[Mikelinton]

Sorry, perhaps I wasn’t clear. If you are capturing footage with the Decklink card, its coming into Vegas in the Sony YUV Format. If your source material is DV, you’re going to capture it through firewire.

In other words, if you are using SP as acquisition in the field, capturing with Vegas to YUV (the only option you have), then do any kind of color correction, which will then require ANOTHER render using the YUV Codec, the footage starts to fall apart… Graphics completely fall apart… Regular video looks ok (because there is enough other information there), but so far my experience using generated media, graphics, animation etc. is the YUV codec just tears it apart – especially gradients, or solid colors. I was just playing around rendering DV to YUV, and then re-rendering it again and it seems my assumptions were correct. Albeit less obvious than graphics, there is a decline in subtle color details (banding, etc.) more so than rendering DV-DV. I haven

[Mikelinton]

Thanks Donatello… That’s pretty much my understanding of things… If 16,16,16 is 0ire, and the Decklink adds 7.5ire, then are we at 7.5ire from the Decklink. So, I guess where the confusion begins is with generated black media – I should be setting this to 16,16,16, and that should maintain the Studio RGB spec, and give me 7.5 ire on the Decklink. That makes sense… I just totally “brain fartted” on the whole 16,16,16 vs 0,0,0…

What was kinda buggerin’ me up, was from I could find on BMDs website – it says something about it being impossible to output ‘illegal’ signals, because of the 7.5 setup… and another article I read, relating to Final Cut said DON’T adjust black levels at all, as the Decklink will add 7.5 (or, because it’s Quicktime – is FCP working at 0-255, or 16-235?) So, not taking into account the fact Vegas’ black is actually below 0ire, that’s what was messing me up… I was thinking, for some dumb reason, it would essentailly ‘boost’ Vegas’ 0,0,0, RGB to 7.5 ire. But, actually it’s just boosting it to 0ire.

Okay… to recap… Assuming the black level in my captured footage reads around 16,16,16 RGB in Vegas (0ire with the Studio RGB switch on), then the Decklink is adding 7.5 – my footage should be great, rock solid everything is cool, black levels sitting at 7.5ire at the end. If I generate black media in Vegas, set its RGB values to 0,0,0, it should be 0ire on the Decklink… If I set the black levels in the generated media to 16,16,16 that should be 7.5ire on the Decklink… Okay, thanks… I’ve been confusing myself… what was throwing me off is, if black in the footage is 16,16,16, I was kinda thinking that would appear as closer to 15ire… I wasn’t thinking about the 16-0ire ‘offset’ so to speak… in the past, I’ve always color corrected manually, used the Broadcast Colors filter and not having the additional 7.5 setup – I was somehow thinking it would all end up brighter than it really is.

Man… long way to go for a drink of water… I’m still going to try and track down a Waveform monitor, and double check it…

Anyway, thanks for the help! Sorry about the long-rant…

Mike.

[Mikelinton]

Thanks Seth… Yah, I wish I had a waveform monitor – but like I said, I dumped it a few years back… I’m going to see if I can track one down. You are right, this is going out to BetaSP for broadcast – hence my confusion with the Dekclink adding 7.5ire to the mix. In the past, we’ve kept it all in DV format, then in the final mix to go out to BetaCAM we’ve adjusted levels to insure something close to within NTSC spec, before going to the deck. In effect, adding a 7.5 setup by boosting blacks, and making sure whites are within spec – if it was being dubbed (longer format stuff), from a pro DVCAM deck to BetaCAM we made sure to NOT mess with black levels, and use the ‘setup’ functionon the pro deck, to add 7.5 to keep things legal (of course, compressing our whites where need be)….

Anyway… thanks for the article link too – Its a good refresher…

I’ll let you know what I find out….

Cheers.

Mike

[Mikelinton]

I’ve found the best way is to dig… Banging on doors and cold calling works, as long as you have a good solid pitch, and you are banging on the right doors. Do the research first, know who you are calling, and call the right person in the organization. Make sure you talk to them, about them – don’t make it about yourself first off, be interested in what they are doing first – you’ll get a chance to tell them what you can do. Talk about benefits, and what an ad can do to help their business, put numbers to it if you can, use examples. Look for opportunities in the paper – companies that have recently celebrated anniversaries, or have released new products, opened new stores. The chamber is probably a good one too -anything that puts you shoulder-to-shoulder with people and businesses with money, and understand they have to spend it, to make it. Perhaps find out if you have an advertising organization/association in your area, and consider going to luncheons and meetings they might have. It’s a good way to meet ad agencies, and possible get work that way. It’s a never-ending uphill battle, you have to keep at it and not get discouraged when you’re told “no.” I still think finding and generating new leads is the best way to get new clients.

Hope that helps.

Michael Linton
Centric Productions
http://www.centricproductions.com