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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 :)

Why Colours Play Differently when burned to DVD?

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David Bea

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Hi I have shot a short on RED. It's been Graded and looks really great on the editing suite and on my computer. However when it's burned to DVD some scenes look really dark when you play them back on a DVD Player and from a Computer while other scenes look just like normal. These aren't only on old DVD players but on some new ones and computers too. That doesn't seem to be a rule as to which play the film back as it's normal graded colour and which play it back extremely dark.

I have no idea why this is, but someone said that the RED has known to have problems with this.

This is a huge problem for you as some people believe the scenes are just badly filmed when their not.

Has anyone got any ideas of why this might have happened and also more importantly how I can fix it!

Thanks a bunch.
 
thanks for your reponse. Glad its not a RED problem. I dont know loads about the technical side but do you know how I can fix this - as the editor and grader dont!?

As on the offline and online monitors the image is fine. Does the editor need to change his settings on his montior or something? How does he go about callibrating it all so it will work fine on any TV/Computer?

Thanks guys - this is seriously a huge help as it's really stressing me out as I need to sort this so it can be shown.

Thanks again

Dave
 
Problems come from LUTs and Gammas , TV is REC709 or 609 and what you see on monitor is RedSpace or any other gamma .
On every monitor you have new gamma . Best solution is to get
Monitor for Color Correction , then get software and manage your LUT
on monitor like this http://cinespace.rsrhq.com . Also load Luts to your CC software .
You can manage LUTs for Film out , for TV for DVD and
etc.
Cheaper solution is to make 100 tests and found different , and
in CC job always calculate this dif . Also you will always get
different in MAC VS PC picture . Also problem is with Downconverting
footage from HD to PAL . Try to do it not in FC , or better to Capture
it from IO card to any DV recorder , Analog signal not from FW .
For me best solution is working with Uncompressed TGA files , and just
scaled them from HD to 4:3 . You will get uncompressed TGA PAL files ,
with maximum quality .
 
Check your monitoring.

A- Are your computer monitors calibrated? If it's a CRT, set the black level.

B- What are you using to monitor your DVD? Is that monitor calibrated *to the DVD player*? The DVD player may put black level differently than the video I/O going to your computer if it's analog, due to some equipment putting analog black at 0 IRE and other equipment putting it at 7.5 IRE.

C- What editing system are you using? There might be something wrong in the levels conversion between the editing software and your DVD encoder.

etc. etc.
 
Hi, the monitors are top end and calibrated.
Not sure what you mean by monitor the DVD. We have played it on various
computers and DVDs and there seems to different scenes in all which play darker
than it should be.
We are using Final Cut and burning from DVD Studio Pro.
Is it worth just bringing the darker scenes up in the grade? It might not look great on really good systems but will hopefully make it light enough on others.

Also - we had to grade a few scenes quite a lot as it was underlit. By pulling the levels up a lot on these does that mean it could affect the way it plays on other systems?

Thanks
 
David Bea said:
Hi, the monitors are top end and calibrated.
Not sure what you mean by monitor the DVD. We have played it on various
computers and DVDs and there seems to different scenes in all which play darker
than it should be.
We are using Final Cut and burning from DVD Studio Pro.
Is it worth just bringing the darker scenes up in the grade? It might not look great on really good systems but will hopefully make it light enough on others.

Also - we had to grade a few scenes quite a lot as it was underlit. By pulling the levels up a lot on these does that mean it could affect the way it plays on other systems?

Thanks
Click to expand...

Most people don't realize how encoding a DVD can cause these kind of problems. The best thing to do is test your workflow by creating a few video test patterns, such as color bars, grey charts, etc. You then encode the entire video using the exact same resolution and the same process to burn to a DVD.

Next, rip the DVD back into Final Cut Pro using DVDxDV (http://www.dvdxdv.com). DVDxDV will give you a perfect digital copy of the DVD in a Quicktime file that can be imported into Final Cut Pro. You can use the trial version if you don't want to pay the $25 for the full version.

Compare the video levels against the original material with the Final Cut Scopes. If the levels shifted or changed in any way, go step by step through your process to find out what went wrong. Measure the result at each step with the scopes in Final Cut Pro.

Very common mistakes people make are to export out of Final Cut Pro using the "export to compressor" option. Never do this. Always create a self contained movie. All standard definition DVDs are in a different color space than HD video. To avoid color space shifts, make sure you test your workflow where the down sizing of the video happens. The color needs to be converted in the correct way.
 
It might be your MPEG encoder that is "causing" the problems. You encode with luminance level of 16-235, since that is what TVs can display, but you are viewing a luminance of 0-255 in your CC program.

Edgar
 
Nuetral color accurate wide gamut broadcast monitors are a must if you're doing critical color correcting.
 
I just want to also mention that HD and SD are completely different color spaces. If you are using DVD SP then you should be color correcting for STANDARD DEFINITION. If you are sending an HD sequence to DVD SP then it is doing a colorspace conversion between HD and SD, this will of course result in darker images.

Place your HD sequence in an SD timeline. DO your color correct in SD color space with monitors calibrated for SD and your DVD will look fine.

David
 
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