How to improve output video quality « Videomaker Community Forums

dvdrockon
Member

Hi:

I have a 60 minute sports hobby video that is in final post production. Lot of movement across screen, with stationary scenery or medium distance interviews. It was filmed using a combination of 3ccd& 1 ccd cameras, with a majority of the footage filmed using a Sony DCRVX2100. Post production using the Adobe suite.

I am trying to get some great quality output video & experimenting with different looks. I guess I'm trying to get something that looks slightly different that the usual " oh-anyone can do it-that was video'd look". I particulary like the bleach bypass/saturated color look as seen in BBC America shows Top Gear and FWord, but have not really been able to duplicate the colorization. I have tweaked levels but it just doesn't do much.

I have even tried some older Magic Bullet looks, like Filmic & Bistro, but it didn't do much. I have tried a AE7 de-interlacing effect for footage to "clean it up a little", seems like a lot of work for not much result.

I understand the concept of garbage in garbage out, but I was wondering if anyone has suggestions on how to get a get a great looking output that just looks.... well, not so run of the mill. I just want it look like it wasn;t filmed by some goof using the equipment he has at home (which it was).

Thanks
D

Posted 4 years ago #
Coreece
Member

I'm not sure exactly what you're lookin for, but remember that the affect from deinterlacing is really not going to be visible while playing the video from the timline in your editing program. It becomes more prevalent when you watch it on a tv.

Adobe has decent color correctors and I would think that you could find your look by just continuing to mess around with the plugins. I usually can find my look by adjusting the saturation and contrast levels. I would encourage you to "harmonize effects" by using at least two seperate layers of the same video and placing different effects into each layer while setting the opacity of the top layer to at least 50 percent. For example, if you don't have a pro-mist filter, you can completely blurr the top layer. When this completely blurred video is reduced 50 percent opacity, it gives the original video in the bottom layer the soft silky look of the promist filter. I know this may sound a little confusing, but the idea is to make two layers of the same video look completely different and than to combine those differences by reducing the opacity in the top layer to get a new effect.

Posted 4 years ago #
dvdrockon
Member

I just read book called "the DV Rebel's Guide to making a Killer Action Film"

in the book the author advises to edit a basic cut of your video in your NLE, like say, Adobe PPro. Then in order to render the highest quality master and preserve the best quality, he says export the PPro project into After Effects. In After Effects:

-deinterlace
-remove artifacts
-color correct
-title
-fx transitions
etc

then he says to export the whole video as a a monster TIFF image sequence, which becomes your archival DVC master, as well as a compressable/viewable file like .AVI/MPEG for immediate viewing & checking. This is suppsoed to be the absolute best way to preserve video quality and follow a proper DV workflow.

Can anyone who is a professional confirm that this is a correct workflow, and is the difference signifiacent enough, if the your end product is a niche DVD?

What I want to know is will I get signifiacantly better looking video by following the above proceedure, rather than just exporting a video as a .AVI/MPEG---mixing it up in AE--then exporting again as a AVI for transcoding right into a DVD (using Adobe Encore)?

Thanks

Posted 4 years ago #