Shot this green screen too...

http://modernartpictures.com/commercialAmFund.html

Marc

There are four greenscreen shots in my recent production, "The Container Adventures: The Rescue". (See if you can tell which ones!)

Marc, that looks awesome. The audio was clean, although the one where she is standing far away sounds far away, and IMHO, shouldn't. Grest use of time, great visuals.

Is it possible for you guys to post some Green & Blue screen footage? A few seconds is enough.
I would like to do some test with some software packages to see what gives the best results.
Thanks

I don't understand comments like this. For starters I believe you meant the HDV mode not DV right? If not then yes DV would be a drop in quality for sure.
All right. Now you say you recorded to tape which means HDV compression. So taking this out and converting it to a codec like DVCproHD hardly seems beneficial to me. Why not simply (I'm a PC guy so I'm not mac experienced but..) edit in apples HDV intermediate and render out to Sheervideo or some other lossless codec? Converting HDV to DVCproHD just seems counter productive to me. I can respect the workflow simplicity and speed especially being in a Mac world where your software is geared for DVCpro, but converting a compressed codec into another compressed codec with a lower resolution all in the name of quality seems goofy to me. Are you saying component out and DVCpro combine to make the chroma edges smoother? I just picture a 4:2:0 HDV frame down rez'ed and stuffed into a 4:2:2 frame with that original 4:2:0 inside it.

Very true. Trying to convert footage to a higher data rate is not going to give you a better picture - it's like dropping 24p footage onto a 30p timeline - you only recorded 24p, so that's all you will have. Same thing with HDV .m2t files. You're recording the information at 19Mbs, you're still just putting the 19Mbs info into a 40Mbs stream. And changing the color compression is not going to necessarily yield great results either.

this is filmed in greenscreen via hdv tape.
http://www.andreatoniolo.com/test/jb/FINALE.mov

these are all great. Can any of you tell me what scene file you used, or what your settings were?

Okay, not the best of the lot. Easy to use but doesn't truly uprez chroma the way that PriMatte, Zmatte, and AdvantEdge do. Works fine for its primary function - talking head -- but doesn't handle blur well so dramatuc/action stuff is less than satisfactory.

John Jackman

Just wondering if you still plan on posting your sample?
I am curious myself...

How did it go?

No, I meant DV. It was an obvious comment, I guess.
Well, I never meant to imply that I was improving image quality. But DVCPRO HD, being an I-frame codec, stands up better to multi-pass post. Since Keylight was necessary in this case, I had to go to AE - so, would I have been better served by digitizing native HDV, and then outputting back to HDV with composited graphics? I didn't test it, but I know that HDV isn't the best choice for post-production since it's clearly an acquisition-only format, so I doubt it.

Or are you saying that I should have used HDV to capture natively, and then deal with the rounding and concatenation errors when I rendered to another HD codec in AE, like, oh, I don't know, DVCPRO HD? It seems to me that it's smarter to know what you've got on the front-side when it comes to green screen material, especially.

Additionally, the digitizing process (at least in FCP) is a lot smoother and faster using the Kona LHe vs. the HDV firewire input. You shouldn't overlook the workflow part of the equation as a critical element in terms of productivity.

I suppose it's safe to say that it wasn't "all in the name of quality." I'm sorry I didn't make it clearer.

Actually, there's another advanteage for working in a DVCPROHD timeline, which is: you can apply to your HDV 4:2:0 footage, an artifact removing filter, in order to bring it closer to 4:2:2 - it will never be perfect but certainly will help when keying. Besides tho other obvious reason you mentioned - ''lossless'' rendering.

In fact, converting footage to a higher data rate will often give you a worse picture. For example, although DVCPRO HD has a higher data rate than HDV, it has a lower spatial resolution for the luma channel: HDV 1080i is actually 1440 x 1080, whereas DVCPRO HD 1080i is actually 1280 x 1080, so even if both formats were lossless, the conversion would add a lot of horizontal blur.

But converting to the same data rate also gives you a worse picture, unless you're using a lossless (or at least idempotent) codec. For example, decompressing HDV and recompressing back to HDV significantly degrades the picture, as does recompressing DVCPRO HD to DVCPRO HD. And in codecs using interframe compression, such as HDV, the degradation propagates through a whole group of frames.

These two considerations have to be weighed against each other. If your HDV footage is going to go through a lot of editing cycles, it may be that the initial quality hit by converting to DVCPRO HD will be more than offset by milder subsequent degradation through repeated decompression and recompression in that format.

Even converting to a lossless format such as SheerVideo won't give you a better picture - at least, not right away. But after the initial conversion, sticking with a lossless format will give you a better picture than you would otherwise end up with, because you'll avoid all the generational loss from subsequent recompression cycles. In other words, if you're starting and ending with a lossy format, using SheerVideo in between won't give you a better picture than the original, but it will preserve the original quality from getting ever worse.

Andreas Wittenstein
BitJazz Inc.
http://www.bitjazz.com/

Andreas-

Would sheer video increase the size? If the HDV materials converted into sheer video (720p codec at 4:2:2?), would it maintain same size as HDV or add more size? Could I have the same size as DVCPRO HD without robbing my computer space?

Joseph