Problem; Uncompressed 1080i HD Motion Graphics
by Salerno
on
Aug 31, 2007 at 2:03:18 am
Hi All-
I'd be curious to hear your opinions if anyone has experience creating motion graphics in an uncompressed 1080i environment.
We created an 8-minute uncompressed 1080i HD video for our client, which is very motion graphic heavy.
We mastered our uncompressed 1080i footage to a D5 deck; From there, our client tried to run the D5 deck into a JVC HD100 projector for a tradeshow presentation.
After testing, they found that our motion graphics have a lot of motion blur to them (anything that flys in on screen, or has fast motion).
There is also a lot of stagger to some product shots, as they grow/increase on screen. Similarly, some of our text is very jerky as well.
We have narrowed it down to 2 possibilities;
1. Our computer can not handle the master to D5 (We are running an 2x2 GHz Dual-Core intel mac, 3 GB 667 MHZ DDR2 FB-DIMM)
We have 10 layers of uncompressed HD motion graphics in FCP, trying to master back to D5;
2. Is it a motion graphic / HD issue; We created a lot of fast motion graphics and they look fine in FCP, however, projected on a HD LCD or a JVC projector, we get issues; We are thinking about numbing down the problem areas and make it less intensive.
Re: Problem; Uncompressed 1080i HD Motion Graphics by Salerno on Aug 31, 2007 at 3:33:16 am
Actually, I take that back- the graphics in our HD monitor statement; Last 2 weeks have been fuzzy late nights.
We had a freelance editor in creating everything for us, and whenever it was time for a review, he would render out a uncompressed quicktime file and everything looked pristine and the client would sign off on that.
Normally, we always review on our JVC HD LCD; I believe there was some motion blur in the text when we viewed (after the facct) on the HD LCD. I still don't understand why the uncompressed motion graphics would cause an issue though; Is it the motion lag on LCD's?
Re: Problem; Uncompressed 1080i HD Motion Graphics by Michael G on Aug 31, 2007 at 3:37:39 am
Firstly I assume you rendered before playout. Secondly the D5 playback on your HD monitors looked the same as straight off FCP.
Thirdly you are talking interlaced 29.97 Or 25, not progressive 23.98.
If all of the above is true, then what is the JVC projector doing? Is it deinterlacing on the fly? What is its refresh rate?
What does it look like on a different projector? My money is on the projector, not FCP. I play out Uncompressed HD from my G5 dual 2.5 to HDCam without any of those issues (1080 50i).
Re: Problem; Uncompressed 1080i HD Motion Graphics by Salerno on Aug 31, 2007 at 3:59:39 am
Yes, we rendered before playout and it's a 29.97 framerate. The HD monitors don't have an SDI input which we usually run from the D5, so we downconvereted to an SD monitor and also had FCP ingest the mastered D5 tape back in to check it. We are a small agency w/ a small broadcast dept. so we don't have everything we need at our disposable I suppose.
My money is on the projector too, but our client makes the projector :) I am not sure how their engineers are working the D5 to Projector issue, all I know is it's a 30,000:1 contrast ratio..
Re: Problem; Uncompressed 1080i HD Motion Graphics by Michael G on Aug 31, 2007 at 4:04:14 am
One other thought - were the graphics interlaced or progressive? Again if it didn't strobe on your monitors, then that might be a furphy.
I would try to run it on some other brand of projector like a Barco or Christie before you blame anything. A friendly local cinema might be able to oblige.
Re: Problem; Uncompressed 1080i HD Motion Graphics by Uli Plank on Aug 31, 2007 at 7:50:11 am
I'd suppose it's a interlace problem, since you are talking about 1080i.
No projector (other than tubes) can project interlaced, you'll need to feed it progressive or it'll de-interlace by itself (which can be good or bad, depending on their chip). Unfortunately you can't lay down 1080p50 to tape, which would be the perfect solution (I've seen that projected straight from a computer, it's awesome).
So, your best bet is 1080p24 or 25, but you'll have to watch out for stuttering of fast motion because of lower temporal density, you may want some motion blur.
Regards,
Uli
Director of the Institute of Media Research (IMF) at Braunschweig University of Arts
Re: Problem; Uncompressed 1080i HD Motion Graphics by walter biscardi on Aug 31, 2007 at 10:03:04 am
[Salerno]"My money is on the projector too, but our client makes the projector :) I am not sure how their engineers are working the D5 to Projector issue, all I know is it's a 30,000:1 contrast ratio.."
That's where my money would be too. Unless it's an extremely high end professional projector, you would have issues showing interlaced material on this. Contrast ratio does zero for interlacing.
I tried to do a search on the model number, but that's a model number for their camera, not projector.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
http://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.
All Things Apple Podcast! http://cowcast.creativecow.net/all_things_apple/index.html
Re: Problem; Uncompressed 1080i HD Motion Graphics by walter biscardi on Aug 31, 2007 at 10:04:56 am
[walter biscardi]"That's where my money would be too. Unless it's an extremely high end professional projector, you would have issues showing interlaced material on this. Contrast ratio does zero for interlacing."
