Hi Ray,

It's not for me to say whether you're crazy or not... ;^)

I can only say whether I see the same issue or not. I don't doubt you are seeing something... what it is has yet to be resolved.

It does sound like compression; I don't think it's the colorspace conversion - I think the the colors in the sample should convert transparently.

It sounds like the MSDV codec, which (as I understand it) raises blacks and neutralizes colors.

I'll try to peek at the clip before I fly outta here. When I get to the Mobile, AL area later today, I'll be on a T1 and check in.

MPH

Ps. I have never touched the interleave..

MPH & Muttley - Any point or mileage in "posting" an example on Chienworks site so we can all see what is actually happening? I've often felt this is an option - Waddya fink Kelly? Oh yes the other idea I did have was for us to "post" screen grabs in a short "clip" so we could all share instructions on drop down menus and the like - yes? Only a thought from the UK.

Grazie

Hi Grazie,

FWIW, The files are pretty big. Any compression could hide artifact that creep in.

Ray has publicly posted the files, so anyone who wants to check it out at this stage can...

Even the few folks willing to download 50MB+ files must be giving Ray's bandwidth some exercise. :)


HNY, MPH

Gotcha! And Understood! Sorry - Enthusiasm over Brain! - What do you think regarding the "screen" grabs? What is the web address to view Ray's work? I'm on ADSL so it shouldn't be a problem.

Grazie


PS WHat does FWIW mean?

PPS - Just worked it Out - For What It's Worth . . . DOAH!

Hi Grazie,

The URL's are posted above...


Cheers! MPH


(gotta go...)

Hi, I've been following the thread and downloaded the sample. I ran some tests with output going to thru a jvc dv cam and jvc studio monitor. I couldn't see any quality difference between the masked and unmasked footage.

But, while running the tests, I did notice that vegas had an issue with the PNG Letterbox mask. I tried different alpha channel settings with no change of video quality then I removed your PAN/CROP setting and changed the aspect ration from 1.0 to .9091 NTSC in the properties box. That seemed to make the biggest difference. As a result, the clip rendered much quicker (the entire kitchen scene would render faster than your original excerpt) and the preview framerate was much higher than the original either out to the camera or on the preview screen. To me the quality was again equal but I did notice a slight more jitter seemed to be introduced.

Suggestion: You can get the same output if you use PAN/CROP on the actual footage and eliminating using a mask. When cropping the video, Un-check "Stretch to fill frame" to keep the original aspect ratio of the footage. I'm assuming that this is the last step in your editing and will have no layered tracks. This technique will also eliminate a possible cause of your quality problem so it may help in your troubleshooting. The down side is that rendering time is increased a lot.

Good luck, franco

I see what your saying with the pan/crop, but is there a way to apply it to the layer and not just the screen ?

Although one of the reason I wanted to apply the letterbox to the entire movie is so that you wouldnt see ( as I saw in my early tests ) the letterbox fade in and out between sceens.

I have just tried the pan/crop option and it seems to do the same thing. It appears to only happen during the sceens, that MPH mentioned earlier, where its says " Frame Recompressed " in the preview window when viewing on an external monitor.


- Ray

ray@austin.rr.com

I don't think so. When I tried using the track motion settings it always changes the aspect ratio (but I didn't poke around much to see what was possible). When using Event Pan/Crop you can save the keyframe setting to keep it consistent across the events.

Can you notice the quality difference if you render to another format like mpeg or real?

In my tests there was no visible differences on the output to DV tape. I'm sorry if this has been asked previously but do you have any other dv codecs installed? The system I used for the tests only had vegas installed so I know there was no interference from another codec.

One more thing, I've never experienced a png or transparent layer adding "coloring" or dulling a clip below it. What I have seen is small ringing artifacts around type or graphics when they covered a complex image underneath but nothing like you describe. Have you tried using another graphic. Native photoshop files import into vegas. Also PaintShop pro 7 has an excellent PNG export utility

franco

You can check which DV codec your using with a wht 255/255/255 graphic. SF Vegas codec will not reduce the brightness as much as the MS codec.
Try activating resample for your PNG file. Right click - Switches Might clean up the video blur your seeing.
Only *good* and *best* preview and render settings will produce interlaced output with scaling, motion, or geometric filters or transitions.
Vegas Color Gradient background could be used for your letterbox track if you wanted. Might be a good test to help you trouble-shoot this funk your in.

Craig H.

Marty called me from the airport to relay this to you, Ray--

says he can see the difference and suspects its the codec because he can see a radical change in the histogram.

Marty won't be able to post for a couple hours. Until then...

Also, display at project size must be selected by right clicking the preview window. Ext. monitor OHCI output will get really soft/blurry when recompression kicks in. This doesn't affect render settings.
I have no problem with overlayed graphics blurring the underlaying video steam while using the MS DV codec in Vegas 2 and Vegas 3 demo. It does luma clamp, but doesn't go soft. Somethings up with that PNG file of yours.

Craig H.

Hi Ray,

I'm back online...

I looked at your footage when I was delayed for an hour in Atlanta, and in the histogram you can see the clamping of blacks and whites on your rendered footage.

The same clamping is not evident on rendered footage from my machine.

I am also seeing the softening/noise you referred to which is not present in the footage I rendered.

I would check the installed codec and poss. re-install Vegas if needed.

I know yer beating a deadline for Fri., so use yer best judgement.

HTH, and "Break a leg"...


MPH

P.S. you're not nutz, at least about what yer seein' mph