Comments

Coursedesign wrote on 4/27/2008, 10:05 AM
If your question is, "What should I give the station?," you really should ask them.

NTSC DV sucks imho, and stations would certainly be happier overall if you could give them 4:2:2 footage after a bit of chroma interpolation to create something out of nothing.

Tape delivery used to be mandatory, now it's becoming more common to see hard drives accepted.

It varies enough that you really do need to ask them.


Ros wrote on 4/27/2008, 10:28 AM
I did ask the tv station for a format, they suggested either .avi or quicktime, but I am really not satisfied with the NTSC DV render.

It will not be exported to tape, it will be dumped on a hard drive.

So if I want to render it in 4:2:2 color space from vegas, what format, codec and settings should I go for in order to get the best possible quality?
.
Coursedesign wrote on 4/27/2008, 11:55 AM
Use "Video for Windows (*.avi)" with the "NTSC SD YUV" template.

This is a 720x486 4:2:2 SD codec.

If your source footage is 720x480, you have some options, including picking the settings above, then going in to Customer and changing "Frame size:" to "NTSC DV 720x480".

Broadcast SD footage is 720x486 though...

Ros wrote on 4/27/2008, 12:17 PM
Thanks,
So basically I am using the SONY YUV codec. Do they need that codec installed on their system in order to be able to read it?

My original footage is from a PD170 at 720x480 rendered to 23.976P. Is there a big difference between 720x486 and 720x480?

And maybee I should make it broadcast legal as well, just thought about it!

Thanks again!

Goji wrote on 4/27/2008, 12:20 PM
The affiliate in our area wants standard-definition _DVD_ for insertion. Ditto for the cable system and local university on their channels.

I was really surprised . . . engineers don't care as much about "Quality" as they used to, I guess!

Maybe a good thing . . .

G.
Coursedesign wrote on 4/27/2008, 12:45 PM
So basically I am using the SONY YUV codec. Do they need that codec installed on their system in order to be able to read it?

Sure, so ask. A very common alternative is HuffYUV (Huffman-encoded YUV), if they don't have the Sony YUV, ask them about this.

There are at least hundreds of codecs in wide use, you simply have to ask what they have if they don't have either of the above two.

Is there a big difference between 720x486 and 720x480?

No, only 6 lines more :O).

And they can be black (they're used for meta data such as captions).

And maybee I should make it broadcast legal as well...

Fine, but for the love of God don't do that by just dropping a Broadcast Filter on it.

If you want the best quality, you should go through each scene in your video and "color correct" using your Vegas video scopes to become "legal."

This often makes a huge difference.

Ros wrote on 4/27/2008, 12:52 PM
Mind you that DVD (mpeg2) rendered out of Vegas is 4:2:2 I believe.
I did render it on a DVD for it to be upconverted from the dvd player to an HD display which turned out very good better than an NTSC DV render.

I just rendered it with the SONY YUV codec and it looks just great!
Ros wrote on 4/27/2008, 12:59 PM
I had the HuffYUV installed, but it doesn't show up in my codec list. I'll have to look into it. Should be version 2.1.1?

Is there a big difference between HuffYUV and SONY YUV?

And thank for the broadcast filter advice!
John_Cline wrote on 4/27/2008, 1:53 PM
"Mind you that DVD (mpeg2) rendered out of Vegas is 4:2:2 I believe."

MiniDV is 4:1:1. NTSC MPEG2 for DVD encoded out of Vegas (or anything else) is 4:2:0. If you encode 4:2:0 from 4:1:1 source footage, it becomes 4:1:0. Only 12.5% of the original color information survives.

If you render footage that was originally 4:1:1 to a 4:2:2 or 4:4:4 format, it will still be 4:1:1. However, anything generated by Vegas, like titles or effects, will end up at the higher 4:2:2 or 4:4:4 color sampling.

If the TV station will accept a YUV encoded file, which is pretty universal, then that's what you should give them as it will have the highest quality. HuffYUV is proprietary and can only be read if the TV station has the HuffYUV codec installed. Video encoded with the Sony YUV codec can be decoded by any other standard YUV codec.
Ros wrote on 4/27/2008, 2:05 PM
I got it wrong, your right John, DVD is 4:2:0!

Every single frame in my video has had color correction and color curves added, so YUV is the way to go.

Although, the Huffyuv 2.1.1 makes the video washed out a little bit, while the SONY YUV is just perfect, is there a reason for that?

rs170a wrote on 4/27/2008, 4:17 PM
...so YUV is the way to go.

Do yourself a favour (aka cover your butt) and give the station a few seconds of this to make sure they can indeed read it.

Mike
Ros wrote on 4/27/2008, 4:35 PM
I will indeed send them a test file. The person in charge of this matter was off for 3 days, all we could tell me was to send an .avi or quicktime file. I rendered it to NTSC DV but I didn't like the result, so that is why I was looking for alternatives, the SONY YUV is really great, now hopefully that will work for them!

Thanks Mike