Also, obviously the refresh rate of the projector comes into play here. It just may not be able to keep up with all the motion on the screen, like a cheap LCD display would shot a lot more motion blur than a high quality HD display.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
http://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.
All Things Apple Podcast! http://cowcast.creativecow.net/all_things_apple/index.html
Re: Problem; Uncompressed 1080i HD Motion Graphics by Salerno on Aug 31, 2007 at 12:52:41 pm
I looked into the projector and it's the JVC D-LA HD1; I believe it converts 1080i to 1080p on the fly; Our editor created all graphics interlaced as well. I wonder if it's the 1080i to 1080p that is causing the stuttering / blur issues.
Re: Problem; Uncompressed 1080i HD Motion Graphics by Salerno on Aug 31, 2007 at 1:26:44 pm
I believe I solved the problem; Our editor had our sequence settings on field order: "Upper". I changed it to "None" and got rid of our interlacing problems.
Re: Problem; Uncompressed 1080i HD Motion Graphics by gary adcock on Sep 1, 2007 at 12:02:21 pm
[Salerno]"I believe it converts 1080i to 1080p on the fly; Our editor created all graphics interlaced as well. I wonder if it's the 1080i to 1080p that is causing the stuttering / blur issues. "
good guess
the 60p that this projector is creating using a line doubled conversion, where every interlaced field is computed into a progressive frame for output.
This line doubling in the displays / projection often show signs of interlacing since only one field is represented in each frame being shown.
gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows
Re: Problem; Uncompressed 1080i HD Motion Graphics by Marco Solorio on Aug 31, 2007 at 10:36:37 pm
Just curious... why is the production flow going through the hassle (and cost) of D5 tape in the first place? Why not just encode the video to a 1080 HD video format of choice and play it off a notebook computer connected to the projector via DVI?
Then everything could also stay in progressive mode, even 30p if you wish. Maybe it's just me, but I've always hated tape, especially when it was on reels!
Re: Problem; Uncompressed 1080i HD Motion Graphics by Salerno on Aug 31, 2007 at 11:42:24 pm
Our client makes projectors, and for this tradeshow, they want the video we created playing through their projector. Their engineers decided on the workflow; still not sure how its going to pan out. As for tests in our studio, we mastered our uncompressed footage to D5, and ran SDI through a teranex server (can't remember exactly) then ran HDMI to the projector.
Our client watches over the quality like a hawk, as he wants it as pristine as can be, since our video is supposed to be showing how great the projector actually looks.
We usually just master uncompressed to D5 and it gets encoded elsewhere, on most of the HD projects we've done.
Re: Problem; Uncompressed 1080i HD Motion Graphics by Marco Solorio on Sep 1, 2007 at 12:25:39 am
I guess that's why I'm confused for the decision to go to D5 tape even though D5 is great quality. Playing back 1920x1080 HD off a computer isn't bottlenecking like it used to be. You could literally play back a lossless RGB 4:4:4 video file at 1080p30 (non-linearly none the less).
If you're going single-link HD-SDI, you're going 4:2:2 that will employ some form of chroma filtering, not to mention chroma compression. A shame since your footage is motion graphics that were processed in full 4:4:4. If your client wants the best quality, they should stick with 4:4:4 lossless. I wonder why the engineers didn't think about this. ???
Re: Problem; Uncompressed 1080i HD Motion Graphics by Salerno on Sep 1, 2007 at 1:33:00 am
That's great advice. This is our 2nd HD project, so we are still learning the ropes. With your workflow, what codec would you use to compress out of FCP, to acheive the 4:4:4 lossless? The new apple Pro-res codec, or is there something else? Also, you would play the file off a laptop then connect RGB or HDMI to the projector? Thanks for the advice!
Re: Problem; Uncompressed 1080i HD Motion Graphics by Marco Solorio on Sep 1, 2007 at 2:41:46 am
You'd probably do well using the Sheer Video codec by Bit Jazz. It can work in several different modes, but in this case, choosng RGB 4:4:4 lossless for both the FCP timeline setting and the final video export would be ideal. The difference between Sheer and something like the standard Animation codec is that Sheer takes up about half the file size space and in the case of 1080 HD, that means less bandwidth demands between hard drive and computer (although a little more CPU power will be required to decode the compressed file size on playback using Sheer, but that's not a big deal). Otherwise, you could use two codecs you already have right now to perform some lossless RGB 4:4:4 tests: Animation and PNG.
In terms of hooking the computer to the projector, that should be done via DVI if the projector has that input (I'm sure it does). This way you get a straight RGB connection without any digital conversions in the mix.
You could have a complete RGB 4:4:4 lossless path from creation to final display. It doesn't get better than that!
Re: Problem; Uncompressed 1080i HD Motion Graphics by Marco Solorio on Sep 1, 2007 at 5:27:20 pm
A G5 would be ideal, but using BitJazz + 2 or 4-disk SATA + ExpressCard should be able to handle it on a MacBook Pro. A 2-disk SATA isn't that big. Even a 4-disk SATA with a MacBook Pro is much easier to lug around than a D5 deck without worrying you'll have to sell your house should you lose or break the deck!
