August 27, 2006

EN: Fighting with HDV Compression Artifacts

I knew before I started shooting with HDV that I would face problems in postproduction when it comes to bluescreening and color correction. Just the amount of problem I would face was always in question. Well lets put it that way: If you are doing any filming and plan on doing ANY postproduction forget about HDV alltogether. I have never seen a worse quality movie under my fingertips and I deeply regret going HDV now. All resolution advantages go out the window if you do even the slightest bit of contrast or individual color correction and the image looks like it has been blown up from 160x120 badly compressed webmovie. The whole picture - even with a locked off camera that has minimal movement starts to shift and wobble. I do not understand how anyone would buy such a camera or even recommend it - especially for VJing where you almost always add coloring effects onto the picture. Its bad and if there is gain grain in the picture shots are almost absolutely unusable. Bluescreens have huge edges that even badly shoot DV footage can do better (and it bad there already). HDV is a a technology that can easely be skipped if you are in the market for a new camera get the Panasonic which has twice the compression data rate then the "normal" HDV cameras and hope that this gives you a bit more room. I fully understand now why professionals talk about "doing everything in camera" with HDV because the footage that you shoot is the footage that you get. I am introducing heavy graining to divert from the compression artifacts now and it has cost me 4 days to pull a decent bluescreen. If you have the choice between HDV and something uncompressed normal resolution go with the uncompressed normal resolution you will have better quality after all.

Posted by fALk at August 27, 2006 12:35 PM | TrackMeBack
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