Report on working with Xpress Pro 4.3.1

W

WindSandStars

Member
I would like to start a discussion on working with progressive film material (24p or 25p) in XPress Pro.

I use a PAL DVX 100 and Avid Xpress Pro 4.3.1 on a Windows XP System without Avid Mojo.

(1) Flicker in Avid XPress Pro on 25p ;D

Very much "flicker" of my captured material in Avid XPress Pro made me a hard time and drove me crazy. At the beginning I thought it was due to the setup of the camera, like "V Detail Freq" with the "thick" or "thin" vertical resolution. But this was all bullshit... Avid just forgot to include the progressive format file as discussed in this forum. I loaded this file to the Avid directory and captured all film material again with the "DV25p" option. Beautiful results, no flicker... Really getting close to cinestyle look...
So if you have problems with flicker don’t look for the camera setup in first place, look if your DV25p option in Avid is present.

(2) There is still a problem left to me: No WYSIWYG in Avid XPress Pro! :eek:

I fight with a WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) problem in Avid XPress Pro! When start viewing your film material in editing mode (by pressing the spacebar) Xpress performs a colour enhancement and the film material becomes somehow darker and more colourful compared to the still picture in the composer. The running film material looks very good as intended. The still image in the composer window has lower colours.
When I export the material to a DV Stream, Quicktime, AVI, etc. it looses colours and gets more close to the colour setting of the still (not animated) image in the composer. I tried a lot of settings in the export dialog boxes, like uncompressed video, Quicktime Reference export, RGB Palette against 601, etc. No way… There is a problem…
I just want the same look of the film material after export, as it runs in XPress Pro during editing. But this does not work! No WYSIWYG!

(3) Depth of Field (DOF) with DVX 100 and Avid XPress Pro. ;D

I am looking for very nice DOF shots when making close ups etc.

When I bought the DVX camera I thought I would not get any DOF. But I was wrong. The DVX produces a nice DOF, when setting up the scene properly and find the right settings of the camera. (Well I was expecting no DOF at all…)

I was also testing the Mini35 adaptor from “P&S Technic” to use 35 mm film lenses and film equipment or just foto lenses from Nikon, Canon EF, Panavision, Leica R, ZeissContax with this adoptor etc. Very good results!

But now I don’t think I will purchase the Mini35 Adaptor. Instead I will use the DOF of the DVX and try DOF enhancement work in post. My idea is to use Key Effects as described in the effect guide starting with page 236… The manual for Boris fx also shows an example in the tutorial with some flowers and a changes in the background. Unfortunately XPress Pro comes with the Lite Version of Boris FX and important features are missing to use it.

Has someone experience how to achieve DOF in post?
 
Re: Report on working with Xpress Pro 4.3.1

1.) Correct. If you want to keep everyhting progressive for all effects, renders, etc, you need to be in a 25p project. All renders will then be performed at 1/25th of second instead of 1/50th.

2.) That is not an Avid issue. The difference in color, gamma, brightness between a pause and play is due to the video overlay controls of the graphics card. You can "eyeball" this by going to the display settings, advanced, etc. and tweak the overlay playback to match the pause playback of the image. BUT... this does not mean that what you see then is correct either. All serious color correction needs to be done on a client monitor that is also properly callibrated. There are a couple things you can do. Use "Video Essentials" to callibrate the client monitor. There may very well be a PAL version or equivalent for you to use. Go to:
http://www.videoessentials.com/
You can also callibrate the computer monitor to a know standard - I use the Monaco Color Callibration system. This will correct the base state of the compyter mnonitor. Essential for Photoshop work etc. Go to:
http://www.monacosys.com/

Even when these have been done, there will still be a difference when hitting play becuase none of these systems actually callibrate the video overlay of the graphics card which is active when video is playing.

3.) Depth of field is a tricky issue. There are software plug-ins that can simulate sich things, but unless you have Z space metadata (depth) it is very tricky if the image has 3 or more planes of interest. A simple foreground/background can be done if the foreground object is easy enough to separate, but there could be tracking, etc. involved. I would work the DVX100 as much as possible to have the best results. I also don;t find the common blurs best simulate out of focus as in "circle of confusion" - those nice lights at night when out of focus make nice round overlapping circles.. not posible with gaussian and similar type blurs...

