Broadcast safe = bright green!

Hi,

I'm running FCP 4.0 on a G5 with Tiger. I just finished editing a short film that's been accepted for broadcast - PAL standard. There were a lot of hotspots so rather than go through the whole thing and adjust levels clip by clip, I nested it and applied the broadcast safe filter. The results are pretty good mostly. It seems to lessen the hotspots without messing with the overall picture too much. But for some reason, every so often, I get nasty bright green pixels creeping in. It seems to happen in the hottest spots, the colour is that green screen colour so it's pretty noticeable. I've tried adjusting the filter with the same results. The workaround seems to be to go back and recut the clips from the nested sequence, delete the filter and adjust those ones 'by hand'. But that's a major pain in a large project.

Any ideas??

I wonder if it isn't my camera (a Panasonic 3ccd) as I haven't noticed the effect with my Sony. The Panasonic is so much brighter and clearer than my 1ccd Sony.

Thanks, Nick

<<<colour is that green screen colour>>>

Bright Lime Green is all three video signals going all the way to zero. That usually happens with severely damaged video or where the color decoders can't figure out what to do.

Luminance going to zero will give you superblack which can slide right by you, but the two color difference signals going to zero are very noticable (take all the red and blue out of the picture and what's left?).

Koz

Mmm. The funny thing is, it tends to footage from my good camera that's doing it. The footage looks fine (I don't think it's damaged) but has the occasional hotspot due to the fact it was shot in a rush (48 hour film fest). There are 2 obvious solutions - the first I mentioned above - cut the clips. The 2nd, don't use the broadcast safe filter.

But I want to damn it. If it worked properly, it would save a lot of messing around.

So I reckon it's like you said, the filter's getting confused and setting all 3 colours to 0 resulting in bright lime green.

Now how to fix it?

Thanks,

Nick.

I was afraid you were going to ask me that.

Do you know the clips are too hot from turning on the Hot White Tool (or whatever it is) or you just went through the movie and looked?

Or just looked for the green.

You know you can do the same jobs with the color correctors. The Safe took is just an automated version. Try gently reducing the whites in the 3-way and see what happens. After you get the whites out of low earth orbit, you may be able to reintroduce the Broadcast filter and get away with it.

Koz

Rather than muck around with trying to make Broadcast Safe work, you might as well just take it off only the problem clips and apply Color Corrector or Color Corrector 3-Way instead. In the long run, it might be faster. If you're using one Broadcast Safe setting over your entire film, just get out of the nested sequence, Paste Attributes it to all your individual clips, then take it off the problematic ones. On a film I cut, we delivered a colour-corrected copy to HBO without ever touching Broadcast Safe -- we used only Color Corrector, RGB Balance and Color Balance. The time you're trying to "save" with Broadcast Safe may already be costing you more time than doing it manually. Automated = unreliable and unpredictable.

<<<Automated = unreliable and unpredictable.>>>

[Gasp]

I won't tell anybody you said that.

Koz

Yes, nawwwwty nawwwwty. The human touch rules.

<sigh> I kinda figured that would be the case. Automated = unreliable. But one does dare to hope. It sure would save some fiddling about.

I think the fastest way's still going to be to apply the filter to the nested sequence and clip out the problematic bits.

I'll try the 3-way colour corrector but what I like about the broadcast filter is that it seems to only pick up on the areas highlighted by the zebra stripes - oh and it's quick and I'm lazy.

Thanks,

Nick.

[I think the fastest way's still going to be to apply the filter to the nested sequence and clip out the problematic bits. ]

Clip out? Hopefully you don't mean "blade the nest" to isolate problem sections. How long is the show? Every time you blade a nest you are *duplicating* the content and taxing RAM! Just learned this the hard way.

Suggest you physically step into your nest, lift out all problem edits (Command X leaves black), deposit them on the V2 track, CC them and if necessary, mask them to match.

You can trim the edges of a nest without penalty, just don't blade it, unless it's only a shortform piece and you have tons of RAM.

- Loren
Today's FCP 4.5 keytip:
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Option>Windows>Arrange>Set Custom Layout.
Access your custom layouts 1 & 2 with Shift & Option-U!

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Now available at KeyGuide Central
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> You can trim the edges of a nest without penalty, just don't blade it, unless
> it's only a shortform piece and you have tons of RAM.

I'd go even farther than Loren and say, don't ever edit a nested clip in any way (unless it's something inevitable, like a Photoshop file). Trust me, if you do this enough, in four months' time you won't remember which nest is which, which sequences appear in your Browser and which don't, which sequences you need to keep and which ones you don't.

Maybe try this instead: Put all problem clips on the topmost track of your sequence (INSIDE the nested sequence). That way you can use single-track select tool (single arrow pointing right) to select them all. Copy them, then disable them but don't delete them in your nested sequence. Now go into the outer-layer sequence where the nested clip appears. Paste all the problem clips, in sync with the nested clip. Now you can apply individual filters to those without mucking with your nested sequence, and your nested sequence still contains all your cuts, just with selected ones disabled, but still intact as placeholders. You can still apply the Broadcast Safe to the entire nested clip this way.

