Live-Action Footage = Yucky After Converting (Pictures)

Melichan923 · Post by **Melichan923** » Sat Nov 24, 2007 11:31 am

I just finished working on a music video that isn't anime. It's actually a live action movie based on the anime Death Note. If this isn't the right place to post this or it's not allowed, I'm really sorry. Just let me know and I will ask someplace else.

I am having difficulty compressing my video to XviD so that it doesn't look like ... well, crap in the end.

It's a short video, about a minute and a half long, so I don't need to worry about a second pass. I just need to do a first pass. I'm actually not compressing the audio. I am keeping it PCM for a couple of reasons. The lagarith file I worked with in the end was about 386MB and when I compress it ends up at about 33MB with the PCM audio. It could be getting compressed too much, maybe.

I understand that anime footage and live-action footage may have to be changed to different settings when compressing, but I really have no idea what to adjust. I get a bunch of blocking in dark areas and not-so-dark areas too (even when enabling the Chroma Optimizer) Also, it looks like VirtualDubMod is converting colorspaces because the color looks washed out and not half as vibrant (it does that when I convert my AMVs to XviD as well, but this topic may be for another thread) even though it's not changing colorspaces.

It's not as obvious as when watching the video, but here are two before-after examples of quality (The top is before converting to XviD and the bottom is the XviD):

^ Bunch of blocking on the walls and discoloration. It's darker and lost it's vibrancy.

^ It's not as obvious in the picture but it's a lot darker than the original and there is a lot of blocking in L's hair in the video.

I'm not using any post-editing filters, but I'm not sure if it would help with this problem.

Has anyone worked with live-action footage like this before and if possible can you please help me out?

Thanks for reading.

post-it · Post by **post-it** » Sat Nov 24, 2007 1:36 pm

.. actually, the answer is in your Avitar; Animations have a very wide range in color-changes while Live Action does not! A setting we use at the TV Studio is called "White-Balancing the Room." The theory is that if Nothing is hidden then Nothing is missing .. to make such a correction in a recorded Live-Action-Scene, you need to change the "LEVEL's" of Black-vs-White BackGrounds.

.. Rules to follow when dealing with Actors are:
1) at no time are people to have less brightness than what they are standing in front of.
(( if the sun has set and the news caster is on camera, Lights will be on the news caster so you can see them. ))
2) if the background is too bright, the "f" setting is increased to the news caster does not seem so be a shadow talking.

.. In your pictures, the White Level needs to be dropped a bit and the Black Level is way too dark .. anotherwords, your picture is "to heavy" causing Block's and MicroBursting -- just "thin out your picture" and it will be good to go

.. anotherwords, the face colors and brightness should always bee at the same colors and brightness REGUARDLESS of the Background scene's -- with that, your now a Live Action Editor ^_^ congrads

post-it · Post by **post-it** » Sat Nov 24, 2007 1:42 pm

--- correction ---

2) if the background is too bright, the "f" setting is increased so the news caster does not seem to be in a shadow talking.

T_T who is messing with my uploads ?? T_T

Melichan923 · Post by **Melichan923** » Mon Nov 26, 2007 4:05 pm

post-it wrote: .. In your pictures, the White Level needs to be dropped a bit and the Black Level is way too dark .. anotherwords, your picture is "to heavy" causing Block's and MicroBursting -- just "thin out your picture" and it will be good to go

Wow, the pictures looks fantastic! They look much better.

Can I achieve this using Avisynth filters or VirtualDubMod filters somehow? Or did you mean a different way?

Oh, and sorry for taking so long to reply.

YouTube · Post by **Kionon** » Mon Nov 26, 2007 4:12 pm

Melichan923 wrote:
post-it wrote: .. In your pictures, the White Level needs to be dropped a bit and the Black Level is way too dark .. anotherwords, your picture is "to heavy" causing Block's and MicroBursting -- just "thin out your picture" and it will be good to go

Wow, the pictures looks fantastic! They look much better. Can I achieve this using Avisynth filters or VirtualDubMod filters somehow? Or did you mean a different way?

Oh, and sorry for taking so long to reply.

Yes, by adjusting levels. It's a filter option in VdubMod already.

HOWEVER, I can tell you right now, you need to attack a lot of other stuff. I see rainbowing galore, for one thing.