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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Challenge to Red: HD to SD...

Out of curiosity, are most car spots shot on film transfered at 23.98 or 29.97 frame rate? Could the 2:3 pull down and too much vertical resolution be the problem?

I am seeing some aliasing too when my projects are output to DVD.
 
I did drop it into a FCP time line.
Played it out of a Kona 3 to a Sony MEU-WX1 Monitor
and out side of some slight Moire patterns in the grill there isn't any significant aliasing going on. Perhaps I just used different settings than you.
I did notice aliasing when scaling down in AE but to blatantly say that REDCINE will always produce these results regardless of settings is not true.
 
Please share your RedCine settings.

Thanks,

Leo
 
Whoa...

I just noticed you wrote, "AE;" in your earlier post you said all was done in RedCine.

Did you scale down in RedCine? That's the problem. Or, one of the problems; we have to go to through a lot to mitigate it in AE.

Thanks,

Leo
 
Be sure to use one of the "smoother" options in redcine. Mitchell, gausse, etc. on troublesome shots.
 
No. I was just doing some testing in AE. I did all the scaling in REDCINE.
Can't remember all the settings right now will have to wait until I get back to the office in the morning. All the settings were set to best or maximum
and the filter was set to sinc not linear.
 
I'll be shooting today, so I won't be able to work on this until Friday. Fortunately, this commercial has no car shots, just a bunch of little kids.

Frankly, the aliasing issue is becoming so frustrating that I'll probably give it a rest until next Monday.

Thanks, Deadkrash; I've used all the quality settings including Lossless, but I've not tried the sinc filter. Actually, I see very little difference in the one's I've tried; hopefully this is better.

I greatly appreciate all the help and suggestions from everyone here; just wish Red would respond with a definitive recommendation.

Best regards to all,

Leo
 
Leo,

have you tried setting the scale down/ resize quality to "best" and maybe applying some anti aliasing - when using compressor? (under frame control pane in the inspector).

I just down-rezzd a commercial we shot on HDcam. Just watched it on Tv and it looks good. Before i used FCP HD sequence to SD sequence (though no Blur applied) and it looked terrible, compressor without the above mentioned settings looked terrible too.

I know my example is not directly RED related, but maybe it´ll work anyways:)

best,

Sidney
 
Is it related to 2:3 pulldown?

Is it related to 2:3 pulldown?

What happens when you drop a 24fps clip into a 29.97 FCP sequence? How is the pulldown handled? Could this be the cause to to the problem? Has anyone tried rendering a clip in AE and introing the 3:2 pulldown with correct interlacing? This is a VERY annoying problem, verging on being a deal breaker...
 
It is related to standard definition interlace. When a horizontal line moves up or down through the frame it tends to shimmy up and down as it passes between the active line and the nonactive line. Diagonal lines alias with lots of jaggies. Good broadcast standard def cameras, and even some HD cameras with matching decks that have built in down converters like Varicam, have special hardware that helps smooth these artifacts while retaining the appearance of sharpness in the rest of the shot. These issues are only visible on an NTSC interlaced monitor. When you transfer 35mm film to standard def tape a very expensive hardware down converter is used. So our problem is to find a cost effective way to down convert for interlaced NTSC properly.
 
Hello Leo,
I gave your sample a try and converted it to NTSC using Algolith (largely unknown conversion software). Algolith uses motion interpolation and has anti-alias features, no blurring or sharpening is used. I posted the result to your ftp site for your review ("Red Test NTSC Algolith.mpg"). What do you think, does it pass?

I seems to me the problem with your footage is to translate a smooth camera pan at 24p to 30i. That's not possible without motion interpolation and its a tough problem. Ultimately this could be resolved by shooting and mastering in 50p or 60p.

George
 
I realized I was working with a center crop - and uploaded another full frame sample. In this sample I also blurred the chroma channels to avoid dot crawl on the orange light. In NTSC chroma has only about half the full pixel bandwidth so the blur is needed to bring the chroma within "NTSC range".

George
 
The problem with that is that it would not be a 24p look. There are solutions for other HD cameras with their matching decks which down convert an acceptable picture, and for 35mm film because of the high end hardware down converters used in modern telecines, and there needs to be a cost effective solution for using the Red camera at 24P and down converting for NTSC that looks just as good.
 
Mark Crabtree said:
The problem with that is that it would not be a 24p look.
Click to expand...

Yeah, OK, I'm going to upload a third sample without motion interpolation. I just wanted to see if we can arrive at something acceptable.

On the other hand maybe we are too worried about the NTSC thing. NTSC is in the coffin, the last rites have been sung, to cover is about to get closed shut and nobody is crying. Maybe we should worry more about how our stuff looks like once it has been passed trough a couple of hardware MPEG encoders and decoders....

George
 
February 2009 analog TV will stop transmitting but there will be NTSC dubs going to TV stations for many months, perhaps even years after at many stations that will be trasmitting in digital but only up converting all their local content because they can not afford to convert their whole facility, news and production, to HD. For all of us in the TV commercial biz we need a solution ASAP. We are shooting now and delivering broadcast content now.
 
COMPOSITE NTSC is going out quickly as flatscreen TVs take over and broadcasting will be MPEG data streams. And flatscreens are all internally upconverting to a high progressive frame rate with various levels of quality. It's a whole different world of artifacts as what we are used to from the old NTSC TVs.
 
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