Fades and Vignette look AWFUL on an HD tv

[ToddWayne_AZ]

Hey all you AE peeps! Editing an interview I shot against a greenscreen and two problems have emerged...let's take the vignette problem first.

The footage was shot on my HVX-200 at 720/30PN and I'm doing all the editing in After Effects. You can see in the still below that I've added a vingnette that is especially prominent in the corners. I want the vignette throughout the entire interview and it looks okay here. And when I burned a test dvd and played it on my SD tv it looks fine, but on my sister's HD tv it looks hideous! Not just "different" but truly awful. The vignette looks like a big, dark, blocky, hard-edged ring around the edge of the frame. And it's especially bad during the fades and transitions.

My first guess is that there are some settings in AE that I need to be aware of regarding playback on a big HD screen. But then I got to thinking maybe my method of getting the vignette is problematic and could be better achieved in some other way.

Here's how I added the vignette:
1 Added a new black solid layer
2 Used elliptical mask tool and subtracted it
3 feathered the mask about 200 pixels
4 adjusted the mask expansion upward about 60 pixels until I got the vignette I was looking for.

Someone here must've encountered this problem before. Any thoughts or ideas would be so appreciated.

[William_Robinette]

How are you burning to DVD? Might be your MPEG-2 encode settings. And how are you getting footage (encoding) out of AE?

I have made vignettes the exact same way and they come out fine on HDTVs from SD DVD.

[ToddWayne_AZ]

William,

Oh man! Hadn't even thought of that!

My render settings out of AE are:

Quality - Best
Res - Full
Format - Quicktime Movie
Compression Type - Animation
Depth - Millions of Colors +

Maybe something to do with my Compression type, huh? What setting do you use?

Here's the thing I just thought of...I'm using iDVD to burn the dvd, NOT DVD Studio Pro, which has given me problems before. Maybe it's using a lower grade (?) of compression or something when it encodes my file?


Maybe something to do with my Compression type, huh?

[ProfessorU]

Compression would cause banding. Use a multi-pass VBR, it should be very effective on shots that are mostly still. The other thing that you're up against is that you're mimicing an analog curve (vingette) with a linear effect. Try changing your layer to darken, burn, multiply or something else you like. During fades and when light things move into the darker area it will seem more organic.
Working the fades in a 32-bit color space will also help.

Somebody should have hit that guy with the dulling spray before they backlit him. ;)

[William_Robinette]

Well, QT Animation is a solid codec to work with. I export with that out of AE almost all the time. Just make sure your quality slider is all the way up to "Best".

After that, unfortunately I don't have any experience with iDVD, but bad MPEG compression is definitely where I would be looking for a problem in your workflow.

[kai]

Also, if you're noticing strong banding, try adding a very slight noise to the layer... like 1-2%.

[ToddWayne_AZ]

Huge thanks everyone.

Jon, a question: You say use a 32-bit color space when working the fades...can you elaborate? Is that a comp setting that can be easily changed?

Thanks again.

[Gary Parkinson]

I've had that same problem in the past as well, it is pretty annoying especially when it looks different on another monitor.
We used to do a lot of work in 10bit Digi Beta, gradients like those vignettes seemed a lot nicer in 10bit as opposed to the 8 bit DVCpro codec we use now.

Must be that little bit better.

[Matt Grunau]

Is there any way you can do a firewire video preview on the HD tv from After Effects?

If you try what has been suggested above and then do a video preview from AE on that HD tv, it will isolate the problem exactly.

you may not be able to, but it would help. Working in 16 or 32 bit workspace (in the File>Color Properties [or something like that]) will also really help.

What also may help is not using red, and using an animated background. Nothing fancy, just something with a little movement. I can send you some cool background stuff that you can apply a color layer over and drop the opacity. That way, it is not overwhelming, but still more dynamic.

[Jim Montgomery]

Just change your project settings to 16 bit or 32 bit. Go to your project window, along the bottom you will see 8bpc. I think if you Alt click on it it will change to 16 then 32 then back to 8 and so on.

[ToddWayne_AZ]

Matt, Jim,

Thanks, I was indeed working in 8bpc. I upped it to 16 and 32bpc, rendered at 10-bit uncompressed, burned a short segment to dvd and checked. Sure enough in 32bpc the vignette looks FANTASTIC on a big 50 inch HD screen! Also, I changed the transfer mode to darken as Jon suggested.

The only problem now is that by going to 32bpc, the key looks really funky. Tons of edge problems. I'm using Keylight and a matte choker. The matt choker is unsupported in 32, so I had to turn it off and try to work with JUST the Keylight settings. The key simply does not look as good in 32 as in 16...SO, I'm thinking I'll pull the key in 16bpc, render 10-bit uncompressed, then come back over the top with all my fades and vignette at 32bpc. Kind of a long workaround, but oh well.

Matt, feel free to send any backdrop you want...PM me and I'll give you my email. The red was just sort of a placeholder while I tried to decide on a background.

Thanks again everybody for your tips...they're a huge help!

[tcindie]

I personally prefer classic color burn for vignettes, it seems to be a little more aesthetically pleasing, and definitely working in 32bit color space is the way to go, especially if the project is destined for an HD display.

Keylight should work in 32bit color space, and it should be perfectly capable of pulling a good key on its own

[josh townsend]

yeah your gonna have to rekey when you go 32bit. Happened to me also. More color info.

[ToddWayne_AZ]

Yeah, spent some time this morning trying to pull a good key in 32bpc, but I still have edge problems. My matte view looks good, but when I view the final output there's a weird halo thing happening. I'm sure I'll get there eventually...send along any hints that you have, I sure appreciate all the tips.

[Arson]

your sisters HDtv is upressing the DVD from SD to HD to fit your screen. Some TVs use older chips and do a worse job than others.