Somethign interesting.

TimurCivan

TimurCivan

Director of Photography
Staff member
I shot some footage today, a person wearing a red hat and scarf. I watched the footage from the tape, but straight form the camera on a TV, expecting the usual, pixelated reds. Surprisingly, it seemed not to exist. I catured, and bang pixels galore. Does the capturing process of the Vegas screw wth the reds? and if so are there anyother codecs you can use? The microsoft codec, i didint think it would be all that good though? Virtual Dub?

or will the reds pixelate no matter what you do?
 
You won't notice the pixelation on a TV as much as you do a computer monitor. Just do the usual horizontal chroma blur to get rid of it and you'll be fine.
 
when you capture the DATA from the tape is transferred to hard drive .. vegas does not change the data ..
if you want to view the data using microsoft codec you can go into Vegas preference and switch to use it ... note that Vegas codec is NTSC 601 spec (16-235rgb) and the microsoft dv codec is not 601 - it operates 0-255rgb .
 
Hey i second the poster on this one. Vegas has a lil problem with reds. Ive tried red text and they come out very pixellated. Any other color text is smooth and crisp. Someone told me that it had to do with the limitations of the dv codec which by default handled RED badly. But guess what i tried rendering just generated media from within Vegas to many different types of output. The jarring red shows up everywhere. AND THERE WAS NO DV INVOLVED. So what is the true reason to this shortcoming ....nobody knows. Ive also tried lower than 255 values. Still mucked up reds. Try lowering from 255 to lets say...um....10 ....or ....11. Then maybe it might work. But then it wouldnt be red at all would it ?

This is the only obvious let down i found with Vegas. Otherwise the software is one powerful killer.
 
Hi Bennis,

But i render out of some other suite. 3ds max, moviemaker, etc. And the reds there look ok ! how come ?

Also it does this only to text. Ive found people with bright reds in fotage dont get pixellated. But the text is bad. So on the same machine i test render the brightest same value red. And the output looks fine on even the same monitor ! Any clues ???
 
Some codecs "smoothe" the reds out for you, essentially adding the blur that Vegas makes you do.

Me, I'll do my own CC. :)
 
This is not a vegas problem, this is not a monitor problem, this is not an avi problem, this is a DV problem. Chroma blur will only work as long as you don't re render out to DV, so lets say you have footage with red blocks along the edges, and you ad red text. You use chorma blur on the bad footage and then you re-render to the DV-avi template, not only will your footage once again have the same red blocks as before, your red text will have it as well. The only way to get rid of this is to render to a different codec. Mpeg2 will be fine when going to DVD, it will not have the red blocks if you apply the chroma blur filter first, for archival purposes, I prefere to use the "cineform" codec as it works great with vegas as well as looks great and is roughly the same size as it's DV counterpart.
 
I dont get you Sharky. But i told you its happening even in Absolutely non dv renders (from non dv footage). So where does DV even come into the picture (no pun intended) ??

Would really help if we could understand why exactly this is happening.

Just for the record. I rendered a 3ds max animation involving RED titles.

Played the resulting avi on the same machine. Smooth text edges. No noise. Now put the same avi into Vegas (bec it had to be part of a presentation video). Rendered to MPEG2. Played result on the same machine....Bad Red Noise. Reds are pixellated. So in experimentation. I render out to wmv and the reds are crisp and proper. Again no DV in the picture.

Whats happening ?
 
If you're looking at the video in your NLE (or anywhere else that can display it) and it was recorded with a DV codec, the NLE is using a DV codec to display it, no matter what you use to render it afterward.
 
I think you are missing the details i have furnished. No DV. Its a 3ds max render to Uncomp AVI. Am i missing something here ? Where does DV even get into the picture. Theorotically speaking if i were to open a new project in Vegas and just create a red moving title. And render out to Uncomp AVI it should have no red bleed artifacts right ? WRONG. It is reating artifacts even in this tryout. Now what do we do ?
 
plainman007 said:
Theorotically speaking if i were to open a new project in Vegas and just create a red moving title. And render out to Uncomp AVI it should have no red bleed artifacts right ? WRONG. It is reating artifacts even in this tryout. Now what do we do ?
Click to expand...

OK. I just did that. Just took the default text in the scrolling credits preset, changed the text color to 255 red and bumped the size up to 36.

Nice crisp red letters.

So....don't know what to tell you. Sorry. :(
 
Wait im going to try again. Im happy that your getting crisp letters. But i hope your not using very large fonts like 48points etc. Those tend to be clear even in DV. Its when your sizes are about 12 to 18 that theres problems. Anyway thankyou for trying Gen. Ill go give it a shot again and let you know if its ok now.
 
I did 36 pt. But I'll do smaller when I get home tonight. Usually though, the red blotchies only show up on fairly large areas. I've never noticed any in small details, no matter what codec (or none at all, like uncompressed AVI as you did).
 
OK. Did 16 and 14 pt text. On Black, blue, yellor, green, and white backgrounds.

I don't see the normal red blotchiness. But text that small does look like crap. The resolution can't handle it...whether that's the 720x480 or maybe just the computer monitor, I don't know. But the same crappiness I see shows up even if I change the text color to blue.

Don't know what to tell you. The only red problems I've had are bleeding around the edges, or blotching on internal detail (like shooting a rose and losing the petal definition).
 
Oh...maybe your right Gen.
I think photoshop rendered fonts with transparancy around it render a little better. I tried that and the reds dont bleed as much. Who knows maybe somethings just cant be solved. Not everything can be perfect in this world right. :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top