Michael
 
Re: Report on working with Xpress Pro 4.3.1

Dear Michael,

Thank you for your reply. You provide very valuable information.

I was not aware of the monitor calibrating requirements to receive a “what you see is what you get” on colour correction. I just looked up your links and found also for PAL systems adequate information and software on calibrating colours. I will try it.

I shot with my DVX 100 in standard 4:3 mode. Like Nancy Schreiber on the set of “November” I marked on the DVX 100 LCD display the 16:9 borders and tried to shot the pictures to be in both formats.

All post work with Avid XPress Pro is done in 4x3 format.

I want to export the final movie to a 16x9 format to be shown on University Cinemas and small private cinemas. Mostly they use projectors like the D-ILA Projector JVC-SX21. Therefore I provide a DVD.

On the other hand I have the option to show my current project on a German television and hopefully sell some DVD’s. For this purpose I want to export the 4x3 format.

As far as I see all my colour correction work seems to be garbage because it refers to a bad setup monitor. Now, I am a little bit afraid to set up a WYSIWYG editing system with a exact colour calibration. How do I get a good result for my export purposes? Do I need also a projector as a reference system?

:)-[ Oh man… this turns out to be a big challenge!)
 
Re: Report on working with Xpress Pro 4.3.1

Dear Michael,

To use a Colour Calibration system seems definitely a requirement and the way to go to receive accurate colours. ;D

I just ordered the MonacoOPTIXXR Pro Edition in Europe. Well I think the monitor calibrating issue is solved with these hardware and software calibrating system.

Are projectors and broadcast television systems also calibrated to standard colours? Is the European Colour Standard equal to the US-Standard?

Another question: Is there a quality difference between Apple and Windows XP systems?
 
Re: Report on working with Xpress Pro 4.3.1

Now you are opening a whole new can of worms as they say here in the US... color calibration and different viewing formats all have their own representation of color, gamma, etc. Now you are getting into the world of look up tables (LUT) and LUT's are used to emulate a target distribution format when doing the color correction or any type of of work intended for that format.

Basically digital video work in 16RGB-235RGB with 16 bening black and 235 being white. Computers, and projection, film outs etc. register black as 0RGB and white as 255RGB. Digital television for PAL and NTSC use the same standards. Analog is different since NTSC needs to be set to 7.5IRE for black level.

Mac monitors have a defualt gamma setting of 1.8. PC monitors and television have a gamma setting of 2.2.

A good waveform vectorscope is essential to broadcast quality color correction and delivery.

Michael
 
Re: Report on working with Xpress Pro 4.3.1

:-[ Thank you for your information. This issue turns out to be complicated.

Well at this point I guess I will do all postwork with Xpress Pro and have someone professional does the colour correction work.

I did some further testing with Xpress Pro. What seems strange to me is the difference in the colour appearance when a video is running in Xpress and running in Quicktime/Windows Media Player. In Quicktime and Windows Media Player the video looks somehow milky and not as colourful as in XPress.

Here comes the strange point: When I export a video as DV and load this video into “Sorenson Sqeeze” which is delivered with XPress Pro it has the same colours as in Xpress. Exactly what I intended to have. The colours are exactly “what you see in Xpress is what your get after export” (WYSIWYG) but in Sorenson Sqeeze the video shows “white grain spots”. I don’t know why. The same DV video runs in Quicktime without this “white grain spots” but it has the milky colours which are different from Xpress.

Well I think there must be technical reason for the colour difference. Somehow Quicktime and Windows Media Player are down scaling the colours.

This WYSIWYG problem should be the same for all people exporting their videos with Xpress Pro. Are their less problems with other postwork software like Final Cut Pro?
 
