Good R3D (and ProRes) footage, AWFUL dvd

[Steve Sherrick]

DVD's do look kinda crappy, in general.

Homemade ones do. But I've seen some pretty impressive Hollywood DVDs. But then again, they are using Compression Artists.

 

[Florian Stadler]

The problem I think is that you are not grading your footage. Your blacks are milky to start with:

Red leaves the bottom of the curve open but noisy. You have to bury that part of the curve in black or you will end up with noise that gets worse when compressed. The background in your shot does not have a lot of information in it yet it places in zone II or even III in your non-grade. It should really land in Zone 0/I

 

[Brian Reisdorf]

Using redrush for the prores conversion is the most likely reason for your image troubles. Rendering from the camera look source usually results in a more washed out, noiser image. Try rendering the h proxies in compressor instead and see how that works for you.

 

[Paul Harrill]

Florian - yes, some of the milkyness is the "non-grading" but some might be a screwy Apple gamma issue.

For example, I just tried the Bitvice demo. The quality is a step up, and it looks like the gamma is different.

Judge for yourself in the screenshot below from my Bitvice test:

EDIT: By the way, in reference to an earlier comment that I shouldn't be grabbing such large screenshots of SD dvds, yeah, I know a screenshot of a SD DVD really shouldn't be this big. My reasoning was that, since I'm not posting clips (where the MOVEMENT of the blockiness makes it very apparent) it'd be better to exaggerate the blockiness. In the case of the still immediately above this text, however, I think the still demonstrates that, even when enlarged, it is difficult to see compression problems (i.e., Bitvice is doing a better job than Compressor).

 

[Brian Reisdorf]

it's actually hardered to see what your talking about when the image is blown up. Just post it at its full DVD frame size.

 

[Paul Harrill]

Sorry - for the confusion. What I should have said was, "the larger the image the larger the issues should be -- and, as you can see, the compression is MUCH BETTER in the 2nd image even with it blown up"

1st image = post #16
2nd image = post #24

(EDIT: I have tried to clarify this point in #24 as well.)

 

[sander kamp]

I just found out that Motion can do a conversion from 10 bit to 8 bit with dithering. In 'project properties' choose 8 bit and turn on dithering. In my case it helped to take away blockiness in certain areas that appeared after converting 10 bit ProRes quicktimes to 8 bit jpeg quicktimes in FCP.