How to keep a constant look through output...

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DVX100Shooter

Veteran
This is kinda piggybacking off the other thread..."why does the DVX100 footage look like home video". Now with me I have been shooting for over 13 years and I have the original DVX100. Now I shot a 4 minute feature on a rapper here in Philly (Here's the link to the video) http://www.sharkle.com/video/94852/

Well over the Thanksgiving weekend it aired on TV. My raw DVX100 footage looks good. I have a mixture of settings I play around with to acheive certain looks. I also set up my own lights for the shoot. All the shots were well composed as well. I Color Corrected everything once I was done the editing. I then burned the project to DVD and everything STILL looked good.

Now when I took the DVD to work (I work for a TV station), They have a DVD player already configured to dub to BetaSX ouput. When I played back that tape it looked like my project lossed 1-2 generations of quality!!!! In my opinion it looked dull on the air! Colors were not vivbrant as they were on the DVD. I noticed this also when I compressed and uploaded to the web. I don't think my project looked like a "Home Video" but the colors were just not as vivbrant as they were on the DVD.

What could I have done differently? Should I have gone straight from FCP to SX tape format?
 
Well... when you say it didn't look as good as when it was on the dvd, where were you watching it? on your monitor, on a regular television? on a plasma?
 
I have a 42 inch plasma here at home that I watched it on and it looked good. I also use a 26inch HDTV with DVI to edit with and it looked good on there as well. However when I watched it on the air over the weekend it looked dull to me. I felt the same when I uploaded it to the web too.
 
DVD as an intermediate is a bad idea, because it is so heavily compressed. It may look good on DVD, but then going from DVD to another media the results can be bad. Too many compression cycles in your workflow. Also, if the DVD was widescreen, some resizing may have happened going back to 4:3 on tape.

Stick to miniDV if your going to broadcast, and make sure it's 4:3 (letterbox it yourself if it's widescreen), since broadcast is 4:3. DVD should be the end of the line, not an intermediary step.
 
I see your point. But here at the TV station our format is BetaSX or SP tapes. Now we have made the transition to a non linear news room meaning they import the stuff we shoot into a server everyday. I've tried to go straight from my media to the server once before but it didnt work (but this transition is still new to many) so maybe I can look into that again sometime. Even if I brought my MiniDV deck to work, I would still have to convert it over to a tape if I cannot go FW right into their server.
 
a conversion process is fine...but compressing it to mpeg2 completely degrades the picture. bringing in your miniDV deck would eliminate this degradation.
 
mpg2 degrades quality?

thisi s how ive been burning dvds forever.

is there another better compression before going DVD out?
 
Well,

Mpeg2 is lossy. I believe DV spec is 25 Mbps. The MAX for a DVD (mpeg2) is 10 Mbps. So you've got to toss out 60% of your digital information minumum to even video on a DVD.

Going out from a DV camcorder over S-Video might even be better.

Of course my math may be faulty, in which case I am sure soemone will come along and correct it.
 
no perrone, your math is fine...

Papa, mpeg2 is the correct way to go for DVDs. But since the OP is broadcasting the video, then there is no reason to compress the project any further than the DV codec.
 
MPEG-2 is fine for DVD's... it's the only way for DVD's. It's a delivery format. Heavily lossy and intended as a final step, not an in-between.

DVX100shooter, that's what I meant, go from miniDV to Beta, using the best connector possible given the decks you have to work with. That will be light years better than going to DVD and back.
 
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