I'm not going to broadcast with my film, and adjusting the levels of the blacks and whites, especially the blacks tends to wash out some of the clips....my question is, if it degrades the quality of the picture too much and causes it to wash out the image, is it at all important to have the blacks above 0?
blacks below 0 Ire, does it really matter for professional DVD?
- Thread starter Paunch
- Start date
Zak Forsman
Major Contributor
it's okay to crush the blacks below 0. that being said, setting your blacks at 0, they should look black. not grey or washed out. is your monitor calibrated correctly? it could be giving you a false read on the image.
Zak Forsman
Major Contributor
oops wait. i see you used the word "professional". if you want to press and distribute DVDs (not DVD-Rs) then you have to provide a broadcast legal master to the authoring house. you can still crush the blacks but you need to legalize it by clipping the black signal for anything that dips below 0. Color can do this.
Shooter
Veteran
My point was: if he is "washing" out the whole image when he is only intending to lift the black level, he is using the wrong tool or the wrong part of the tool to do it.
There are controls for all parts of the image and an adjustment to Black Level should leave Gamma and Highlights alone.
Paunch: What tool are you using and what did you do with it?
BTW: All Levels should be made "legal" for outputing to whatever so that you get consistent results to a known standard.
heres the thing, when i read the waveform monitor, some of the clips have black levels that go below 0 IRE, if this is the case then I increase the "levels" of the black output which in essence moves the black levels above the 0 IRE level....but some of the clips are pretty dark and increasing the blacks too much to attain a minimum black level of 0 IRE level can end up making the footage grainy....so does that even matter at all?
I've heard that having the blacks at -8 IRE doesn't really matter and won't cause any issues like those that will occur when having the white levels above 100IRE (ie clipping).....
paunch
I've heard that having the blacks at -8 IRE doesn't really matter and won't cause any issues like those that will occur when having the white levels above 100IRE (ie clipping).....
paunch
Shooter
Veteran
Try changing Black Levels using the INPUT control.
Using the output is just "digging into" tones that have no information and hence the grain (actually its "noise" not grain) is produced.
BTW - if you are in a NTSC world you may need to have the 7.5% IRE Set up turned on for your waveform monitor. This would probably bring your blacks into line.
Using the output is just "digging into" tones that have no information and hence the grain (actually its "noise" not grain) is produced.
BTW - if you are in a NTSC world you may need to have the 7.5% IRE Set up turned on for your waveform monitor. This would probably bring your blacks into line.
MikeGunter
Well-known member
Hi,
Well, there's reasons for what you're hearing that have to do broadcast specification. The FCC requires the IRE fall between 7.5 and 100 in the USA.
That's pretty clear - not 7.4, not 100.1, not if you or I like it more or less, washed out or washed in. It's mandated by law.:evil:
What more can come of it is a matter of what you will do with the content. If it will go into general distribution - that is wide general distribution, you would likely want it to be fairly close to NTSC standards, at least in the near future. Older TV sets (and you can't be certainly what your market will have) can give unpredictable results with out-of-standard signals.
Don't add setup in your NLE if you're shooting digital. That's for analog signal ingesting. Often that will output a black pedestal of 16 IRE which would really give a truly washed out look.
As mentioned, how you adjust your pedestal will make a tremendous difference in how blacks and colors will hold up. Of the NLE color tools I've used, Edius's has had the easiest to use. It's color adjustments were just one button. Premiere's isn't bad, the new CS3's Levels and Curves are actually the best ever.
if I have a clip and the levels in my waveform monitor are showing below 0 IRE increasing the black output level actually raises the black level, increasing the black input level decreases the black level and pushes it further below the IRE level of the original clip.