DSLR video on DVD

[Derek Neustaeter]

I am curious whether anyone else has had similar experience or thoughts to what I've had. I shoot with an xf100, 6d, and 70d. The XF footage looks quite mediocre imported onto the computer where the dslr footage looks fantastic. However, one I export and burn to DVD the XF looks amazing (as long as there was enough light) and the dslr footage looks terrible. Not in the sense of lower quality but just something about the picture that looks off? For highlights films only distributed on the web we use the dslr footage almost exclusively but when it comes to tv, the xf takes the cake!

Anyone else dealt with this dslr phenomenon? I imagine this is something that the c100 would take care of?

[Noa Put]

I don't have a xf100 but use a mixture of videocamera's (such as a sony's cx730 and ax100) and dslr's like the panasonic gh3/4 and I honestly don't see any difference whether I render to a HD file for internet, a blu-ray or dvd, beside the obvious fact that on dvd there are some compression artifacts, the colour is a bit less vibrant and it's less detailed but all camera's are affected by the compression dvd has.

[Steve Burkett]

What settings are you shooting each under? Generally DSLR are progressive, whereas the xf100 could be shooting interlaced. Since exporting to DVD usually means converting to interlaced, this could account for some of the discrepancy. It's been awhile since I've owned a Canon DLSR, but the 60d's style of image didn't always down convert well to SD.

[Noa Put]

I shoot mixed 25p and 50p and in the past there where camera's included shooting 50i, back then I didn't notice and out of the ordinary artifacts either. Maybe Steve if you could explain your workflow how you get the footage onto dvd? A short, maybe downloadable, SD mpeg2 file to show the problem might help to understand what you are dealing with?

[Derek Neustaeter]

I will try to post some screenshots of what I mean. It's not the compression to sd itself that I notice. I think it has more to do with the moire/aliasing of the video and the way some of the colors come out. The dslr footage seems to be a little less predictable when it comes to the color correction aspect of things. This may be because of the 4:2:2 color space of the xf?

[Kevin Lewis]

Derek, I have the same issue and have been trying to figure it out. At first I thought it has something today with my NLE and not using rec 709(?). Hers a thread that I started last week on the topic:

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/what-hap...ting-dvds.html

[Adrian Tan]

Originally Posted by Derek Neustaeter

The XF footage looks quite mediocre imported onto the computer where the dslr footage looks fantastic. However, one I export and burn to DVD the XF looks amazing (as long as there was enough light) and the dslr footage looks terrible. Not in the sense of lower quality but just something about the picture that looks off?

Could be a resolution issue? The DSLR might look softer when blown up to full screen, but, when viewed online, resolution is much of a muchness and instead you notice shallow depth of field, etc.

[Derek Neustaeter]

I have narrowed it down to 2 attributes that differ between the dslr and camcorder. The first one is the moire, its everywhere on the 6d and 70d. Even if your not looking for it, its subconsciously there. The other is the color. On the same shot with a good white balance, the dslr hunts down and captures red like there is no tomorrow. Outdoors this doesn't seem to be as much of an issue? I have color corrected like crazy to try and fix this and help them coexist a little better, but its not easy...nor perfect. On many shots I have had to use the secondary color correction in premiere in order to target a color the dslr has set its sights on and gone a little overboard with. Where it gets tricky is that once burned to dvd and played on tv, its like is saturates the dslr's footage even more. I have had to make changes/encode/burn 3 times now because of this!

Sorry for the rambling, I guess I needed to vent! Have been thinking of changing my workflow by adding a tv to my office and instead of burning discs I could simply output an dvd image and play it through the display to the tv. Has anyone tried anything similar?

[Chris Harding]

Hi Derek

Do you perhaps have profile settings on your Canon's ... maybe that's the issue?? The year before last I shot on Panasonic Camcorders and then moved to Sony EA-50's which are essentially DSLR sensor based but in a camcorder body and even mixing the two I had no issues ..Yes, the moire shows it's ugly head now and again but I see that on TV from professionally based broadcasters! I have shot with the Sony's in 50i and 50p and there is no issue at all and I have even mixed and matched at the beginning with the Panasonics without any issues at all.

I know that some profiles looked distinctly horrible when I initially tried them all out and I have no idea what the Canon profiles offer but I found that a profile closest to ITU709 works best for me. Quite often a profile that looks stunning with stills looks rotten with video, especially rendered down to SD

Chris

[Derek Neustaeter]

The XF's custom pictures settings are quite extensive. I have tried a few that I have found online and have liked a few of them. On occasion I will try to match things up a little better but have found it to be very time consuming. I also have found the lcd to be to be quite blue compared to what the footage looks like once its uploaded. I tend to always have the white balance at least 200k cooler then what looks right.

On the dslr's the picture settings are obviously very basic with 6 notches for sharpness, saturation, contrast, and color. The color you can only change from more red, to more yellow. Altering these setting does help a fair bit. I usually have the contrast down a bit, saturation down, and take some of the red out.

Oh how I long for a pair of C100's...