Video bleached out in rendering

RichMitt wrote on 2/11/2005, 6:58 PM

Thanks grisetti, gogiant, and trock for the useful information on editing MPEG-2 files. Given my level of expertise, I think the safest route is to go back to the MovieStudio file and re-render.

Of the three projects that I've rendered, the video on one seems to have gotten bleached out some in the rendering process. The other two seem okay. Is there something I can do to alleviate the loss in quality? This project is relatively short, so I rendered it in both the fast and regular modes, but that didn't seem to make any difference.

Comments

trock wrote on 2/11/2005, 8:36 PM

Bleached-outness or washed-outness is usually a symptom of something having changed the IRE (black level) to 7.5 instead of 0. DV often needs a different black level setting than analog captures. There is a MS video effect called Broadcast Colors that can correct this, as can the Brightness and Contrast filter to some degree.

RichMitt wrote on 2/12/2005, 9:04 AM

Thanks, trock. That gives me something to work on. I can find the Brightness and Contrast filter under the Video FX tab, but not the Broadcast Colors adjustment (I'm still using MS 3 but plan to download MS 4 as soon as I get my MS files backed up).

I don't understand what you mean by the IRE (black level) being changed from 0 to 7.5. Where does this happen? Is it a setting in MS?

The problem seems to be ocurring in the rendering process. I had rendered part of the footage earlier in another project and it looked fine. But when I rendered the same footage in a later project it was bleached out. The main difference between the two is that I had added a music track to the project that was bleached out.

trock wrote on 2/12/2005, 10:16 AM

My mistake, the Broadcast Colors filter is in Vegas, not MS. But MS does have a Black Restore filter that you can use very lightly to improve the washed-outness.

To answer your question about IRE, this is a very good 3 part article:

http://www.signvideo.com/dv-black-levels-dvd-authoring-mpeg-2-part-1.htm

RichMitt wrote on 2/12/2005, 11:32 AM

Thanks again, brock. I've been studying several of the articles on that website and have found them very helpful.

RichMitt wrote on 2/12/2005, 3:15 PM

Hudson in his article on Black Levels suggests increasing the MPEG2 bit rate, but I can't find anyplace in Movie Studio to do this. Is it possible? Otherwise, my only option seems to be using the Black Restore in Video FX, which I will try.