#getting to video tape
13 messages in this thread
Hi there,
I've read the replies to your question, just to let you know where this message
fits in.
I recently aquired the DPS Par board and I love it. The quality is very good.
Previously, I had rendered to a 3/4 Umatic (Industrial quality video) and the
results were good. The PAR board makes Umatic look like a home movie.
Keep in mind, however, that quality is really quite subjective. I've "crash
recorded" stuff right off the PAR board onto Betacam SP decks and the results
are quite good. The video editor I work with thinks the quality is great. I
haven't put a wave form monitor or vectorscope to the output of the PAR, but
since it's comming from DPS, I'd think the signal would be good.
Understand that the PAR board will do simple cut and splice edits. It won't let
you do fancy fades and wipes between scenes. Use video post for that stuff.
Also, to get the best results from the PAR board, you have to render to a
resolution of 720×480. In fact, this resolution is part of the reason stuff
looks so good off the PAR board. Using my old method, rendering for a Targa +
for step-frame animation, the resolution was 512×480. Also, the higher
resolution tells you that the output bandwidth of the PAR board is quite high.
Your observations are identical to mine. I also once used a targa+ to Umatic
and the 50% increased resolution, lower signal to noise, increased K factor
quality of the PAR over the targa+ more than makes up for the compression
artifacts that some on this forum claim exists but few have ever seen. I use
the PAR output betacam SP CAV and the quality is running rings around some
output I recently saw done on my competitor's SGI/softimage/ wavefront system.
My demo quality won over the Abekas output. Now don't get me wrong on this. I
think the stuff rendered with the SGI was rendered to frames, not fields and
the colors were washed like he had a gamma set to 3 or so. Bottom line is my
3DS/PAR stuff was just plain supperior in appearance. One thing you do need to
adjust though is your resolution on the PAR. It should be 752X480, not
720X480.
Take care and keep in touch.
Don Landis
Thanks for the corrx. on resolution. I'm interested in your comment comparing
the PAR to the Abekas output. Do you mean it's actually better? Equal? I was
thinking of putting together an Abekas subsystem (Exabyte tape, ASDG software
etc.) for high end stuff, but if you're saying what I think you are saying….
G.O.
The PAR (and the MAX, for that matter) does not compete in output quality with
the Abekas machines. If you're talking industrial or cable, then its a
different story, but for mainstream broadcast the consensus seems to be that
jpeg and wavelet (ImMIX CUBE) compression is usually not acceptable.
John Tissavary (LUNA cie)
>>The PAR (and the MAX, for that matter) does not compete in output quality
with the Abekas machines<<
I should have said "does not compete directly" – sorry for any inconvenience
this has caused <g>
John Tissavary (LUNA cie)
>>but for mainstream broadcast the consensus seems to be that jpeg and wavelet
(ImMIX CUBE) compression is usually not acceptable.
Have you heard anything about CBS buying bunches of the Imix Cubes for
producing these tabloid shows? Seems what these broadcast guys say and do are
two different stories.
I'd recieved some info from an editor at a TV station in LA who'd been woed by
ImMIX and duly impressed. He really loved the unit, and said it definitely had
a place in the broadcast world, but probably not for finals on network stuff.
I think the ImMIX gets considerably less compression than the PAR or MAX,
though, because it uses a SCSI array and some proprietary hardware to do the
wavelet thing. It also lists for over $40K.
John Tissavary (LUNA cie)
>> It also lists for over $40K.
The base unit will set you back $65000. while you can sit the machine up for
40 it won't be capable of much. The figure I stated is what my quote came in
at last winter for a working productive system.
I guess 65K is with the extra disk arrays or something, and the larger monitor.
I was pretty shocked at the crappy monitor you get with this system, and ImMIX
claims it's to "keep costs down" – yeah, right! <g>
John Tissavary (LUNA cie)
Thanks for the reply, John. I'm wondering if anyone has done an "ACID TEST"
comparing the various compression schemes vs non-compressed video. It would be
interesting to see the differences side by side.
I don't know if there's really a way to quantify these sort of compression
schemes, since they really do different stuff to every different image they
compress. I mean, you can know what the compression ratio is, but the
artifacting will be different on each image. So it's really a judgment call,
IMHO. Like Don says, it's never come up for his clients. It has for one of
mine, but not for another. I would do some demos on the units, show them to
clients (don't tell them what equipment you used), and if they complain, then
go with Abekas or single frame on that particular job. In any case you can't
really go wrong with the PAR or MAX, because just their preview capabilities
will increase your production BIG TIME (they did mine, at least).
John Tissavary (LUNA cie)
Thanks for the advice… keep in touch
g.o.
>>, but if you're saying what I think you are saying….
What I'm saying is that in my recent experience AP the PAR to betacam SP has
satisfied all my clients that were looking for "beta SP quality" My
competition that uses an Abekas A-66 has put out some (in my professional
opinion) pretty lousy quality renderings from his SGI. This was indeed
disappointing for me but knowing animation like I do I could see that the
quality was probably due more to the improper use of his hardware than anything
else. I will say that if your clients are real picky on detail and quality the
next step up from the PAR would be the Abekas output. This is my decision here
and if I ever do run into a customer that is not satisfied with the PAR I will
go this route.
One other thing to remember about the PAR: The PAR does NOT do the same
quality on frame grabbing as it does on simple animation. QF of 12-14 are
common for rotoscoping frame grabs but QF of 23, BLF 250 is the rule for
animation. This means that animation incorporating rotoscoping will be of
lesser quality in the rotoscoped portion than simple animation. The reality is
I've done a few jobs of rotoscoping and a few slomo and time lapsed jobs all
requiring frame grabs at reduced QF and even these jobs the artifact question
never came up.