No good render with my new bought DV-camera ??? :-(

UFP wrote on 1/23/2005, 4:30 PM
The Dynamic Noise Reduction plugin does it job, thanks.

But actually Im kinda desperate now...I just bought that Sony TRV14 (not TRV19 as I said before) and cant seem to get a good render from my recorded digital video! :(

To start with, the rendered file is much darker than the preview window. That's when I encode it with MPEG2 PAL DVD, or PAL AVI. With AVI (uncompressed) the colors are kinda normal, but a bit 'colorless'.

It looks like I cant make a DVD from my DV camera that I just bought for €480, without blurry quality and noise! Please someone explain to me that this is not true!!

Comments

mrjhands wrote on 1/23/2005, 4:52 PM
"It looks like I cant make a DVD from my DV camera that I just bought for €480, without blurry quality and noise! Please someone explain to me that this is not true!!"

So you've gone ahead and rendered it out and burnt it to DVD and played it back thru your set top DVD player and television and see this?
Or are ya rendering to preview in your Vegas configured media player?
which is it man;;;
oh, and I don't know your level of expertise with all this, as there are many very learned folks here, but I am just beyond novice and reading your posts previous you may be new, but by what means are you capturing? BIG MISTAKE I made when I bought my first capture device was just going to Best Buy and reading the boxes on the shelf, read the language on my Pinnacle capture device box and it appeared to be "the easiest way to capture analog video to your PC" for editing....so I just bought it A FREAKIN DVC-80!... Yah gave me pretty decent 320X240 CAPTURE RESOLUTION MAX!!!! So, Im cruising along capturing and I open the capture in Vegas, which cuz of my preferences, naturally opens it at full 720X480 resolution.So I say to myself, gee, this sure looks like sh*t..., please dont tell me that I cant make good DVDs with my $90 capture device, please tell me this aint so!!!! Naturally all pixely and funky at that resolution...course you probably are firewiring this in?...Point is, it may NOT be so, there more than likely is a novice error going on...hope Im on track
John
mrjhands wrote on 1/23/2005, 4:55 PM
And, how does the video look if you hook your camera DIRECTLY to the line input of your television and play it back?
UFP wrote on 1/24/2005, 4:25 AM
"So you've gone ahead and rendered it out and burnt it to DVD and played it back thru your set top DVD player and television and see this?
Or are ya rendering to preview in your Vegas configured media player?"

- I played back the rendered file in BS Player, which wasnt nice. I also burnt it to DVD and is more or less the same, although I see less noise, which is good :-) In both cases it is to dark.

"...course you probably are firewiring this in?..."

- Yes, I captured the video using firewire and video capture inside Vegas.

"And, how does the video look if you hook your camera DIRECTLY to the line input of your television and play it back?"

- It looks more or less the same as the captured video on my pc.

Here are some screenshots:

=== Screenshot of captured video in preview window in Vegas ===

http://www.tomkorver.nl/1.jpg

=== Screenshot of video with some saturation & contrast added in preview window Vegas ===

http://www.tomkorver.nl/2.jpg

=== Screenshot in Windows Movie Maker 2 of the rendered video ===

http://www.tomkorver.nl/3.jpg

(Please copy & paste the url into your browser, dont know how to make a link)

Please let me know if you can help me further with this.

Thanks! -Tom
farss wrote on 1/24/2005, 5:09 AM
Ah, yes well, poor camera!
Video cameras unless told otherwise tend to set exposure for the birghtest thing in the frame, in this case the outside light! The rest of the frame is WAY underexposed. But it's not like film, there's only 8 bits per channel and what you're trying to 'see' is probably using 2 or 3 bits out of the 8 so when you try to brighten it up you just get gunge. Sorry if that's not a very technical description, I;ve got a clear idead of it in my head but explaining it is elluding me.

Anyway, what to do? Well not much I suspect you can do to pull that video back. In future, if at all possible get MORE light on your subject, with video short of pointing the camera at the sun you cannot have too much light.
If you have something really bright in the frame but what you want is much darker see if your camera has a 'Backlight setting. This will tell the camera to set the exposure for the darkest area in the frame. Conversly if what you want is brightly lit against a dark background then use the 'Spotlight' setting in the camera. If you don't have either of these then you'll need to avoid scenes with high contrast like this one, if nothing else turn the outside light off.

Bob.
rs170a wrote on 1/24/2005, 7:03 AM
Step # 1 is to block ALL extraneous light from getting in to the room.
Put a piece of cardboard or similar type of blocking device (dark towel, sheet, etc.) over top of the door/window in the background. As Bob said, it's forcing your auto iris way down so anything you can do to block it will help immensely.
Step # 2 is to add some light to the area being shot. This could be as simple as pointing a worklight towards the ceiling to bounce the light off of and reflect back down on to the talent.
Make sure the light isn't too close to the ceiling because the resulting heat build up could have the potential to start a fire.
Also, if you're using a worklight, make sure the stand is secure from accidentally being bumped and falling over. This is usually done with sandbags.

Mike
UFP wrote on 1/24/2005, 4:17 PM
"If you have something really bright in the frame but what you want is much darker see if your camera has a 'Backlight setting."

Ah I see, I found backlight. That makes recordings nicer. Question thou: in which case should I NOT use backlight? As far as I can see it only makes it better anyway.

Thx rs170a for your advice. I hope you were not telling me this out of experience...: "Make sure the light isn't too close to the ceiling because the resulting heat build up could have the potential to start a fire." :O
rs170a wrote on 1/24/2005, 4:26 PM
in which case should I NOT use backlight?
Configure your set properly (i.e. block out unwanted light) and you won't have to. Also, if at all possible, make sure your talent aren't wearing pure white clothing. A very pale blue or yellow will look just as good and you won't have the hassles of their shirt, blouse, etc. driving the camera's iris crazy.

I hope you were not telling me this out of experience

Fortunately not. I have seen people melt things though (such as the power cord for the light) because they weren't paying attention to how the light was mounted :-(

Mike