Tape Issue?
 

I am not sure if this lies in a tape issue or camera issue.

Here's the situation.

I recently setup a shoot for an interview. I had the camera connected to DV Rack and to a field monitor. All lighting adjustments were made and the picture looked great on both monitors including the viewfinder on the Sony PD-150.

However, I shoot it and bring it back to editing, and the picture looks semi-washed out and some areas look pixelated.. I am using the RT.X100 editing card and using the same field monitor I used at the shoot with the playback from the card..

The only think I could think of is how it wrote it to the tape, but isn't dv just 1's and 0's anyways?

Any ideas?

Thanks

DV is 1s and 0s. It has error correction so if some of these 1s and 0s can't be read then you'll get dropouts. If you have bad tape, then it would show up as dropouts. Dropouts also come from other causes. I assume you don't have dropouts.

When you capture, I don't think there's any way you can screw it up if it's done through firewire. It's possible to lose non-video and non-audio information (user bits, timecode, date/time), but you can't screw up the video.

Things I would check:
1- The pixelation: This might indicate that your system is dropping down to a lower resolution so you can get more real-time. Or, there may be a settings mismatch that is causing your editing program (presumably Premiere Pro) to resize your video. Try checking your footage and project/sequence settings match. Making a new project using canned presets may be faster.

2- Monitor: Is it connected to your deck/camera which is connected to the RTX.100 via firewire? (And not analog.) Maybe your card doesn't have analog outputs, I'm not that familiar with it.

3- Monitor calibration: Try feeding it color bars and calibrating brightness/contrast. If contrast is too low you can get a "washed out" look, although it might not be the washed out look your are describing.
http://www.videouniversity.com/tvbars2.htm
Ambient light hitting your monitor can also make it look washed out.

Glen,

First of all I appreciate your time in responding.

I am using the Matrox RT.X100 with a breakout box from the editing card. I have the field monitor connected to the S-VIDEO off the breakout box.

I used a Sony PD-150 camera with Sony DVCAM Prof tapes. I shoot it using the Sony 16:9 Electronic Wide, 7.5 IRE turned off.

I notice it's the background that looks grainy and that the blacks look somewhat pixelated. However during the shoot the camera showed no signs of this at anytime.

Now even when I play the tape back from the camera to the same field monitor during the shoot with the same cable it looks the same.

basically after the interview was written tape it doesn't look as crisp and clean as it did when it was recording.

Sony Tape heads a problem?

I guess I found a solution..

Setup the shoot and calibrate the camera at 7.5 IRE.

Then before recording switch it to 0 IRE.

So when it records it actually looks darker, but when I bring it in digitally to the matrox system it doesn't look washed out..