[Graeme Nattress]

Enzo, my article here address some of these issues:

https://www.nattress.com/Chroma_Investigation/chromasampling.htm

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP

[Graeme Nattress]

Say you take in some DV over firewire, edit it cuts only, and then send it back to DV tape over firewire. Do that in any native DV editing system (FCP, Premiere, Avid, whatever) and the results will be the same, be equally good, and equally identical to the original footage.

You’ll only get differences on rendering some kind of effect, or adding text, because although the DV format says what the data has to look like, it doesn’t tell you how to achieve it.

Take chroma sampling for instance:

The Apple DV codec converts the 4:1:1 to 4:4:4 for rendering (all rendering in FCP occurs in a fully uncompressed 4:4:4 environment) by duplicating chroma samples. This looks bad on screen, but provides much better generational performance, than, say, the Avid codec. The Avid codec smooths the chroma from 4:1:1 to 4:4:4 (pretty much like adding the Apple chroma smoothing filter) and this looks nice on screen and makes for better keys, but, when compressing back to 4:1:1 for going to tape, that smoothed chroma will blur out slightly, and over many generations, you’ll get chroma bleed and desaturation.

Similarly, the Avid codec filters high frequency information from uncompressed material before rendering to the DV codec, making titles work better. This will also soften the video a bit, but it will look better on screen. The FCP codec doesn’t do this, so you get people saying that titles look bad, but if they’d filtered them themselves to the approriate level, they’d compress just fine with DV codec.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP

[Graeme Nattress]

I’m working on some plugins that do this, but perhaps the easiest thing to do is dub your fotoage to VHS, mangle the tape a bit, and record back to DV for capture….

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP

[Graeme Nattress]

Aleric, can you post up an image so we can see what you’re talking about. It will make it easier to point you in the right direction.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP

[Graeme Nattress]

You need to monitor the DV back through the camera to your monitor to see what it really looks like. FCP or FCE does not compress DV upon capture – it’s purely a file transfer. What you see on screen though, is preview quality only.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP

[Graeme Nattress]

Cinequip is where I get a lot of my video gear from. They don’t do Sony, but other than that, they do practically everything and tend to be helpful in the extreme.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP

[Graeme Nattress]

Only thing is Walter, is that none of those formats are uncompressed, and HDCAM is even more compressed than DV 🙂

For DV, best thing to do is to bump it to uncompressed in FCP, using either my G Nicer or G Chroma Sharpen (From Film Effects) which really fix up the chroma great. Do this in an uncompressed timeline, then export that as a new clip.

That is, until I get such chroma fixing working as a plugin in Motion – that’s my next task.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP

[Graeme Nattress]

How are you getting the VHS into your mac? The canopus analogue to DV box has some noise reductions built into it, and a time base corrector too, which I’m told can help.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP

[Graeme Nattress]

I don’t think you can add multiple transitions at once.

The image stabilizer in FCP doesn’t work very well. You can try http://www.lyric.com for one that works, or use After Effects or Shake.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP

[Graeme Nattress]

For DV, no need for any card at all.

Best:
Big G5
DV Deck (DSR-11, or DSR-25 etc.)
Video monitor (NTSC or PAL or both, as appropriate)
Audio mixer
Powered monitor loudspeakers
Nice desk and chair – you need good ergonomics
External storage – anything from a HUGE drive, to a bunch of firewire drives, or an Xserve RAID.
Cheap:
Small G5
Use a cheapo camera instead of the deck
Get a cheap Monitor
Put a big internal SATA drive in the G5 for storage
Cheapest:
iMac (G5)
Use your camera instead of the deck
Use your 14″ portable TV for a monitor
Use firewire drives

So you’re in Ottawa eh? So am I. Take a look at the cheap JVC NTSC (actually dual standard) monitors, you can get them from Cinequip on Camelot. They also sell practically everything for video productions – cameras, lights etc.

Basically, you need a camera, mac, lots of hard drive space, and a way to monitor both audio and video properly. If you’ve got that, you’re laughing.

For shooting, get decent mics, and sound makes a documentary more than the picture.

Graeme

– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP