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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 :)

Good R3D (and ProRes) footage, AWFUL dvd

P

Paul Harrill

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Yesterday I was doing a simple 5 minute test sequence of Red footage in order to test a REDrushes workflow... and everything's hunky dory except for the last step, using Compressor and DVD Studio Pro.

Here's the backstory:

Original footage was shot with the Red camera, transcoded to ProRes422 (using REDrushes), and edited in FCP with ProRes422 (HQ) codec. So far so good.

I open the self-contained quicktime movie -- a ProRes422 file -- after exporting. Still looks great.

I take this self-contained quicktime movie into Compressor, and choose the following:

90min best
two pass vBR - bit rate 6.8 to 8.0

Burn it... and it looks like CRAP. Incredibly blocky. So I try it again, this time using:

90min best
one pass CBR - bit rate 7.0

Again, blocky. REALLY bad.

I can't figure out why this doesn't look great: The original footage looks great. There are no graphics, etc. It's short, so I can crank up the bit rate.... and I've seen better DVDs burned from MiniDV.

The one thing I'll say is that there are some significant shadow areas in the frame. But these shadow areas don't look blocky or very noisy at all in ProRes. And, besides, I've seen dozens of feature films on DVD that don't look blocky at all in the shadow areas. So what's the problem?

Can someone enlighten me? Is the problem Compressor? And if so, what should I switch to?
 
Couple of things to look out for.

First, make sure you aren't accidentally interlacing the footage.

Second, some people have had issues with downrezing RED footage because it's too sharp and creates jagged lines. If this is what you are seeing, you might apply a bit of blur before downrezing to SD.

It took me a couple of tries before I could make it look good, but now I'm ecstatic about the SD results I get.
 
Hm... it's not jagged or too sharp.

It's just REALLY blocky in the softer focus, darker background areas of the frame. I can post an image if need be.
 
Instead of going straight to MP2, try down converting to SD in FCP and see if the issues are there. Need to know at what stage the artifacts are appearing.
 
Ok, 3 voices for doing a SD downconvert. I guess that's what I'll do!

I've done this using MPEG Streamclip, but not FCP. Any tips on the method that produces the best results? Should I just create a ProRes422(HQ) NTSC timeline and drag my footage there and export?
 
Just tried burning an SD dvd. Still blocky.

Here's the thing: I think the blockiness could be from the mosquito noise in the soft-focus, shadow area of the shot. It's there a little bit in the HD ProRes footage, it's there in the SD downconvert, and it's AWFUL in the .m2v, no matter how I get there (via prores HD or SD).

The thing is, in the HD ProRes footage, I *like* the way it looks -- it looks like a healthy kind of film-grain noise. But by the time it gets to DVD... ugh.

Below is a link to an uncompressed still from the original HD ProRes 422. Look to the right of her head, in the shadow area. It looks acceptable on a monitor with 2.2 gamma and pretty nasty on a monitor set up with 1.8 gamma.

http://www.lovellfilms.com/img/noisy.pct

Anyway, am I right that this is the culprit? And if so, what do I do about it?

Surely, I can't be limited to shooting only bright sunny images with the Red!

Tips?

ph

ps. Funny expression in the frame grab, I know -- my gf's eating some popcorn and reaching for another handful. (I chose this frame b/c there's very little motion blur in the shot.)
 
Try this:

When you've imported your ProRes master into Compressor and made the settings you described above, then:

Select the Frame Controls tab (3rd option from the left in the inspector) and make these settings:

Frame Controls On:
Retiming: (Best) High quality Motion Compensated
Resize Filter: Statistical Prediction
Deinterlace Filter: Best (Motion Compensated)
Adaptive Details: On
Antialias: 0
Detail Level: 0
Field Output: Same as Source

When I first made DVD's as you described I had the same problem, I discovered that tab and it made all the difference in the world.
 
Can this have something to do with converting 10-bit files to 8-bit? I see the same thing happening on my screen when converting prores to jpeg quicktimes. Blockiness or banding shows up in certain areas in the image where you would expect smooth gradations . I guess you should dither when going from 10 to 8 bits but I don't know of any software that does that.
 
MrGlory said:
Try this:

When you've imported your ProRes master into Compressor and made the settings you described above, then:

Select the Frame Controls tab (3rd option from the left in the inspector) and make these settings:

Frame Controls On:
Retiming: (Best) High quality Motion Compensated
Resize Filter: Statistical Prediction
Deinterlace Filter: Best (Motion Compensated)
Adaptive Details: On
Antialias: 0
Detail Level: 0
Field Output: Same as Source

When I first made DVD's as you described I had the same problem, I discovered that tab and it made all the difference in the world.
Click to expand...

Came here to post exactly this, but Scott beat me to it. This has worked fantastically for us and as long as your aspect is correct it'll drastically improve the look of anything kicked out of Compressor (Especially when downconverting).

Just be careful and double check your final product because some specific codecs have adverse affects when you turn on the frame controls (DNxHD I'm looking at you)....this is pretty rare though, and the standards (DVD MPEG, H264, and Prores422 specifically) work great with this method.
 
When going to SD with very high detail (without a Crimson/monkey extraxt step) it MAY be an idea to use the gauss filter to go down from the 4k files to SD, and then (if you need to) apply some sharpening on thSD file, if you feel that is needed.

Not as a general rule, just try it.

Usually (but not always) these kind of problems come off misunderstood development of the files (if you do offline/online). Working dirctly off the camera "on-set" settings.

I plan to make a "RED test" showing the difference in result depending on workflow, but that won't be much help in your case, I guess...
 
update: I just did another test from the original HD ProRes 422 (HQ). Took that (high def) file and went straight into compressor and did:

One pass CBR
8.0 bit rate (I was able to crank it this high b/c it's just a 40 second clip)

... and then I followed MrGlory's suggestions.

Result: Not much improvement. Still just a patches of blockiness in the shadow areas.

Ugh. Am I just being too picky?

There was a request for files. Here's what I'm willing to offer (any and all to anyone):

- original R3D (448 mb)

- hd prores 422 (hq) (493.3 mb)

- 4k tiff export from R3D (48mb) -- looks pretty clean

- pct export from hd prores 422 (hq) -- looks a wee bit noisier

- m2v using most recent (1 pass CBR 8.0 bitrate, manual frame controls, etc) settings (40 mb)


How to get this to you, I dunno. I don't have that much server space. But I'm willing to get them to someone if you let me know how. (Yousendit or similar, maybe?)


I'm totally willing to admit that I'm doing something wrong on the front end. I've been teaching myself the workflow of this camera and it could be a newbie mistake. I'd just like to know what it IS. A little more background:

- Footage was shot at 4K Redcode 36 at 320ASA, 24fps (1/48 shutter) -- that is, fairly "normal" settings. (The image looks a little moody, sure, but I can't believe this image is a huge problem for the camera.)

- Transcoded via REDrushes to ProRes 422 (HQ) using "camera lookspace" parameters -- in my case, "Redspace" for both

- The file wasn't "graded" before going to prores, or after. Maybe this is the problem? But if so, why?


Finally, I was looking at this on an upscaling DVD player hooked up (via hdmi) to a 26" HD lcd television. BAD. So I though, oh, maybe it's because it's a SD dvd on HD lcd (even though store-bought SD dvds with much higher compression have looked amazing on this setup). So I watched it on a 4:3 video projector hooked up to a SD dvd player: Still looked like crap. So I'm baffled.

Ok. Thanks to everyone for your help so far.
 
Here's a big screencapture from the last DVD trial burn:

noisy%20dvd%20burn%20big.png
 
Hmm, that's actually not too bad for Compressor (based on our experiences here), I think you'd have to look beyond for something better software/hardware-wise when it comes to encoding the shadow ranges like that.
 
u have to understand that any dvd footage full screened to 1920 wont look amazing, u can check the actual size instead.
u can rar archive and split the r3d file and upload to rapidshare.
 
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