Pixelated Reds

M

Mike Caffrey

Member
I'm a bit new to this and I've ordered the Barry Green book, but it hasn't arrived yet.

In the mean time, I'm having trouble getting good images indoors becuase the reds are showing up extremely pixelated.

I tweaked teh scened file settings and got a great looking image through the LCD. I didn't notice any pixelation when shooting, but it looks a bit like a bad you tube video, especially the reds, on playback.

My first first though was that I pushed setting too far. Since then I've expereimented with factory settings and adjusting all fo them one at a time while watching the LC and also though a computer monitor with a FW cable and nothing i do gets rid of the pixelated reds.

I've experemented with low, meduim and high levels of light too. I've got a UV filter (after advice from a few people here) and I didn't think to test it without.

So far, in about 6 hours of shooting with two brand ne cameras, I've havent' een able to get a single great image - although everything besides the reds has looked great.

Any ideas on what's wrong? I suspect it's probably a very basic mistake.
 
I should add that the first stuff I shot was with progressive on, probably 30p, bu I've had the same problem with progressive off.

I've been loading it in to FCP via FW, and while i'm pretty good with editing, I may have captured wrong.

When you come out into FCP the camera is converting to 60i, right? I've tried setting the timeline differently, but I still have the same problem. Even though I've done some experimentation, I woulnd't rule out a bad trnasfer setting.
 
This is inherent to MiniDV. It sucks.

Use the 4:1:1 color smoothing filter in FCP (or whatever editor you use.)
 
To decrease the pixelated effect caused by the limited red bandwidth of minidv, I've found that once I get the image into post that if I desaturate the red channel by about 20-30%, darken it a bit and change the hue to more of an orange color that I can get away with the color still looking red but not having the reds pop out at you like the ruby slippers in the Wizard of Oz.

While I don't know the FCP equivilant, Magic Bullet has a great deartifacter filter that if set to 4:1:1 (DV, HDV) can smooth out the jaggies around the artifacts (and provide an overall smoother look to your image). The downside is it is very very taxing on export speed. It increases my export time by about a 6:1 ratio so I use it only on final passes.
 
Yeah, MiniDV just doesn't like red. That's pretty much all there is about it. It has to do with what wjm mentioned earlier with the fact that MiniDV has a low color sample rate of 4:1:1. With something that low, red is a color that really taxes the format.

Other colors can do the same thing although not as bad. Real bright, pure blue kinda does the same thing (though most types of blue you see don't pose a problem).

That's why my professor told me that when choosing costuming, when working with MiniDV, you really have to be aware of what are your "safe colors." She said avoid red at all costs. Avoid the really bright blues.

She also said that whites are bad because it'll overexpose easily compared to the rest of the scene if you're in a bright environment (for example outdoors on a sunny day).

Also blacks don't come out too well because depending on your settings, you'll either lose detail as all the different shades of black you see with your eye will just look like a dark black hole OR you'll pick up noise in it.

Wow, so that cuts out red, blue, white and black. That's a lot of clothing! Basically more neutral colors, earthy tones, pastels, tend to turn out better on MiniDV. That could also lead to a drab looking image if that's your entire film's color scheme (which depending on the story, maybe what you want) so it's okay to insert some lively color here and there. Just don't over do it and try to recreate that red autumn fight scene in Hero or something.
 
I brought my camera back to the place i bought it and the checked it out and there don't seem to be any problems with it. So it seems like it's a problem during FCP capture.

It's possible that I may have set something wrong, but I was pretty careful. I'm going to try again tonight.

They had a theory that if I exported they compression would add some bluring, or if I out putted back the the tape in the camera and played it off the tape on a monitor through the regular video outs there'd be no problem.

This was a very true red and very saturated. The loaded in some of my captured video (I didn't have the tape with me) and did something in FCP (blurred?) by two pixels on teh red channel and it looked much better.

Does this point to anything beyond the nature of mini DV?
 
Yeah. Like seriously, red does not show up well at all in miniDV. Not even "das wunderkid" DVX can solve that.
 
Actually its inherant in all DV. But the larger number of pixels the smaller it becomes.
 
Soluiton?

Soluiton?

When I had this problem, I was shooting indoors and there wasn't much light. I used a couple of light panels lights and used teh darkest orange/red gels to make it look natural. That was probably really saturating the reds.

Suppose I used no gels or the blue ones and wen the oppostie diretion and then corrected it with the white balance in the camera? Do you think this will solve the problem? Will it create any new ones?

Am I suggesting a method that's more fundamentally correct in the first place?

Is the white balance at the CCD or post CCD?
 
You want to avoid having the camera record saturated reds to the tape. That means that "correcting" the white balance in the camera (to restore the reds) will not solve your problem. Having the camera desaturate the colors, and then boosting saturation in post, should help.
 
iain.bason said:
You want to avoid having the camera record saturated reds to the tape. That means that "correcting" the white balance in the camera (to restore the reds) will not solve your problem. Having the camera desaturate the colors, and then boosting saturation in post, should help.
Click to expand...


WHile that will help some, the jagged edges can still appear. Everyone, please look up the words "CHROMA BLUR" as this is a very simple solution to all of this, and most NLE's today have this feature. This question has been asked to death and has a very simple solution to be done in post.
 
I recorded a mini dv tape that only plays in the deck for two seconds then goes to black. A magnetic issue? However, it will play normal in the camera.
 
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