Intermediate Codec?

pmark23

Veteran
We're experimenting/preparing for a future project which will be shot with chiaroscuro lighting on a DVX100A PAL.

The noise in the dark parts of the picture (caused by the DVX) is undesirable, so we'll be shooting with a much higher level of lighting, and then dropping ("curving"?) it down in post (much like as it's done in film production.)

There is also going to be a lot of saturated reds, and quite a bit of colour correction. We need as much colour headroom/bandwidth/leeway as possible, and any changes we make should stay changed -- not mussed-up by the codec.

DV can't handle these requirements. What intermediate codecs can be used within Vegas which will allow more contrast and colour-information to be stored/manipulated?

Final format is not yet determined, but will not be DV.
 
I'd try the free DVCPro-50 Codec available for download from the Matrox site.
Barry_Green posted a link to it recently. I think it's even in the Vegas forum here.

If you spend $$ you could probably get a Wavelet based codec but I'm not even sure about that.
 
The DVCPro-50 codec is on my "try out" list.

I looked at some of the newer wavelet codecs, but they all appear to be for final output.

Currently the PAL footage I'm working with is 4:2:0. DVCPro50 is 4:2:2. Are there any 4:4:4 codecs for Vegas yet?

How does Vegas process colour information? Maybe it's not necessary to use an intermediate codec if we're staying in Vegas and outputting to a higher format? Anyone know?
 
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