[John Huff]

Shane Ross, I no longer wish you to answer any of my posts. I am no longer interested in any of your rude, snide, self-serving comments that serve only to attempt to put people “in their place” no matter how “learned” you may think you or your comments are. You don’t fool me. Your negative assumptions and nasty comments about my knowledge of color correction and IRE levels, audio levels, time code, video editing, output format requirements or anything else for that matter only serve to curtail the discourse so necessary to the heart of CreativeCow.net. Underneath everything you say is negativity. You might want to study the phrase “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” While you think about that, I’m reporting you to the Founder and Director of CreativeCow.net.

John Huff
Lake Oconee Video Editing and Production
Eatonton, Georgia

[John Huff]

Shane Ross, you are a nasty negative person only interested in putting down people who don’t know as much as you. You have not only been completely unhelpful and unsupportive but you insist on talking down to people and assuming the most negative things. I’m sorry you don’t like yourself but stop taking it out on the people who are sincerely trying to use this forum to learn. I await you to break this reply down sentence by sentence with your snide remarks, in fact I’ll bet everyone awaits your next reply. This forum isn’t just about video skills, it’s also about people skills. So go to town, everyone is waiting for your next negative assumption. Have at it.

John Huff
Lake Oconee Video Editing and Production
Eatonton, Georgia

[John Huff]

Thanks for your replies. Shane, I’m afraid I didn’t understand any of your post. If I understood what all those numbers and letters meant I’m sure I wouldn’t be asking this question. But thanks for trying to help. Kristoffer, you suggested 2 ways, and for the first my camera, a Canon HV-20, doesn’t accept or export S-video, and the second, the 20″ imacs don’t support S-Video. But again I really appreciate both attempts at trying to help.

I have been exporting my commercial spots to DVD as mpeg-2 files and the on screen quality is barely acceptable, so I’ve been looking for a better way. It is my understanding that my choices are digi-beta, which is unaffordable, or beta-sp, a deck that can be found used for around $1000. So that was my reasoning. If there’s anyone out there who can explain in layman’s terms how I can get from a DV50-ntsc file in FCP on my imac to a beta-sp deck I’d surely appreciate it. Thanks.

John Huff
Lake Oconee Video Editing and Production
Eatonton, Georgia

[John Huff]

Hi David,
Do you mean just scale each clip in the HDV timeline up to where the vignetting disappears?

Then how do I get the FLV file? Do I export the scaled HDV timeline as a self-contained .mov file and then squeeze it? Can you convert a hi-def .mov file to an FLV file? If so that will be a great resolution video file, and I won’t mind that its 16:9.

Are my assumptions correct here?
Thanks, David.
Best Regards,
John

John Huff
Lake Oconee Video Editing and Production
Eatonton, Georgia

[John Huff]

Hi David,
Do you mean just scale the HDV up to where the vignetting disappears?
John

John Huff
Lake Oconee Video Editing and Production
Eatonton, Georgia

[John Huff]

David,
Must be a misunderstanding, I’ve never output anything to Beta SP, how would I go about that? Since Beta sp is analog (I think) I don’t have a clue how to transfer from my SD sequence to beta sp. For digibeta you said to put it on a firewire hard drive for transfer to digibeta tape. What about to beta sp tape?
Same process?

If I had to contact someone, what kind of place does this sort of thing, what would they be listed under in the phone book?

Thanks,
John

John Huff
Lake Oconee Video Editing and Production
Eatonton, Georgia

[John Huff]

David,
My Comcast Spotlight broadcast standards sheet says “Accepted formats for spot encoding purposes are Beta SP tape, Mini DV (recorded at SP speed only), DVCAM format, or DVC Pro 25 yellow top.” They also mention DGFastChannel, whatever that is. (And they have accepted my DVDs as well.) Does this mean they are not up to speed with digi-beta? If so, do I have an alternate way here to go with beta?

Sure, come on to Augusta, just bring your pull cart and 20 bucks and we’ll whistle our way right down Magnolia Lane! I go nearly every year to the Masters but I have yet to play there. I’m 58 so I’d better get cookin I guess.

Where do you play in LA? In the daytime I mean! I am at a real decent Crenshaw course on Lake Oconee called Cuscowilla (.com). Have a look.

Thanks for your help, you have improved my video.
Best Regards,
John Huff

John Huff
Lake Oconee Video Editing and Production
Eatonton, Georgia

[John Huff]

David,
Just read your profile, I’m way into golf all my life, Pat McGowan and his wife Bonnie and Bonnie’s family are old friends of mine, I remember now Pat came out of California.
John

Lake Oconee Video Editing and Production
Eatonton, Georgia

[John Huff]

David,
Thanks so much for your reply, every time you jot down a sentence or two, I learn something.

My previous question was actually asked in regard to pixel size, I was curious if I exported the SD sequence to MPEG-2 video in Compressor for burning to DVD for submission to the broadcast people, whether the video I would see on TV would be scrunched horizontally or vertically due to a difference in square vs. 1.33/1 pixels, similar to what exporting to NTSC video does to graphics like logos and things.

That having been said, I am MOST APPRECIATIVE of the answer you gave concerning image quality because you are exactly right, my image quality has suffered from doing it this way, and I was going to tackle that next.

My problem is that I live on a beautiful lake in rural Georgia, quite a ways from “civilization.” And I had been burning the SD sequence to a DVD because I was having trouble with the Print to Video command to my HV20 HDV mini-DV camcorder. I should be able to fix that.

Let me see if I understand first. (For broadcast at 4:3 on cable TV) Put the HD sequence in an SD sequence as we spoke before, scale it to crop off the sides, then export the SD sequence to an 8-bit uncompressed (Quicktime conversion) file and copy the output to a firewire hard drive, then take the drive to someone who can copy the file to digi-beta tape, then submit that tape to the broadcast people. Is that right? Sounds like it would improve the quality about 5 million per cent!

That sounds like something I could do to get the absolute best quality period, is that where you’re coming from there? But since my geographic location is a factor, what file format and codec could I export the SD sequence to for printing to mini-DV tape, that would give me the best possible quality (for mini-DV tape.) Could that be an acceptable way to go? Would it improve a little/a lot, over the DVD?

(It would make things a lot easier for me, however I haven’t had a chance to look into the associated costs of what you have suggested.)

Again, thanks much for your assistance.
Best Regards,
John

[John Huff]

David,
Regarding the last question, let me try to phrase it differently. Should the SD video on the DVD that I send, if played on a DVD player, look the same as it will look on TV when finally broadcast? That’s really my question.

That would be the only way I could do a test.

Thanks again, Happy Holidays,
John