[Owen Rr]

Thanks to everyone for the advice. I seem to have partly resolved our problem to do with colour although I’m not really sure why this has happened. I have pursued a solution using my Mac at home and this is the process that seems to have sorted the problem;

TGA sequence into Quicktime Pro export using – 10 bit uncompressed 4:2:2 codec.
Uncompressed quicktime into FCP, export using Compressor using highest possible setting for DVD playback.

I’ve tried endless combinations with many different applications and codecs all resulting in a picture that is too dark and too high contrast. Does anyone know of a good reason why this route above should work over any other, I’d like to know whether this is a result I can replicate on PC or whether a Mac is going to be the way to go. I have noticed that the uncompressed codec I used isn’t available in the PC version of QT Pro.

Thanks

[Owen Rr]

Charles, I think you’re probably right, I’m going to go and test this on some other players and see what results I get.

[Owen Rr]

Is that an option in Procoder? It seems as though setting keys for compression settings isn’t available at least in the demo I’ve been using.

[Owen Rr]

Ok I’m hoping someone will know the answer to this, and hopefully this isn’t too off topic, not really to do with compression but more the display I’m using for my compressed material. I stated in the above posts what I’m viewing my m2v’s on, in my frustration I tried adjusting the output signals from the DVD player which was initially set to SCART RGB, I changed it to component signal, still through the SCART cable, and the picture quality was noticeably better. I wanted to know why this is? Is the component signal not true PAL, ie square pixels? I’m a little out of my depth in this area so any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[Owen Rr]

I don’t get a massive difference using the YUV codec, I’m going to look into Episode and Bitvice as we may switch to compositing and editing purely on a Mac. I think the source footage is probably quite challenging, high contrast, fast motion but I wasn’t expecting to encounter such difficulties. I’ll keep experimenting and keep you posted if I discover anything new. Thanks again.

[Owen Rr]

Thanks for the speedy reply, I was just choosing to use no compression the “none” option in the drop down list. Can you recommend a YUV 8 Bit codec? I have an AJA ‘2vuy’ aka Uncompressed 8-bit 4:2:2 although no other YUV 8 bit codecs. In regard to filtering, my source material looks fine in the preview windows but as I said before it’s desaturated and has artifacts when compressed. Is the application of filters a process of going back and forth between applying a filter, compressing and then correcting until one gets the desired result? If so the preview window for filters seems somewhat redundant. I don’t know if this helps but we currently view our m2v’s on DVD on a 32″ Sony Bravia LCD screen, the input being a SCART lead from the DVD player. It is generally a similar setup to what we would assume our clients to be using, most of our work on DVD being sent to ad agencies as either showreels or previews of projects.
We used to use premiere and mainconcept, however I’m still only using a demo version of Procoder as my current task is to try and solve this ongoing compression problem by finding an encoder we can work with, I don’t think that should make any difference but if anyone knows of any limitation other than the watermark it would be handy to know. Once again any help greatly appreciated and many thanks for your advice Charles.