Re: Report on working with Xpress Pro 4.3.1

I do have that trouble. I mean: When i see the material in Xpress pro the colours change, the gamma i guess, when its playin looks different than when it is stop, or in pause.
Does it have anything to be with the calibration monitor.
I tried to chenge it with the settings of the video card but i couldn´t make any visible change and when it was visible was worse.
It never happen with other versions of Avid.

By the way, and regarding to workin with progresxsive material...

I use the 25p project resolution once. I had a strange problem. Maybe it is something with my general settings.
What happens is that when i play the material audio and image fits well but a little bit later, the audio gets delay. If i stop and play again audio fits well again, but again get a delay during playing.
I know my english is crap. And i am sorry if its hard to understand.

I don´t understand the timecodes that appears at the button of the timeline (24/25p/ and something about 35/16... ) I supposed it is have to be with the posible transform to cinema. But if someone can give me a easy explanation....

I got the chance to edit in 25p because i put the 25p file resolution from another version of Avid into the 4.3.1 avid Xpress Pro. As Ingve friendly discoverd to us.
I am not sure if my problem with delay audio playback can be related with this domestic patch.
 
Re: Report on working with Xpress Pro 4.3.1

The difference in playback and pause are cuased by the graphics overlat card. Avid has no control over that as the new versions of software use standard off the shekf cards. On Meridien systems, Avid made the graphics card - called the EDC card so this was not a problem. We have made the card vendors aware of this issue and are trying to get access to the overlay controls for a color callibration process.

The multiple timecode strips at the bottom of the timeline allow for seqwuence tracking, duration for output to video (at 24fps and 25) as well as feet + frames for those working on a fim out. It is a subset of the "Unversal Mastering" feature set which is part of a 24p and 25p project type.

I do not know why your timeline would play out of sync unless there is a setting that git set somewhere that has video at 24 and audio and 25 etc as is the case with 24p projects. Did you create the project from scratch when doing this? You are the only case that I have heard this from. Have other PAL users run into this?

The fix you did to get the 25p resilution is correct and supported. The file and directions to do this are on the Avid Knowledgebase. Please see an earlier posting I added in the list for the direct link.

Color managment is a hige issues at levels of the market. We are workng on tools to better support this.

Michael
 
Re: Report on working with Xpress Pro 4.3.1

I have exactly the same problem with sync.
In 25p mode when play from timeline audio annd video
no sync like Audio 24fps video25fps

HELP !!!
 
Re: Report on working with Xpress Pro 4.3.1

"Did you create the project from scratch when doing this?"

What do you mean by that?

Anyway the project was created in a normal way. The material captured was progressive and capture in 420.
I forgot to report that i can´t capture in 28:1.
I always have that trouble. I mean, it´s not since i added the 25p file resolution.
Actually i am working in 25i projects because of all this bugs. Or problems or whatever you can call it.
I guess i´ll wait to another version to start seriusly with the 25p projects.
I hope it is not so loosy working in 25i for 25p material.

I heard some pal users having the exact problem with the sound. I think i rode something about it in a forum from avid.com but didn´t help me a bit.

I checked all the setting to see if something was wrong but i dont think there were any problem in that. Everything seems to be fine.
Someone has any guess to help me out.
Thanks
 
Re: Report on working with Xpress Pro 4.3.1

What I mean "by scratch" is a brand new project will all new settings. Not a project that may have been started in another version of Avid product that may have been copied over and brought over settings that may be messing with your playback.

What was your CPU again? You do need a fast processor to capture 28:1 becuase of the decompress and recompress steps in doing so.

IMage quality is the same in 25i and 25p when working with DV25 resolution. The difference is on the rendering for full vertical resolution rather than being field based.

Michael
 
Re: Report on working with Xpress Pro 4.3.1

Yeah, it was a brand new project.
In fact was just a test to see how the 25p prjects works.
It´s weird the 28:1 thing.
I can capture perfectly in 35:1 (a 25i project).
Should be the same thing.
Well, anyway thanks for your help.
I ´ll keep trying.
I hope i can get rid of the audio sync troubles soon.
I´ll post my results (or my frustrations)
 
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