Looking bad on television

M

Merlin90

New member
As a beginner with a DVX, I amlooking for some expert advice to get me going. I recently purchased my DVX100, looked through the manual for some basic operational guidance then went to shoot a youth football game.

I shot at 30fps because the manual said the images would be the sharpest. While shooting, the 1/8 flashed on my screen so I put the filter on 1/8 the it flashed 1/64 so I hit that switch and it stopped flashing. No problemas the sun was setting. I shot on auto everything and finished the game.

I did a basic capture with iMovie and burnt the DVD for the coaches with iDVD (I actually use Final Cut Studio Suite to edit). I then played it on a normal tv and the quality and sharpness was horrible! The sidelines and endzones looked like I zoomed in on a photo too much if you know what I mean (jagged edges). Anyway, a little push in the right direction while I educate myself would be appreciated.
 
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Can you post up some screen grabs or footage.

I think your problem is that you shot with 30p. For me the best frame rate is either 24p or 60i.

If you notice jaggy edges then I think you didn't encode properly.
 
the problem is iDVD. it's encoding sucks. for that matter, dvd studio pro's encoding sucks. a program such as compressor must be used to encode in high quality for dvd.

try viewing the footage thru the tv directly from the cam. huge difference.
 
Thanks for the quick replies. You already have me thinking.

So when capturing the video off tape in Final Cut Pro I used normal capturing procedures. But when encoding it to DVD then I mess with Compressor to make the image look the sharpest? Any tips on making it look like HD quality like changing something to 1080 when I capture off tape or compress it for DVD?

By the way Galvin, nice 2008 Reel on Vimeo!
 
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Hey Fisher nice demo, I saw in your demo that you worked with Valy! Was that all shot on a dvx100? (sorry to hijack the thread). Back to the question.

Merlin if you want the DVX to look at little more like HD look at the software by Red Giant called Instant HD it does a pretty good job of up converting your footage. You won't get the results your after in Compressor.
 
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I then played it on a normal tv and the quality and sharpness was horrible!
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Define "normal TV". I find that trying to watch SD video from these cameras played back on an HDTV (which many people are using these days as their "normal" TV) just does not look nearly as good as it will on a good SD CRT set.
 
I think your problem is that you shot with 30p. For me the best frame rate is either 24p or 60i.
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This brings up another issue. You say you shot at 30 fps, but was it 30i, or 30p? For sports, I'd recommend sticking with 30i.
 
manymoosh said:
Hey Fisher nice demo, I saw in your demo that you worked with Valy! Was that all shot on a dvx100?
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you know valy? ya i shot 3 videos for him. all shot on hvx200 with the redrock. i heard he sold out the kodak theater recently. crazy. i never heard of him.....
 
Checked out Instant HD and it looks pretty nice. It's good someone has tried it out and liked it. Thanks for the tip.
 
Jim Simon said:
This brings up another issue. You say you shot at 30 fps, but was it 30i, or 30p? For sports, I'd recommend sticking with 30i.
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It was 30p and the only reason I did was because the owner's manual said it produced the "highest quality video." Still don't know if that's true, but you're not the first person to tell me that 30i or 24p is better.
 
you know valy? ya i shot 3 videos for him. all shot on hvx200 with the redrock. i heard he sold out the kodak theater recently. crazy. i never heard of him.....
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Cheez, I don't know him personally but yeah, he's very popular in the Afghan and Persian community. Everyone I know comments on how pro his music videos are, so congrats.

Checked out Instant HD and it looks pretty nice. It's good someone has tried it out and liked it. Thanks for the tip.
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Merlin, no problem. Instant HD is nice because its easy to use and does a fairly good job, but it won't give you the crisp HD look that comes from recording from an HD camera. However, it does yield descent results. I would suggest getting it only if your projecting your shots on a HD LCD or Plasma tv, otherwise if its being viewed on a SD tv set don't bother. Hope that helps.

