[John Leblanc]

Is 8 bit uncompressed better than DVC Pro HD?

[John Leblanc]

Thanks.

[John Leblanc]

Thanks. I see this tutorial for Mocha here:

https://www.wonderhowto.com/how-to/video/how-to-rotoscope-in-mocha-102634/view/

It looks like a solution, but unfortunately, I may be under time pressure to attempt to learn it in time, but thanks for the tip.

Isn’t there a way to use a pen tool in FCP to cut around the subject, and is that done in the canvas or viewer, in order to create a mask of some kind that will isolate the subject from the background? I realize it may not be clean, but if I had the ability to feather the edges of the mask/matte, it may suit my needs and turnaround time?

[John Leblanc]

That’s exactly what I see in my footage except it extends to dark colors as well. We do indeed black balance and it doesn’t help. So, then, are you thinking that this is compression in the DVC PRO HD codec only or compression in the camera across all codecs, because I see the same thing in DVC Pro 50 on this camera.

Can anyone speak to whether they see this in the next camera model up?

[John Leblanc]

I see it in DVC Pro 50 as well as DVC PRO HD 1080i (I haven’t tried 720p). It’s really weird because the noise definitely breeds in the darker areas of the frame. However, I see it in darks no matter what the color, whether it’s green or blue or black.

It’s almost as if there are two issues. There is a general grain that is minor compared to the noise in the darker areas.

To my eye, it looks like compression “noise” (although that’s not the correct term) along the lines of what you get when you export a QT movie from FCP using QT Conversion, and in some cases in that process you might see gradations of black in the converted file with noise living in some of those gradations. Like on your video’s fade outs to pure black and at that moment you see a jump in the compression noise.

I’m guessing this is a camera issue and not a codec issue because it seems to cut across at least two codecs. But why?

Has anyone looked at the recorded MXF files in a program other than FCP, like AVID? I just want to make sure this is not something that QT is doing to the file when it captures it straight from the P2 card into FCP. I don’t know if FCP simply wraps a QT wrapper around the MXF or whether it does any further compressing.