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Videoon 10/17/2009
OT: Greenpeace commercials shot on the 5dmkII
Bjorn, I think we may be talking at cross purposes, because that was my point exactly (and no offence taken). The 5D has quickly gained cult status and because of the exceptional skills of people like Phillip Bloom, everyone seems to think they can randomly point the camera and achieve the same thing. Conversely, there are reports such as the BBC's, who rule out a camera in a similarly arbitrary way. I believe that if you handed a mobile phone to a select few people they could still create exceptional video, and that there are millions who couldn't regardless of how fantastic their camera might be. Incidentally, an aside about the BBC here... their point about the 5D was that the down-conversion and aliasing was unacceptable, which could then play havoc with HDTV compression. Well as someone who views BBC HD on a regular basis, let me tell you that their broadcasts and productions are largely considered to be the worst of any of the UK's HD output. Smear, crushed contrast, compression artefact, you name it, even their studio programmes have excessive grain. This makes their assessment of the 5D even more ironic.
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Videoon 10/17/2009
OT: Greenpeace commercials shot on the 5dmkII
"Better educate yourself..." Who is this comment aimed at, exactly?
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Videoon 10/17/2009
OT: Greenpeace commercials shot on the 5dmkII
I've seen some dreadful rubbish shot on the 5DM2. Then we have the BBC telling everyone that the 5D isn't fit for any serious production work. Conversely there are stunning films such as those from Philip Bloom that teach us that it's all about the skill of the photographer and very little about the tools he uses.
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Videoon 10/8/2009
Youtube/Vimeo/Facebook HD uploads: sRGB or cRGB?
Given that the vast majority of YouTube users will be viewing on a monitor using a cRGB colour space, I would suggest that's what should be used. If you have uploaded something as sRGB, take a screen grab and see if the black level is still correct, if it is that'll rule out YouTube doing any sort of behind-the-scenes manipulation when the video is re-encoded.
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Videoon 9/23/2009
"Render as" what for HD1080i?
Yes, you need to render to a format suitable for Blu-Ray (MPEG-2 or AVCHD) and burn a Blu-ray disc... or... you can put the same footage on a DVD disc created as a Blu-ray (Google for Blu-ray on DVD) or an SDHC card for players that have support for such things.
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Videoon 9/16/2009
"Render as" what for HD1080i?
As I'm sure you know, DVD-Video only supports a maximum resolution of 720×576 pixels or in your case, 720×480 as your project is NTSC. Vegas or DVD Architect will need to reduce the resolution of the project when rendering, and for that, the best option from the 'Render As' dialogue is type: MainConcept MPEG-2 and DVD Architect NTSC Widescreen video stream (or the 4:3 equivalent). That'll prevent the footage having to be re-rendered by DVD Architect. Don't forget to render your audio separately...
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Videoon 9/16/2009
What is the best format for a DVD player?
With any of the DVD Architect MPEG-2 (DVD) templates, you have to render twice, once for video and again for audio, ensuring to render the same region each time. You can choose whether to use WAV or Dolby Digital (ensure that the total does not exceed the maximum allowed by the DVD format).
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Videoon 9/15/2009
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>I would expect Lars would prefer a codec and player that the end user already has, so they don't have to download something just to watch HIS video< The CoreAVC CODEC is a playback H.264 software solution, not a proprietary encode CODEC such as CineForm. It can be used by Windows Media Player, VirtualDub etc. to play back any H.264 video, either created by Vegas, QuickTime etc or by an AVCHD camera. I suggested it because the OP wants smooth -playback- of videos on his PC, and as CoreAVC is CUDA enabled, thereby using the advanced GPU features on nVidia cards, thought it might be worth a try, especially as it is widely regarded to be the fastest H.264 CODEC available. Website: http://www.coreavc.com/
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Videoon 9/15/2009
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John is right, QuickTime is an absolute bear on Windows and I don't think it has been optimised for the platform for years... Why not install a H.264 CODEC that'll work in Windows Media Player and see how that fares? Try CoreAVC, which is also optimised for CUDA video hardware.
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Videoon 9/15/2009
Color Correction - Best Practices?
Richard, thank you for your reply, and given that all the controls impact one another, the "correct", or should we say "most appropriate" order could well differ according to the end result. For example, I found that adding a sharpening filter (oddly enough, even with the value at 0) pushes previously set legal video levels outside of that range, so unless a broadcast filter is applied the levels control always has to be after sharpening. Conversely, without sharpening I always put levels first.
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Videoon 9/14/2009
Best Consumer camera for personal use?
>Now I have my shiny new Canon Legria HF-S10 (this is its name here in Europe) and maaan! It does look like all clips've been shot on a broadcast camera.< Shoot in cine mode, tweak the settings and you'll be amazed at what that can produce. Cine mode will retain more highlights by-the-way.
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Videoon 9/12/2009
Color Correction - Best Practices?
>Afterwards Levels...< I've read a few tutorials lately that have levels then colour correction. What is the general convention on this? I usually have mine in that order.
