[Jack Shepard]

Someone had posted this awhile ago and I jotted it down. Never really put my black/white setup issues and the DVD process together before. This has worked with me while making DVD’s in Compressor:

NTSC
4:3
upperfield
closed gop
7 frame structure
Filters:
black restore + 7.5
colors (highlights and midtones = +20 (leave shadows/lowlights at 0 or you add noise back to your blacks)
Gamma is 1.4 (you could try 1.3 and 1.5)

[Jack Shepard]

I see. I see. I have been working a lot with projects that have mixed media lately – maybe that’s why I suddenly started noticing it. Thanks for the indepth answer.

[Jack Shepard]

I was actually using the Media100i codec on this particular one. But I have noticed it on a project I did using the DVCProHD codec as well (though everything looks fine when I am going to tape). for this project, I was exporting a by-reference clip and then was going to make different compressions from that using quicktime. But the black level is off. So, for example, I brought a still file into Boris Fx and shrank it. But the black of the card isn’t matching the background around it, if that makes sense. In contrast, when I export a non-compressed clip/animatic codec clip using quicktime the blacks export fine.

Any ideas? Thanks so much.

[Jack Shepard]

This is a little out of place here – but it deals with the same question so I thought I would ask it. Would this automatic duck solution also work with Media 100? I need to bring some files into Media 100 that are coming from Avid. They are just raw files (unedited) – but they don’t exist in tape form so I was trying to think of ways to importing them into M100.

Thanks!

[Jack Shepard]

Cheers Seattle for the in depth answer. It totally answered my question.
I am going to jump on ebay right now.

[Jack Shepard]

That’s what I thought. Just wanted to make sure it didn’t compress anything further. Thanks.

[Jack Shepard]

MacPro
2×3 Ghz
8-core
4 gigs Ram
version 10.4.9

Using Media 100HDe 11.6.2

I’ll go ahead and update to 11.6.4 – actually might as well go up to 12.

Thanks, hopefully that will do it.

[Jack Shepard]

Thanks so much. Going to give that a try right now.

[Jack Shepard]

Hi,
Someone posted this for me a few months back regarding settings within Compressor. It worked really well I thought so thought it might be worth posting again for you. May be trying if you feel like sticking with Compressor.

“Compressor works in the YUV color space which is Black is 0 and white is 255. Thats why you see faded blacks and dingy whites when encoding a m100 project in compressor.

Settings are:
NTSC
4:3
upperfield
closed gop
7 frame structure
Filters:
black restore + 7.5
colors (highlights and midtones = +20 (leave shadows/lowlights at 0 or you add noise back to your blacks)
Gamma is 1.4 (you could try 1.3 and 1.5)
Compressor has a great split frame view of your original work and “with filters applied” if you double click the source file in the original compressor window that contains the time/quality encode settings.
Scroll through the dark parts of your program to make sure you haven’t destroyed the image (showing as digital black squares) that end up as noise on the finished DVD encode. Play with the gamma a little bit to see what the “crushed black” looks like in your program.
I’m still finding compressor produces the cleanest image(no new noise) – but bitvice has the best color reproduction. I’ve done about 50 tests on this project I’m working on now.”

Best,
Jack

[Jack Shepard]

Does that apply as well if an HD source has been downconverted to 720 NTSC? I would assume it just becomes the 720 field then?