What is wrong with this video?

Robert W wrote on 8/18/2008, 3:58 PM
Hello folks.

I am struggling to get a film I've be working on into shape to issue on DVD. I've have mentioned before in this forum that I made one version that looked great on CRT TVs and LCD screens but terrible on computer CRTs. What happens is that the video can look ok even in Vegas on the editing machine (corrected to computer RGB). When the renders suddenly look very dark and generally rubbish on the editing machine. However, on LCD based computers and CRT TV's it looks fine. Control videos and calibration DVDs look fine on our test CRT computer machines, and we have ruled out codec and player issues.

Now, admittedly the source tapes has a lot of colour and light problems. We moderated the problems to an extent, but as it happened, the featured artist really likes the lo-fi colours, and we realised we like them too (generally they add to the charm). That is handy because we do not have the money to get someone in to grade it.

Video 1:

He is a sample of the nested video without any master track fx applied http://www.adjustableproductions.com/vidtest/raw.mpg (about 30 megs)

Can anybody give me a steer to what I should be doing to make this look acceptable across most displays?

Video 2:

This is a sample of the video with gain and offset grossly pulled down:
http://www.adjustableproductions.com/vidtest/bversion.mpg (about 30 megs)

These are the settings used on the "Color Corrector" and "Broadcast Color" plugins for the master nested track:




It was a version based on these settings I tested with a few of the Artists fan base on a portable LCD player and a CRT TV before a gig the other week. They gave unprompted positive feedback about the look.

So, despite common sense suggesting these are technically very poor settings, they give a look we find desirable on CRTs and LCD TV's, but looks terrible on computer CRT's.

Can anybody tell what we would need to do with this version in order to reproduce the look but be acceptable across most displays?

We have tried stretching things out with the level meters and so on, but to be honest all we can ever produce is something that looks stupidly bright on one system and stupidly dark on another. I have sunk most of my cash into this project and to be honest I am in a bit of a hole with this. I've learned so many new technical things to get to this stage, but I just cant seem to cross this final hurdle. If anybody can help me out with their experience here I would be very very grateful as I have pretty much completely had it. I am literally sweeping clumps of my hair off my shoulders at the minute. So if there is any angel out there that can help me, please do. I would be ever so grateful.

Comments

fldave wrote on 8/18/2008, 4:31 PM
Without even looking at your clips, what are you using to view your clips on the computer? Many have adjustments to the video that make things dark, Windows Media Player is notorious for that. Nero also has some setting that someone "thinks" might be good.

Make sure your player is set to not alter the picture.

I would bet that if it looks good on your CRT and LCD TVs,. then you have everything set correctly!
Robert W wrote on 8/19/2008, 3:10 AM
I do not think it is a player issue as I have tried it with a few different players and mpg codecs on various machines and the problem is reproduced. If anything it is a player issue in the CRT's and LCD's which is moderating the signal up to look acceptable. Also other videos we have shot and commercial releases do not exhibit this problem on the test systems.

I am pretty sure it is something to do with levels and gain etc., but as I understand nothing about how LCD's and CRT's compensate signals I've no idea how to get a similar look embedded into the master.

I think the video has to be viewed to understand the problem. It really does look a murky mess.
fldave wrote on 8/19/2008, 5:08 AM
The raw version looks a bit grainy, so I think the Bversion looks better. Does not look too dark on either my PC CRT or my calibrated CRT monitor. Do you have a calibrated monitor to view these on?
John_Cline wrote on 8/19/2008, 5:16 AM
Doesn't look like a "murky mess" on any of my calibrated monitors either. Personally, I'd be more concerned about the shaky hand-held shot at the beginning of the clip.
farss wrote on 8/19/2008, 5:57 AM
I'm downloading it now but that'll take a while over the big pond.
If this footage is grainy / noisy some monitors / TVs can really make a mess of such footage, that could be the cause of the problem. Wobblecam would add to the problem as well.