All the best,

manymoosh
 
correction 30i is not a format on the dvx its 60i thats when progressive is turned off
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The long hand specification is properly listed as 480i/30. Vertical resolution, followed by the interlaced or progressive designation, a slash and then frame rate (never fields). It can also be 480p/24.

If the shorthand version for the later is 24p, then the proper shorthand version for the former is 30i. I know a lot of people use 60i, but I feel that is incorrect and should be moved away from. List frame rate only, never fields.
 
Have you all looked at upscalers for DV to HD? I've heard that they usually are all pretty good. There was a movie a few years back that was shot in 100, and they scaled it straight to film 2k. Looked pretty good.
 
Progressive, upscaling and encoding

Progressive, upscaling and encoding

Hi Merlin and others

For what it's worth, I'll add a few thoughts here. There is some pretty good advice so far and I'm only speaking from my experiences AND I'm in the UK which means I work in PAL (25 frames per sec and have the option of interlaced or progressive).

So with that in mind, if I were shooting a football game, I would shoot it progressive as I always want my footage to have the feeling of film as near possible. I would also look at the shutter speed for shooting as a faster shutter will 'freeze' a frame of action more than a slower shutter. It depends on the feeling you're after. Progressive is sharp, it's just different from interlaced which for me always feels like 'reality' video.

Upscaling...A thorny one this. Why do you want to upscale to HD if you're only going out to SD DVD?

I shoot on an original DVX100 (no A or B), which doesn't shoot a full frame 16:9 image - it only letterboxes the image inside a 4:3 frame which of course means less pixels being used and no in camera upscaling to an anamorphic image. All I want to do is output to SD anamorphic full height 16:9! I've looked into Instant HD (which frankly is no better than scaling in After Effects despite the claim) and also PhotoZoom Pro, which is a long way round as it's meant for stills enlargement. You have to output a sequence of still images and then batch process which takes a while on a few thousand piccies.

My tried and tested way of dealing with this is to import my letterboxed movie into After Effects (either as an edit or completed exported movie, scale it by 134%, apply an adjustment layer above the movie with which I apply a sharpen filter or unsharp mask filter. I shoot with detail turned down to -4 on my camera. Alll of which means I'm sharpening the scaled remapped pixels (slightly) and not the original pixels in the imported image. There is more appropriate software for doing this now, but it only works with the latest After Effects and FCP.

Encoding...I gave up on Compressor ages ago and bought a license for BitVice from Innobits. It's way superior to anything I've managed to squeeze out of Compressor. It's a dedicated Mpeg2 compression system and works every time - very clean and easy to use, well worth the extra spend. You need Compressor as well to output suitable audio as BitVice only deals with the picture.

Hope this is some help.

Gary

For examples of my work go to:

http://www.assemblageproduction.co.uk

and

http://www.assemblageproduction.co.uk/eura/rome_conferencefilm
 
noloc45 said:
Interlaced? I thought interlaced video was BAAAAD for sports?
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Many sports are shot in 60i. Some of the newer HD cameras are utilizing 30p, but in general it has always been 60i. 60i looks great live, that's what really gives it the "live" feel, but it's not so good for replaying footage. Many replay systems are going to a 30p or 60p system for smoother looking still shots & slow mo's.

For HD purposes though, 720 30p & 60p are definitely they way to go for sports.
 
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cheezweezl said:
the problem is iDVD. it's encoding sucks. for that matter, dvd studio pro's encoding sucks. a program such as compressor must be used to encode in high quality for dvd.

try viewing the footage thru the tv directly from the cam. huge difference.
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Since when. I used iDVD for encoding all the time. Prefer it over DVD Studio Pro actually and I've never had a problem. Frankly DVD Studio Pro should be more like iDVD only with extra options. On my first DVD I ever made you could import into DVDSP from iDVD. The DVD was awesome. I don't know why Apple ever took that ability away. So I doubt it's the encoding.

-Nate
 
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