Stripes at top left of DV frame
 

I have a tape from a client which on computer (or letterboxed on a 4:3 set) shows a black and white stripe over the first couple of lines and about half way across the frame. I've seen this many times before, but as it doesn't interfere and most clients aren't bothered its not a problem. I now have to get rid of it and was contemplating masking it out in Premiere Pro.

Does anyone know the easiest way to do this, furthermore is there anything that can be done by the guy shooting in the first instance to prevent this being a problem again? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Regards to all


Roland

This is probably due to the camera. Many older cameras did not keep areas out of the NTSC safe zone clear. I'm sure you are familiar with the title safe zone. Until it started being relevant with the use of computers, some camera manufacturers did not keep the area outside of that area clean or didn't have pixels dedicated to that area. What camera is being used?

I second that. There was a discussion about this problem a few weeks ago in the XL2 forum.

I would normally agree with you, but the camera I believe is an FX1! I'm planning to add a png mask top and bottom (I'm going to do both for balance) to remove the offending mark. I did consider that it might be a timecode area, I confess its quite agravating and the customer of course wants a resolution of the issue.

Any further comments would be appreciated.

Regards


Roland

Roland, I see this a lot in footage handed to me for editing, especially from the XL2. It's easy to simply crop it out if your NLE has the option. I use FCP where the Motion tab allows you crop the individual edges and soften them up a bit too if you want. If I'm using footage from different sources and only some of it has this problem, I use the built in crop. But if all the footage has the same problem, using a mask as you suggest is probably easiest.

What NLE are you using?