Looks too dark in SD
 

I just filmed a short film yesterday, and when I got home I hooked it up to my HDTV. It looked beautiful -- even better than I thought it would when I was filming. I'll have the footage edited and uploaded in 2-3 weeks, so I'll post it for everyone to see.

However, later I hooked it up to my SD TV for comparison, and noticed that the shots looked a lot worse -- not just because of a resolution issue, but because of a color issue. There were a few shots in particular which had a character as a ninja in all black against trees in the background. On the viewfinder and HDTV, it looks perfect, but on the SD TV, there isn't nearly enough contrast, and it's very difficult to even make out the outline of the ninja's body against the background. The entire image appeared darker on the SD TV, so the background at parts is just as dark as the ninja's outfit (something that isn't true at all of the original footage). My question is, since not everyone has HDTVs yet, how does one ensure that what they're filming will look good on an SD TV?

Hi James. I'm stating the obvious here, but are the TV brightness and contrast set properly?

Richard

Yeah, I had that same problem... not with HD -> SD but just regular SD.

I created, edited, and burned a movie to DVD which looked great on my computer and preview monitor, but played terrible on my regular TV and I thought I was doing something terribly wrong. My TV had one of those auto-setup modes that got accidentally turned on and dropped the black level wayyyy down where black and blue were almost indistinguishable.