Another Problem with Reds

M

Mr.Durden

Member
Im trying to smooth my reds in FCP with color smoothing 4:1:1 and Nattress Chroma Smoother and it just doesent work. Its weird because when i apply any of the 2 filters it appears to do the smoothing, the RT preview shows reds that appear to be smooth, but as soon as I render it out, the blocky reds come back as if i had never applied the smoothing. Iv'e tried everything and the pixelated reds just dont go away. Am i missing something here?
 
Have to ask it, simply because it creeps up as a problem a lot around here, but post render blocky reds, where are they appearing blocky exactly? Are they blocky on your computer monitor or on a broadcast monitor? You need to make sure you're analyzing this kind of stuff on a broadcast monitor and not your computer screen.

cheers.
 
If you render to DV after smoothing your reds you're going to end up with blocky colors again. The DV codec throws away color information in parts of the image which gives it that blocky look. When you smooth the image you fill in those gaps - only to be thrown away again if you render to DV.
 
Varicam: I dont have a producion monitor, Im working on a 20" intel imac, and i know its not giving me an accurate image, but the blockyness is everywhere. I Shot a concert for a band, and the stage was full of red light, I had the Chroma level pritty low, but still allot of red, so the blockyness is all over the place.

Shaw:How would I go about smoothing the image if the DV codec is just going to block it up again?

Thanks for the help
 
As of problem 1:

Play out through your camera to a TV

As of problem 2

Render out a DV(CPRO) 50 and work with that

Gunleik
 
Render to a format better than DV, such as DVCPRO50, none (very very very big files), "uncompressed" (which is really compressed 4:2:2), etc.

2- Part of the problem is that apple's DV codec does a poor job of filtering and reconstruction.
 
Well i Tried rendering on a DVCPro50 timeline with the Chroma smoothing and it worked nicely. (are there any side efects to rendering DV in DVCpro50 aside from the File size?)

So in short the options are:

-If exporting to DV Tape, no option, your stuck in block city.
-If Exporting to DVD or Quicktime file, render in DVCPro or Uncompressed with a chroma smoother.
Is this the bottom line in FCP? ive read that Premier does a better job with reds in DV, is this true?

Anyway thanks for all your help, i had been hesitating to post this topic because there are allot of other posts about reds in FCP out there, but they mostly just say to apply chroma smoothing, which didnt work for me.
Sorry for the bevy of questions

Thanks again
 
There's an exersice in the ATPS book, Advanced Color Correction and... that covers doing just this with the 3-Way Color Corrector. I isolate reds to tone down with this method often, and always with great success. With the range limiting functions, you can isolate the reds you need to isolate, and tone them down to your hearts content.
 
Ok, ive been able to overcome this problem in a DVCPro50 environment, smoothing the chroma, and in a DV environment by desaturating the reds (although i cant get the vibrance i would like). But why is it that i keep on reading that premier pro deals with this problem on import, if its working with DV, using a DV codec, how can it eliminate this problem in a DV environment? what is premier pro doing that FCP cant?
 
Preimer Pro doesn't do anything to alter the footage on import, no NLE really does. Who ever told you PPro does this "automatically" is wrong. Where did you read this? I'd be very interested in see these sources.
 
On an NTSC monitor, both FCP and PPro should show the same. I just checked with two very experienced PPro users who say that they have no idea what this issue is about. But I suspect what y'all are seeing is the gamma difference between a Mac screen and a PC screen. Mac's are a much brighter gamma than PCs. That's the only difference I can come up with, as mechanically, PPro does nothing to the color of footage different from FCP.
 
Some codecs do chroma smoothing by default -- I believe Avid does, and FCP doesn't, for example. Perhaps Premiere's does?

When rendering back out to DV, any effect of chroma smoothing will disappear because DV is inherently 4:1:1 and so any blurred chroma will be re-decimated back to 4:1:1.
 
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