I own a NTSC XL-1. I'm looking for the best picture quality I can get out of it. I will post any and all information regarding improving picture quality of NTSC I find off the internet. I ask that you do the same. Thank you.

Taken from ADVANCED VISUAL SYSTEMS Website...

Q. What is the recommended NTSC colormap for film recording?
Q: I've been trying to get a color scheme that looks good for NTSC, but haven't hit on one as of yet. Is there a colormap that looks good and has values of saturation and brightness give good results?

A:

1. Stay away from highly saturated colors - red especially. That's why at the last Democratic National Convention, the stage was done up in salmon, ivory, and powder blue (as opposed to RED, WHITE, and BLUE) - they were conscious of the way it would look "Televised". Red, particularly, is to be avoided.

2. Stay away from repetitive vertical patterns. The way NTSC encodes signals is across a scan line and it only has so many "bits" of change that it can do within a single scan line. After that storage is used up, things start to fuzz out. That's why you never see newscasters (or backgrounds, etc.) wear vertical stripes.

3. Stay away from brightly colored backgrounds. Bright foregrounds on dark (black, blue, etc.) work more effectively in terms of having the foreground differentiated from the background.


http://help.avs.com/AVS5/faq/ntsc.asp

Doesn't NTSC stand for "Never the same color"? (grin)

Vic

High quality comparison between Digital Television and NTSC, giving good general, visual reference...


http://www.knpb.org/engineering/dtv/compare.asp

Another website visually comparing the different formats from HDTV to NTSC down to CD-ROM...



http://www.cs.tut.fi/~leopold/Ld/ResolutionComparison/

According to their description, it has the capability of adding up to 90 lines of resolution maximum to the image through "homomorphic digital signal processing". Has anyone used one of these before? Does anyone feel this could be used in transferring to a computer acquiring an extra 50 or so lines of resolution to help out the image quality, where aliasing and artifacts would be an issue?



http://www.elitevideo.com

http://www.elitevideo.com/cgi-local/SoftCart.exe/evbvp4.htm?L+scstore+limj5565+1029444788

Taken from DIGITAL FILM GROUP Website...

One of the most common effects that video cameras use in order to make images look sharper on interlaced video monitors is something called Detail Enhancement. It is image processing that occurs after the CCD captures the image. Essentially it tends to add a "spike" in the signal between areas of high luminance transitions which manifests itself as a black line surrounding the object often accompanied by a ghostly white halo. It also can add to "pixelation" which looks like grittiness or noise on the final image. This may not be very noticeable on a small interlaced monitor but it is quite displeasing when blown up to film. If your camera allows you to access it in the menu, you should attempt to turn it down by toggling down the menu setting to off or near-off. While shooting a high contrast object, you should see the effect lessen dramatically as you turn down the Detail Settings. Consult your local technical support representative for your camera for details. (no pun intended).


http://www.digitalfilmgroup.net/camerasetup.htm

Regarding the Elite BVP-4, I have not used one but I've read a lot about it. Only very small tweaks will actually improve your image quality with this thing. For the money involved and the pay-off factor, I strongly urge doing this in post on an NLE system. Either Final Cut Pro on the Mac, or Canopus on the PC side provide superb color correction tools, with a waveform monitor and vectorscope built right in. With a Canopus system, you can view color correction in realtime over moving video on an NTSC monitor. This is a much more affordable, and ultimately more powerful way of tweaking an image. Hope this helps,

Chris,

I haven't made the leap from EDV to FCP yet -- does FCP and the built-in scope allow you to change the IRE black level to something better for VHS dubs?

Vic

Vic, I don't own FCP but I believe it does. Check out the maddening 2-pop.com site or dvcreators.net for more info. I don't see why it wouldn't... I can change IRE on my Canopus editing system.