[Mike James]

I used the THX video setup routine from a Monster’s Inc. DVD and got the monitor looking nice. This seems to be 75% of my problem.

Thanks for your help Simon!

Mike

[Mike James]

Hi David,

You are my Hero.

I got the monitor calibrated as much as possible using the THX process on my granddaughter’s Monster’s Inc. DVD. I had to crank the brightness and sharpness way down, among other changes.

The whole problem with the pixel distortions went away. Areas of solid colors are nice and smooth now. Amazing.

I’ve been looking at a FCP tutorial on color correction for broadcast on the Lynda.com site. It’s been very helpful teaching me about software scopes and how to use them properly. I’ve got similar scopes in Vegas, and I’ve found that they are available as plug ins for After Effects.

The vertical blur was a nice tip.

So anyway, unless you have any more ideas for me, I want to thank you for your generousity and time. I’ll make sure that the karma heads back your way.

Best regards,

Mike

[Mike James]

Hi Simon,

Thanks – I think I’m halfway there. It still looks a little contrasty. I’ll keep plugging away.

Mike

[Mike James]

Hello again,

I’m using H.264, QT MPEG, Xvid and a few others.

I think you’re absolutely right about calibrating the monitor. This is my challenge for the next 24 hours: learn how to set up an LCD video monitor.

Your horizontal Gaussian blur is a great idea. I will try this.

I am also seeing that a nice 1920×1080 digital still does not necessarily make a nice 1920×1080 video still. You can see every pixel — and if there are any jpeg artifacts, they jump out at you. I’ve got to start with a much higher resolution image and let After Effects decide how to scale it down so it looks smooth.

Thanks.

Mike

[Mike James]

Thanks David.

The stills are usually twice as big as the target video res.- sometimes a lot bigger.

I’m seeing the problems even when I’m looking at stills from PS using the Xena card, so the codec really isn’t the problem (I think). However, I have a fast enough machine (8 cores, 16GB RAM) where I can watch uncompressed video. Same problems.

The resulting video image is overly bright, overly saturated, and the slightest jpeg noise (undetectable on the PC) looks like a gravel road.

I’m also seeing a lot of new edges in high contrast areas — dark banding.

I’ve tried lowering the contrast, the saturation and the brightness. This helps a bit, but the noise is still there. I applied a slight Gaussian blur to the image to help with the noise but the picture gets too soft — nothing like the beautiful PC version I’m getting.

M

[Mike James]

I’m taking digital camera stills, cleaning them up in PhotoShop, then animating them in After Effects. I use Sony Vegas to sequence the clips into longer pieces.

I’m seeing the same crappy video output in PS, AE and Vegas.

[Mike James]

I’ve been scouring the Cow trying to find someone who knows about this pretend computer-land video to real broadcast video video business. Please don’t send me away when I finally found experts who know the Answer!

PS. No I don’t use Premiere Pro… 🙂

[Mike James]

I may not be a young person (56) but I am certainly a knucklehead when it comes to understanding how to convert my beautiful Photoshopped photos into real video out (through an AJA Xena card) and making it look like real video.

What I’m getting now are blown out images and exaggerated jpeg artifacts instead of the beautiful sequences I’m so lovingly crafting on my PC.

What techniques are involved in getting digital camera images to look good on an honest-to-goodness video monitor? If this is too complicated to explain then please point me to a web page or book.

Thanks,

Mike

[Mike James]

This presentation will be run on an Omnivex system. Their techs say that the sliced up videos should work better than one big piece, however I’m sending full 8196 tests and 1366 video sets to see what works best in reality.

Any idea what codec would be best? This will be played back on a multicore XP machine with fast HDs and Matrox cards.

Thanks,

Mike

[Mike James]

Thanks Dave,

I can see how this will eliminate the individual crop settings and that’s the real PITA part.

I’ll give it a try and let you know how it goes.

Mike