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Videoon 9/11/2009
Smooth Start/Stop in Pan/Crop
Grazie, what I'm personally trying to replicate is the type of behaviour you'd see with a manual pan on a fluid head, a slow, gradual start, a smooth pan followed by a slow, gradual stop. I haven't experimented with all the suggestions yet, but a velocity envelop will certainly change pan speed, but I think it'll also change the speed of the footage. My panning clip is going in a PIP box and is a 1920×1080 source, so the quality of source footage isn't really an issue.
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Videoon 9/10/2009
Smooth Start/Stop in Pan/Crop
Mike, Earl, thank you both. That tutorial is excellent, and indeed, smooth is the option for me!
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Videoon 9/9/2009
Best Consumer camera for personal use?
Just a few hours ago I put a rough edit (edit is rough, colour correction took a while) of footage from a HF S100 on a SDHC card and have it running on a big Kuro plasma from a Blu-ray player. The four people who've seen it so far, all thought it must have come from a broadcast HD camera, and three of them are professional TV editors. So another strong vote for the Canon, but I'd factor in the cost of a spare battery and Cineform, both of which are fairly critical. It's not so good with low light though, so if you're shooting family parties bear that in mind.
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Videoon 9/9/2009
Smooth Start/Stop in Pan/Crop
Thank you! I've been using Vegas for years, but its functions never cease to surprise me and seemingly, I will never get to the bottom of them either! However, I don't have "slow-in" or "slow-out", just "slow" and the other options, so will give that a try.
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Videoon 9/4/2009
Increase Contrast Without Blown Out Highlights?
Thanks. I have used curves - to a limited degree - in Photoshop, but never in Vegas. I can Google for tutorials but if anyone has specific recommendations they'd be appreciated.
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Videoon 9/1/2009
WOT: Flat Panel TV
THX have a set of broad guidelines at: http://www.thx.com/home/setup/display.html
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Videoon 7/24/2009
HD Luminance Values?
>The bottom line is, both 601 and 709 call for Y' values where the legal values fall into the 16-235 range (for 8-bit).< Thank you, most helpful, although I could've lived without the confusing sermon about confusion. :-)
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Videoon 7/13/2009
DVDA Help: DVD not playing on XBox360
What type of blanks are you using? I've had this happen to me, and it was down to a brand name blank changing the source of their discs. If you're not using Taiyo Yuden branded discs, check with DVD Identifier as to their origin and whether that has changed. Discs usually play more reliably in ROM drives, so that's a bit odd, but it does explain why there's an issue with the XBox, since it also uses a PC-type drive. By-the-way, not that it matters but in the interests of professionalism, it's "disc" with a "C" not "disk" with a "K". :-)
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Videoon 7/13/2009
Is a 4.40GB MPEG-2 file too big to render to DVD?
"When you rendered the audio you chose a file type, either .wav or .ac3. From the template settings shown you must have chosen .ac3, since .wav doesn't have a bitrate as such." That's not correct; from the render settings, it looks like the OP has used MPEG-Audio, since Dolby Digital doesn't have PSM modes. Going from 224kbs to 192kbs Dolby Digital is only going to save a little.
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Videoon 7/12/2009
Viewing HD Rushes on Panasonic BD35 via DVD-R?
Thank you! That's an excellent solution. I could render AVCHD out of Vegas and go to DVD-R, SD and even DVD-RW and all would work on the Blu-ray players I tried (including the Panasonic). That'll save a lot of headaches.
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Videoon 10/6/2008
Issues with 5.1 Audio
Thanks for taking the time to test and reproduce this, I'll file a bug report as you suggest.
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Videoon 10/6/2008
Issues with 5.1 Audio
Blink - thank you for the reply. >What is the alternate program you are using for testing? Are you sure it is actually seeing a LFE track or is it simply being extrapolated from the center track?< TMPGenc XPress 4 allows me to extract (or convert to WAV) any of the embedded channels, either to individual files or two-channel combinations. There's definitely a separate LFE. I've been testing with film material, so it's easy to tell the centre - with hard dialogue - and the LFE apart. >There are also some cams that just plain don't produce a LFE track.< These particular files are from a Hauppauge. I work with a lot of TV people and this is one of my capture devices. Essentially it can capture an incoming AC-3 stream and just embed that into the TS. The reason I have tested with film sources is because it's a good way of knowing that the source isn't problematic and does have six active channels. I've uploaded a 30(ish) second clip to: http://rapidshare.com/files/151510256/Sunshine-Opening.TS.html ...and the demuxed AC-3 audio is at: http://rapidshare.com/files/151527616/Sunshine-Opening.ac3.html That should have some LFE content. Incidentally, there are some legitimate uses for the LFE, added headroom, time alignment etc., it just gets abused and is thought of as the "bass" channel (which it isn't) because that's where playback filtered bass usually ends up. Producers are just as guilty of these misunderstandings as consumers.
Stuart Robinson
Offline, Member since 7/3/2006