It can't be my XH-a1 (Bad picture qualitY)

M

MelonDome

Hey guys, Im in need of advice.

Heres my problem: When I view my film on DVD, or computer, I notice my subjects' colors pixelated. And the edges of objects and subjects are squigley....choppy..


I highly doubt it is my XH-A1.

I made 2 mistakes in post-production. Let me know in your opinion, if this is the root of the problem.

1. I shot in 24f, however, when I opened Sony Vegas for a new project, I selected NTSC DV (720x480, 29.970 fps). I captured my footage into the editor, then edited my footage; I rendered it back to 24p. Since I originally shot my footage on 24f, imported as 30p, then rended the footage back to 24p, could this be the cause of pixelation, and uneven edges? I'm assuming, I should have selected NTSC DV 24p Widescreen (720x480, 23.976 fps), then captured my project into editor, then rendered it to 24p...

2. I color corrected the same footage twice on accident. For example, I dragged "RGB to Computer color corrector" over my clips, forgot later, and did it again. It seems each time you added color correction, the footage gets brighter and more blown out.

I am pretty worried :(; I want my footage end result to be perfect crisp quality when I view it on my T.V. Just as if I were to put in a real DVD.

So what do you guys think im doing wrong?

thanks in advance!:)
 
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Someone who uses Windows and/or Sony Vegas will have to answer the question about 24f workflow; how to conform/convert from 60 fields with 2:3 pulldown to 24p.

Regarding 30f, the answer is "yes", you can shoot 30f and do nothing special with it. Although it has 2 fields per frame, the two fields are captured at one, precise moment in time, so there are no artifacts from interlacing. You treat it just like it was "normal" NTSC footage, but the frames will look nicer and more film like. If you are shooting for DVD, 30f is fine. For transfer to film, you'll want to work out the 24f thing.

Doug

p.s. If someone else wants to take a shot at explaining this, I would be most grateful. Sometimes I have a hard time explaining some of the simplest things.
 
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MelonDome said:
Oak,

Im referring to 30f now. I think I understand 24f now, thanks to you, VP, and wide. On 30f, you mentioned that

"30f gives you a progressive look at 30 frames per second, which does not require any special handling; just capture it as NTSC 29.97 interlaced, and treat it like it is 30p"

in lamens terms. Are you basically saying, if I use the 30f mode, I wont have to worry about any artifacts if I just render it at NTSC 29.97?

One more quick thing about 24f. I notice that I can make a custom template in rendering. There is this thing I can select called "Field Order" I can choose between Upper Field, Lower Field, and None - Progressive Scanning. NExt time I shoot in 24f, do I choose the progressive scanning option before I Render? is that what you guys are talking about?
Click to expand...

You need to use Cineform to capture the 24p if you want it to automatically recognize and properly remove the 2:3 pulldown flag.

Otherwise, no NLE will automatically remove it (and certainly not Vegas), and you'll be stuck right where you are which is with your 24p film wrapped in a 60i video using a 2:3 pulldown flag. So you need to use a third party program to remove the pulldown, which is called INVERSE TELECINE (IVTC). It's called that because the process of adding the 2:3 flag to 24fps video to make 60i has been used for decades, and is part of what is called TELECINE (TC). The program is pulldown.exe and all it does is take the proper filters needed to effectively IVTC and keep the audio in sync from a seperate program called AVISynth , and give you a really easy interface to be able to process the footage from. You can use any intermediate codec you want, but it WILL CREATE A SEPERATE FILE.

The reason for all of this is simple. Canon did not include the proper pulldown flag for our HV20's and 30's on the files, otherwise it could have been so easy. Cineform has solved this during the capture process, but then you still have to use their intermediate codec (not necessarily a bad idea). Otherwise you will have to use pulldown.exe . I suggest Lagarith as a lossless codec, but there are others.

Its worth all of this, trust me. I pull out footage with my HV20 that could have been shot with a MUCH more expensive camera.

Once you have the actual 24p files, then you need to load them into Vegas, and use the proper 1080p project file. No need for field order since it is progressive. And no need for deinterlacing, since it is progressive and not interlaced.
 
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This is so why I can't talk about Windows workflows. On my Mac using FCP, I just select 1080p24 as my capture mode, and the 2:3 pulldown is removed while the video is being captured. I get perfect 23.98fps progressive, with no more effort than it takes to verify one's capture settings.

Doug
 
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It may just be that you can't do this with Vegas.

But Doug,

you should also be transcoding to an intermediate immediately anyway once you've captured because MPEG-2 is a very inaccurate codec to edit with, if you want max quality that is.
 
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I can do that on the fly, also. FCP will transcode on capture. Whether or not I transcode depends on the kind of editing I'm doing. With cuts-only editing, which is not uncommon for me, there is no need to transcode, because I'm not manipulating pixels.

Also, FCP lets you use a different render codec so altered pixels don't get re-encoded to MPEG-2, with obvious losses (the trouble with that workflow is that you must render everything, over and over, so transcoding one time on capture can be much faster). Finally, if one is outputting from the timeline to the final product (which is also something I do often), there is no degradation, since the pixels are processed in 4:4:4 colorspace, uncompressed throughout the pipeline and then handed off to compressor for final compression. The losses are no more significant than transcoding losses would be.

If I'm outputting to Color, or some other tool, I render in Apple Pro-Rez, or another high quality codec to be sure my intermediate carries as much quality as possible.

Doug
 
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