bigger image. IMHO, of course.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
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An uncompressed workflow can be useful, but only if you’re going back to, mastering to, a higher quality deck, say DVCpro50 or DigiBeta. Going back to DV will remove any benefit of going uncompressed.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
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I think I’ve got a solution going, but need you to test it. My setup here is way too confusing and I might be getting a field order wrong in my testing, so I need you to see if it’s working. Drop me an email and I’ll send it right off to you.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
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All of Region 1 is NTSC, but Region 2 encompasses Europe and Japan, and is hence both PAL and NTSC. Indeed, the TV standard (PAL or NTSC) can be set independent of region code.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
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Well, I leaning towards it being a bug in Film Effects and it’s handling of upper field footage. My plan today is to take the code apart and look at it again and see which bit is not liking upper field stuff. This is really strange to me as the code is totally symmetrical when it comes to field ordering, in that it does the opposite for the other field so I can’t quite see where the error is coming in, but I’ll find it….
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
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Even just interpolation will prodce a visual result that looks better than 4:1:0 though – I guess it doesn’t look as good as 4:2:0, so perhaps it’s 4:1.5:0 it looks like, but that’s better than nothing.
DV chroma should only be smoothed before a) viewing, or b)chroma key.
If you put DV 4:1:1 chroma through a process to DVD, then it never gets smoothed. The DVD player will smooth the 4:2:0 chroma, but it doesn’t know about the 4:1:0 chroma and hence it will look more chunky than it has to. IMHO, you should smooth the chroma before converting to DVD, as nothing else is going to, at least with the Apple DV codec.
You’re right that it’s wise not to smooth DV chroma on a whim, as that will lead to degredation.
As for going better than linear, the G Nicer in Film Effects 2.1 is doing a very good job of chroma reconstruction, and I’ve got a new chroma Sharpen plugin in the works that is also doing a great job of putting that missing data back into the chroma from any sub-sampled chroma source. Drop me a mail and I’ll send them out to you for testing. The only current issue with the G Nicer is that it’s not completely 10bit happy, but as soon as I find that darn bug in FCP, I’ll fix that.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
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Because if the DV doesn’t get upsampled, it’s just 4:1:1 sitting embedded in a 4:2:2 piece of video, which will get converted to 4:2:0 and hence look like 4:1:0.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
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That workflow works well, Marco, but I always also upsample the DV chroma, as putting into a 4:2:2 timeline by itself does not do that.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
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AFAIK, the BMD 8bit code is upper field, as it’s a 486 line codec, not a 480 line one. I’ll try and re-arrange my setup today so that I can play that out and see what it’s like here.
The problem is most definately field based, and as to what, exactly is happening, I’m at a loss to know right now, but it’s by far and a way the strangest I’ve had.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
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But it doesn’t supply you with the key component to a true film look, which is converting 60i video to 24p, which is where the plugins come in…
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP