Mattes

Movick wrote on 5/8/2004, 12:47 AM
Hello,

I am soon to upgrade to VV5, however for the moment I am still using VV3. I’ve owned the program since its introduction a couple of years ago, but have never really taken on a project as involved as the one I’m currently working on.
I am in the process of creating a multi-chapter instructional DVD (approx. 45-60 minutes in length) to accompany a new product line I’m introducing this summer. I’ve acquired good quality DVCAM footage with which to work.
I want this project to have a high production value, and as such have created an alpha overlay, which will sit over the footage and float over a Digital Juice type background. I know that I should create a matte to properly use this overlay, however, I am not sure of exactly how to do this in VV3. I have thus far been able to drop this overlay on a blue background, and chroma it out with some success; however, I do notice some artifacting and bleeding when I render it to MPEG-2 for DVD (NTSC) and play on my Win Media Player. I have uploaded a screen shot at the following address if anyone cares to see exactly what I’m trying to accomplish:

http://www.stevesdigital.com/video.htm

I’d really like my final video to look as close to the screenshot (as it appears in the VV3 viewer) as possible without stair stepping and fuzziness, etc.
Can anyone PLEASE provide me with info on how to create mattes within VV3? I would greatly appreciate any help on this subject greatly.
Additionally, is there an accurate way to preview the quality of video generated in VV3 as a MPEG-2? When I play an MPEG-2 in VV3 to an external monitor, I assume that it acts as if it isn’t rendered, and I experience jerky, poor resolution playback. Playing a rendered MPEG-2 on my pc doesn’t accurately represent what I would see on a television (pixels vs. lines). How can I determine what my video will look like without authoring a DVD and playing it?

Thanks in advance for the help!!

Movick

Comments

farss wrote on 5/8/2004, 2:22 AM
Dropping the encoded MPEG-2 file back onto the VV3 TL is not the best way to preview it. You'd have to render it out which kind of defeat the purpose. You'll get a good idea of the spatial results without rendering but that's about all.
To do what you're trying to do I'd just use Pan/Crop to fit the video into the window. I've no experience with VV3 only 4 & 5 so I don't know if 3 had that capability. I have had problems at time with resized video getting nasty artifacts, for some odd reason the Reduce Interlace Flicker switch in Properties fixed that.

For best results encdoe directly from the TL. Normally this achieves nothing over encoding from a rendered file but as some of the frame isn't DV25 you may get better results by avoiding some of the DV compression.