Sounds like a lot more steps? It is. But when bad work habits start to melt down, they tend to create unrescuable situations. Do it the long, accurate, safe way -- that way you're always in control.

> You can trim the edges of a nest without penalty, just don't blade it, unless
> it's only a shortform piece and you have tons of RAM.

I'd go even farther than Loren and say, don't ever edit a nested clip in any way (unless it's something inevitable, like a Photoshop file). Trust me, if you do this enough, in four months' time you won't remember which nest is which, which sequences appear in your Browser and which don't, which sequences you need to keep and which ones you don't.

Maybe try this instead: Put all problem clips on the topmost track of your sequence (INSIDE the nested sequence). That way you can use single-track select tool (single arrow pointing right) to select them all. Copy them, then disable them but don't delete them in your nested sequence. Now go into the outer-layer sequence where the nested clip appears. Paste all the problem clips, in sync with the nested clip. Now you can apply individual filters to those without mucking with your nested sequence, and your nested sequence still contains all your cuts, just with selected ones disabled, but still intact as placeholders. You can still apply the Broadcast Safe to the entire nested clip this way.

Sounds like a lot more steps? It is. But when bad work habits start to melt down, they tend to create unrescuable situations. Do it the long, accurate, safe way -- that way you're always in control.

[ That way you can use single-track select tool (single arrow pointing right) to select them all. ]

Elegant! Even twice!

I would only add, you can copy the effects applied to the nest parent and you should be able to Paste Attributes (Option-V) to add these to the easily-selected outside clips.

- Loren
Today's FCP 4.5 keytip:
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We all love Paste Attributes, although I think Nick's issue is that he can't apply the same filter settings to those problem clips -- hence the need to segregate them to outside the nested sequence. But same concept, and also, you can Paste Attributes the master filter to the problem clips and then tone down the Broadcast Safe filter or use Color Corrector/Color Corrector 3-Way instead.

We all love Paste Attributes, although I think Nick's issue is that he can't apply the same filter settings to those problem clips -- hence the need to segregate them to outside the nested sequence. But same concept, and also, you can Paste Attributes the master filter to the problem clips and then tone down the Broadcast Safe filter or use Color Corrector/Color Corrector 3-Way instead.

Thanks for the advice Derek and Loren, I WAS just cutting the nested sequence and wondering what ramificaitons it would have down the line, but haven't had any troubles so far.

Your teqniques will be handy in other situations where I need to get into a nested sequence, but I think to solve my broadcast safe probelm, I'm just going to have to get used to using the 3way corrector. Heck, I might even learn to use the levels meters and graphs which so far, I've avoided like the plague. But seeing as I'm not busy right now...

Oh, and while I'm here, how do you guys/girls handle the colour/levels correction workflow? Do you do each clip separately or nest it or output the final project and bring it back in as one file and colour correct that?

I'm particularly interested in getting DV footage to look good for consumer TVs via DVD. At the moment I'm using the good ol' deinterlace filter (above/even) on a copy of my main clip at 50% opacity above my clip at 100% with deinterlace filter set at (below/odd). It gives DV a nice smooth film-like look which I like. It's also easy.

I've also got most of the settings on the mpeg compression way up which is giving good results on fast-moving footage.

But I'm not sure how to fit colour balance/levels etc into my workflow. One or two of my DVDs have let me down at the final hurdle - they look blown out and amaturish. I've found mpeg2-ing clips tends to lower the contrast and increase the brightness so I've just been adjusting accordingly before encoding. It's not very sophisticated, and while I don't have much on, I'd like to learn more about outputting to a more professional standard - I'm just hoping there are others out there with not much to do too who can give me a hand!!

Thanks again, Nick.

> Oh, and while I'm here, how do you guys/girls handle the colour/levels
> correction workflow? Do you do each clip separately or nest it or
> output the final project and bring it back in as one file and colour correct
> that?

DEFINITELY avoid doing the colour correction to a QuickTime movie export of your whole film. Movie files don't last forever, and if it gets corrupted at some point down the line, you'll be in an extremely painful situation where you'll have to redo all your colour correction.

Start a new sequence or even project file which contains your locked picture and nothing else. Preserve your cuts -- prep it for post (colour bars, slate, countdown etc.) so that you lock down the timecode of every given frame. Now do it clip by clip. That way, if you lose media, all you have to do is recapture.

> At the moment I'm using the good ol' deinterlace filter

Hmm, it's obviously a matter of taste, but I've never liked using De-Interlace to try to simulate film flicker. It tends to look very artificial and my directors have sided with me on that so far. Maybe you should also try Graeme Nattress' film-look filters: www.nattress.com. I've only used them a little, but his simulated flicker looks better than De-Interlace, in my view.

> blown out and amaturish. I've found mpeg2-ing clips tends to lower the
> contrast and increase the brightness

Are you checking on a properly calibrated NTSC monitor? The computer screen tends to make things look darker and grainier, and is unable to preview certain video artifacts that may pop up.