Color Range & Detail Losses in PNG Sequence Import

Soniclight wrote on 9/5/2007, 10:17 PM
This particularly deals with PNG with alpha channel sequence imports from Particleillusion 3. However advice/tips from anyone with solid PNG sequence import experience into Vegas is most welcomed. I currently have Vegas ("Pro" :) 6, will most likely get 8.

I'm including below what I just posted at the Particleillusion support forum late tonight. As stated therein, you'll have screenshots to check out and compare at a page created on my server.

Why am I including that support Q here?

--- Having input from both sides of the equation (PI and Vegas) will result in a good solution that perhaps one alone may not..

Thanks.

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I have created a temporary support question page for you to go to on my server -- this due to having to make a few full-size screen-shots in both PI-3 and Vegas. The screen-shots are overlayed with pertinent information (resolution info, etc).

The page is divided into two sections and each respective section is introduced with some further explanations of the issue.

As stated there, some rez loss is natural, but it's a bit worse than I'd expected. It could hamper the end results within Vegas, unless I can find some way to improve this.

The sections are:

1. Particle Illusion Screenshots
2. Vegas 6 Screenshots

Now,one solution may be to:

1. Bring the final footage (without any particles) back as uncompressed AVI into PI as background image. Right now, I use intermediate but sequence/length and fps correct stand-in AVI as background in PI.

This isn't the ideal solution. But maybe it's the only way to preserve the constantly improving and more nuanced magic I'm creating in PI-3.

Thanks for any feedback and/or assistance.

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Temp. Support Q Page - :

PI-3 Q: Color Range & Detail Losses in PNG Export to Vegas
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Comments

farss wrote on 9/6/2007, 12:28 AM
1) Try using the different types of alpha channels in Vegas.
2) Try changing the compositing mode in Vegas.

I've hade much the same issue some time ago with HD DJ stuff and compositing in Vegas. Tried all of the above to no avail. You might get lucky.
That's why a few days ago I was asking if there was an improvement in alpha channel processing in V8 and the answer was Yes, so hopefully this issue will go away. Of course I'm assuming that's where the problem is.

Bob.
Shergar wrote on 9/6/2007, 2:05 AM
How many bits per channel in your PNGs? Vegas seems unhappy with more than 8....

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?Forum=4&MessageID=544620

Can you put up an example PNG file?

Paul
Soniclight wrote on 9/6/2007, 2:45 AM
Paul,

Couldn't sleep, swung by, read your answer and.. Good suggestion. So I've added the files of each particle to the page so they can be inspected :).

As far as bits, PI only does 8 bit as far as I know. This, because I asked them if Vegas Pro 8's new "32-bit float" processing would help improve work imported from PI. Not as far as they know. But you can test the files yourself by saving them.

PI does have the option to use higher-bit images as particles, but as I learned in a project a few months ago, the export essentially crushed it back to 8 (looked crappy in Vegas, too).
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Soniclight wrote on 9/6/2007, 2:57 AM
Farss,

Ooops, missed your post here in the wee hours of the night/morning. I'll look into your suggestions, though I'm not familiar with "different" alpha channel modalities in Vegas. I'm not awake enough right now to delve and comprehend -- pr crack Vegas open right now.

I do hope V-8 will also help in this regard. May they the Gods of Sony grant us a great upgrade price for it in the next couple of weeks :)
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Shergar wrote on 9/6/2007, 4:15 AM
Setting composite mode to "Add" on your PNGs, and/or setting Alpha Channel to Premultiplied (dirty) push the brightness up much closer to what you're seeing in PI.
Soniclight wrote on 9/6/2007, 11:25 AM
OK, I'll try all the above and hopefully this will help in some way, in conjunction with a one suggested setting given by PI staff. Other ideas may show up on the board by those using PI and Vegas at that forum too.
Soniclight wrote on 9/7/2007, 2:11 AM
A Happy Update:

While the details aren't quite as subtle as in pre-PI export, using "Add" in channel improved things a lot. At least now it reflects what happens when I develop the light effects in PI (i.e. said pink-leaning behavior in this particular example as shown on my screen-shots page).

Meaning that I get a far more accurate WYSIWYG feel going between the two apps.. I can then do some minor sharpening and color curving to polish them up in Vegas.

I may have gone a bit overboard in presenting this problem by spending so much time on the screenshots page to illustrate my dilemma. But for me then, it was a seemingly unsurmountable and can't-have-this-going on' situation.

Fortunately a simple solution was offered here which has only widened my mastery of Vegas..
So thanks to all of you for your input..