colour format of Blu-Ray templates
 

When burning Blu-Ray disc from timeline in VP8, I have noticed a very important thing: the color space is hard-coded into NTSC in all Blu-ray templates. I have found this out comparing the colors of renders using "Render as" and playing with the "video format" in the "Advanced Video" tab. Only with this parameter set to PAL or Component, do the final renders maintain the juicy colours of my original (PAL) m2t clips! When set to NTSC, the colours I'm getting are dull - and this is what I'm also getting using the Blu-ray 50i template.

Please tell me whether or not I'm missing anything here. If not, I guess it should be put on a wishlist for the nearest update that the Blu-Ray templates be editable, just like those in "Render as". Should this - for some reason - no be possible, Sony must at least change the 50i template to output in PAL colour space!

Really, the impact of this setting on the rendered file colours is much greater than that of using 8bit vs 32bit with 2.22 gamma!

I have no experience whatsoever with blu-ray, but I am guessing that NTSC and PAL colourspaces are redundant with it's encoding formats, unless you are actual encoding a stream at PAL or NTSC resolutions. 50i does not necessarily equate to the PAL version of HD and NTSC does not equate to the NTSC version of 60i. I can see no reason for 50i and 60i to use different colourspaces. Surely it makes more sense for them to use the same?

Well, I'm not sure about the theory behind it - but based on my encoding experience using "PAL" vs "NTSC" vs "Component" video formats, the resultant movies are dramatically different with regard to colour level and saturation. Of course I'm talking on encoding an m2t HDV clip from the PAL version of the Sony V1E camera; perhaps a clip recorded with V1U would render differently?

Anyway, if the "Render as..." option can offer customizable templates/setting, the same should be possible with the "Burn Blu-Ray disk from timeline" option.

As far as I know all versions of the Z1 and V1 cameras are exactly the same, except they come configured for 50i or 60i modes as default. There is no difference in the hardware or how they handle any DV or HDV mode.

Edit: (Of course V1s come in 25p/30p modes as default)

I never said there is a difference. But Vegas output templates do have the "video format" setting (NTSC, PAL, Component..), don't they? Well, it's this settings I'm talking about. Try and render HDV with all three of them, then compare the colours... You will know what I mean.

The Blu-ray burning from timeline seems to be using a setting whose output is closest to HDV with NTSC video format, and much flatter colour-wise that HDV with PAL/component video format setting. AND it's not customizable!

Just trying to take out some other variables, could colour differences could be down to a monitor scan rate change, or rescaling?

No, it's not the display the device problem! Just take a look at the two grabs from HDV clips: the left one was rendered with color format = NTSC, the right one with PAL. The difference is huge! Unfortunately, when burning Blu-Ray from timeline, there is no option of setting the format and the resultant colours are identical to those in the left picture - hence my conclusion the BD templates have the NTSC colour space hard-coded.

What you're seeing is the difference between REC601 and Rec709. You need to apply a Vegas Levels FX filter before rendering. If you then use the "ComputerRGB to StudioRGB" preset, the washed out look will be avoided. What's happening is your color space is Computer RGB, which is IRE 0-255. When you play on a NTSC display, the color space is Studio RGB, or IRE 16-235, so you're clipping the shadows and highlights out of your video, making them looked washed out.

Hmm... Are you sure? It's "StudioRGB to computerRGB" that seems to work in that direction for me! But again - with changes introduced by 32bit floating point video, this adds one more element to the equation... I guess it's be more obvious, and less error-prone, if the BluRay templeates were customizable the way thos in "Render as" are.

Bill, you probably have the units confused. The units for computer RGB and studio RGB would be RGB (or bits).

2- The difference between "NTSC" and PAL (other than the frame rate and raster size / resolution difference) is that the standard shade/chromaticity of red, green, and blue (the primaries) are different between the system.

For SD NTSC, the standard now are the SMPTE C colors. The original NTSC primaries are obsolete.
For SD PAL, the standard now are EBU colors.

For HD everywhere, the standard now are the Rec. 709 colors. (There are some obsolete HDTV systems that use other primaries like SMPTE C. They are obsolete.)

2b- Most standards conversion devices gloss over the difference and don't convert between the two sets of primaries.

2c- It shouldn't account for the drastic difference in color you are seeing. Probably something went wacky with levels conversion.