Bob.
TGS wrote on 8/19/2008, 10:21 AM
If it looks good in the Vegas preview window, but looks dark on all the players, there is a very good chance it's your video overlays. This would be in your video card settings. I don't know how this happens, but it's happened to me in the past. (I suspect a windows update, but not sure)
For me, I have to right click on the screen to get to my Nvidia control panel and adjust the players to match the Vegas preview screen. I've heard this can happen with other video cards too.
kb_de wrote on 8/19/2008, 12:13 PM
robert,
could you try only with 2 plugs:

1, HSL adjust, luminance=0.84
2, Color corrector, sat=0.722, gamma=1.185

that may be what you want. the mid and high temperature is a thing to your favour. But let me be honest, the way you did confused me quite, e.g. why did you use broadcast here?
johnmeyer wrote on 8/19/2008, 1:04 PM
I assume you use Videoscopes in Vegas to look at the levels. It is clear from the scopes that the highlights are way too bright. Make sure to use the zebra settings in the camcorder on the next shoot and crank things down to avoid this.

Your corrected using the offset and gain controls. This is generally not the correct thing because it shifts everything downwards. As a result, your blacks, which were already at 0 and therefore very contrasty, are even lower. I'd instead use a combination of levels and the broadcast filter to get the blown-out highlights legal (nothing you can do to recover them because they are gone), and then use color curves or the gamma control in the Levels fX to tweak the midtones, while watching on a calibrated monitor.

Monitor calibration is mandatory when doing this work. At the risk of sounding really snooty, if your monitor isn't calibrated, then you really shouldn't be doing any levels or color adjustments because you will, by definition, be correcting to a non-standard monitor and therefore will never get something that is correct.

[edit] Here's my attempt at a levels correction that I think is more "correct:"




Robert W wrote on 8/19/2008, 5:08 PM
Hi guys,

I really appreciate you all taking the time to have a look at these clips and give feedback. There are a couple of things I should probably explain, but jump down three paragraphs if you want to get to the technical stuff: The artist that features became well known for his home made audio cassette albums that he made in the 1980. He often did not even have a tape to tape copying system, so he would record the songs from scratch over and over again every time he wanted to give someone a copy of his record. But the tapes were very lo-fi.

I really wanted to get a pristine recording, so we lavished equipment on it and it worked really well. On the other hand, I had seen a few musical things he had appeared in, and they did the whole MTV whirling camera shots and everything, and it just looked rubbish. It was just like cameras flying around a piece of soap. I generally don't like concert films because they so often fail to capture the atmosphere. I do like the Ziggy Stardust movie, which is pretty grainy and quite contrasty (in the unrestored prints anyway). I also like the Beastie Boys "Awesome... I shot that!" (which used nearly all fans shots). They both capture the atmosphere quite well. So I deliberately took a fairly lo-fi approach to the shoot.

Anyway, most of you will probably wince at this, but I only manned two of the four cameras with actual cameramen. The other two were folk I knew that had a hobby like interest in cameras who I called and asked if they would like to come to a free gig. Then when they turned up, I shoved cameras in their hands and a few quid in their back pocket and told them to keep shooting. This was a deliberate decision to try and avoid the cliches of concert films. I got everyone to shoot the support acts so we could give basic coaching and direction to the two non-cameramen during that, so they would get the basic idea of what we wanted from them in the main gig. In terms of the footage we got out of them, this worked really well.

Unfortunately, the director calibrated the cameras at the start of the gig, when twilight was just descending. The venue employs very odd lighting which when mixed with the altering levels of daylight seemed to send the Z1s crazy. For instance the purple/blue pulpit visible in the footage actually appeared light grey to the eye. We thought there may have been an ultra violet light or something aimed at the stage sending everything haywire, but we confirmed afterwards that this was not the case.

On the tapes the two first fifths of the gig looked poor, but surprisingly the second set looked much better. Also, we think one of the cameras may have had a fault causing a considerable yellow cast that we did not detect during the shoot. The samples I uploaded before had already had some curves and colour correction applied to compensate for the above issues (although they may actually be making it worse). The following is the actual raw footage from the tapes (although some have crops applied) http://www.adjustableproductions.com/vidtest/rawunnested.mpg

With the above in mind, I am not too bothered about making something that looks conventionally beautiful. The subject of our film is not conventionally beautiful. Actually he is quite the opposite, he is a very fragile and complex character. He is also known for his cartoon like artwork. So for me, something that looks a bit stylistic rather than photographically correct is appealing.

Basically, I just need to get it to limp across the line and make it technically passable. I shall try out the presets kindly suggested by Kb_de and John Meyer. I very much appreciate all the advice offered! I shall probably come back begging for more!