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There is a (sometimes) heated discussion on DV-L about
the effects of effects and transitions on DV. Some claimed that
your image would immediately disintegrate once you add effects. Some said
it wouldn't work at all. Some said: "Hey, no problem!" To settle the issue,
I wanted to offer some kind of proof. Until there's real streaming video
on the net (and we all have T3 lines), all I can offer are some stills.
As customary on many web sites, I chose the obligatory pictures
of wife, house, and dog for the experiment. |
How these pictures
were done.
Footage was shot on-location in the pre-springtime Hamptons on
Long Island, NY. My wife & dog did not sign a release form and will
probably sue me.
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Camera: Sony
PC7.
Footage was then copied from the PC7 to my computer using an Adaptec/DPS
Spark.
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The footage was brought into Adobe
Premiere for editing.
Titles were created in Premiere.
For the titles, I used some fancy shadows to show rendering of
subtle effects.
During titling, I made sure that I didn't use NTSC-illegal colors
(Premiere tells you what's legal and what's not.).
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To the titles, I added the following filters: Anti-alias and Blur.
This is always a good idea for titles.
The titles were added to the clips using a White Alpha Matte for
the Transparency setting.
The combination of the title and the clip was then rendered into
a DV clip, using Adaptec's DVSoft codec, which comes with the Spark.
No additional filtering was used on the clips.
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The resulting clips were sent back out to the PC7 for previews.
They looked great.
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Caveat Web.
The stills do not show the clips in their full beauty. Here's why:
To show the clips on the web, I had to make stills from the finished
clips using Premiere's "Export to Bitmap" option.
The bitmaps were then brought into Adobe Photoshop and resized
from their original 720x480 size to 420x280 pixels. This needs resampling
and impacts on the picture quality.
To make loading time halfway tolerable, I had to compress the resulting
bitmaps into JPEG pictures. This results in a further loss of quality and
some staircasing if you enlarge the pictures a lot.
But considering all that, they look pretty good. What's most
important: As the pictures on the right show, titles and transitions with
DV & Premiere work great.
Also, if your computer screen cannot show gadzillions of colors,
you won't see the pictures in all their beauty...
If you want to see the original *.BMPs, then you can download them
for closer scrutiny. Careful, over a Meg each. Mark Hood converted the
BMPs to high-quality JPGs.
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Titling & overlay
tests.
These stills are from clips processed with the
Adaptec/DPS Spark, edited with Premiere and then sent back to DV using
Adaptec's DVSoft codec. Bookmark this page in case someone tells
you scary stories about the quality of the DVSoft codec, or the quality
of DV in general. For details, see "How these pictures were done" in the
sidebar.
Update: Some folks insinuated I cheated, because I sized the
pix down and then recompressed them with JPEG. Of course this
is everything but cheating. Sizing down and recompressing in JPEG degrades
the pictures! For a couple of days, I made the original *.BMP of my wife
available for ftp download. DV-L listmember Mark Hood graciously volunteered
as an "independent party." He converted the BMPs to high quality JPEGs.
He hosts them on his server, along with the original BMPs. Links to the
images are given with every image.
Please allow the images to load!
They load in progressive scans and get better as they load.
Winn Redmond, an accomplished artist.
Buy her paintings at the Coast
Gallery in Hana, Maui. to raise money for
my extravehicular activities.
Download original
*.BMP - Watch original
size, high quality *.jpg
Enrico Chow Bear, an accomplished recording artist.
His CD "Dog's Life" was released on the Blue Angel label
through Zweitausendeins in Germany. (No kidding.) One of his pieces
was part of the soundtrack of one of Juan
Downey's pieces which was shown at
The Whitney Museum of
American Art, NY
Download original
*.BMP - Watch original
size, high quality *.jpg
Our house used to be Bob
Fosse's and Gwen
Verdon's house.
Bob died in 1986 and Gwen had it with the upkeep.
Download original
*.BMP - Watch original
size, high quality *.jpg
Check out Roger Jennings' article
"DV vs. Betacam SP: 4:1:1 vs. 4:2:2, Artifacts
and Other Controversies."
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