Component vs SCART
 

In article , J r powell wrote:
Personally I think the colour reproduction of genuine PAL was superior.
(Whenever I dig out a pre-1999 videotape, it's always a wistful experience).

I can't help thinking that some of this must be the result of proper vision
control by people who had been trained to understand how electronic
photography works, rather by film photographers and "media" people with a "fix
it in Post" mentality as it is today.

Other things have changed since then too. Offering things like a choice of
colour matrixes and adjustable gamma correction as front panel controls
wouldn't help to maintain any kind of consistency of quality even if the
operators *did* know what these controls did, and the pictures were always
monitored in control rooms with standardised lighting conditions, instead of
on portable monitors immediately next to the scene being photographed.

Rod.
--
Virtual Access V6.3 free usenet/email software from
http://sourceforge.net/projects/virtual-access/

Component vs SCART
 

"Roderick Stewart" wrote in message
.myzen.co.uk...
In article , J r powell wrote:
Personally I think the colour reproduction of genuine PAL was superior.
(Whenever I dig out a pre-1999 videotape, it's always a wistful experience).

I can't help thinking that some of this must be the result of proper vision
control by people who had been trained to understand how electronic
photography works, rather by film photographers and "media" people with a "fix
it in Post" mentality as it is today.

Other things have changed since then too. Offering things like a choice of
colour matrixes and adjustable gamma correction as front panel controls
wouldn't help to maintain any kind of consistency of quality even if the
operators *did* know what these controls did, and the pictures were always
monitored in control rooms with standardised lighting conditions, instead of
on portable monitors immediately next to the scene being photographed.

That might be true, but when you see a modern-day repeat of an old programme the
colours still look bad, compared to those of the original transmission.
There are all the other issues associated with digital too of course - dismally
inaccurate motion tracking to name one of many.
People are so used to it nowadays, they don't even notice.

jamie.
--

Component vs SCART
 

In article ,
j r powell wrote:
That might be true, but when you see a modern-day repeat of an old
programme the colours still look bad, compared to those of the original
transmission.

Caused by the original transmission media being no longer available for
whatever reason. You're watching a copy - likely many generations removed,
and those copies possibly not made with the greatest of care, and/or on
machinery not in the first flush of youth.

--
*When cheese gets it's picture taken, what does it say?

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

Component vs SCART
 

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
j r powell wrote:
That might be true, but when you see a modern-day repeat of an old
programme the colours still look bad, compared to those of the original
transmission.

Caused by the original transmission media being no longer available for
whatever reason. You're watching a copy - likely many generations removed,
and those copies possibly not made with the greatest of care, and/or on
machinery not in the first flush of youth.

That's not always going to be the case though. In any event, this is a general
effect I'm talking about on SD MPEG2, regardless of programme age.
One only has to compare HD programming with the downconverted SD versions to see
that the latter has inferior colour depth.
The more vibrant HD colours remind me of "genuine" PAL.

jamie.
--

Component vs SCART
 

In article , J r powell wrote:
One only has to compare HD programming with the downconverted SD versions to see
that the latter has inferior colour depth.

If that's the case, then the downconverter must be set to do something other than
downconvert, because downconversion is simply a matter of changing the number of
pixels in the image, nothing else. If I resize one of my digital photographs it
doesn't change colour as well - why should it? It would be very difficult to work
with digital photography if it did.

I wouldn't expect anything different with television pictures, and in my
(admittedly limited) experience, it doesn't happen. I worked on a HD television
production once where we only had one HD monitor which failed on the second day of
the shoot. We just carried on using for engineering monitoring the 625 line
downconverted output from the camera that we had already been feeding to the
production monitors, and apart from looking a tiny bit less sharp, it was exactly
the same.

Rod.
--
Virtual Access V6.3 free usenet/email software from
http://sourceforge.net/projects/virtual-access/

Component vs SCART
 

On Oct 8, 8:33*am, Roderick Stewart
wrote:
In article , J r powell wrote:
One only has to compare HD programming with the downconverted SD versions to see
that the latter has inferior colour depth.

If that's the case, then the downconverter must be set to do something other than
downconvert, because downconversion is simply a matter of changing the number of
pixels in the image, nothing else. If I resize one of my digital photographs it
doesn't change colour as well - why should it? It would be very difficult to work
with digital photography if it did.

Presumably the values of a number of adjacent pixels are integrated.

Bill

Component vs SCART
 

In article ,
j r powell wrote:

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
j r powell wrote:
That might be true, but when you see a modern-day repeat of an old
programme the colours still look bad, compared to those of the
original transmission.

Caused by the original transmission media being no longer available
for whatever reason. You're watching a copy - likely many generations
removed, and those copies possibly not made with the greatest of care,
and/or on machinery not in the first flush of youth.

That's not always going to be the case though. In any event, this is a
general effect I'm talking about on SD MPEG2, regardless of programme
age. One only has to compare HD programming with the downconverted SD
versions to see that the latter has inferior colour depth. The more
vibrant HD colours remind me of "genuine" PAL.

Not quite sure what you mean by 'vibrant' colours. There might be a fewer
number of colours in computer terms on a reduced data rate, but all are
capable of giving fully saturated colours. But PAL wasn't perfect in this
respect either.

--
*You can't teach an old mouse new clicks *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

Component vs SCART
 

"Dave Plowfool" wrote in message
...

Not quite sure what you mean by 'vibrant' colours. There might be a fewer
number of colours in computer terms on a reduced data rate, but all are
capable of giving fully saturated colours. But PAL wasn't perfect in this
respect either.

You are without clue.


jamie.
--

Component vs SCART
 

"Roderick Stewart" wrote in message
.myzen.co.uk...
In article , J r powell wrote:
One only has to compare HD programming with the downconverted SD versions to
see
that the latter has inferior colour depth.

If that's the case, then the downconverter must be set to do something other
than
downconvert, because downconversion is simply a matter of changing the number
of
pixels in the image, nothing else. If I resize one of my digital photographs
it
doesn't change colour as well - why should it? It would be very difficult to
work
with digital photography if it did.

I wouldn't expect anything different with television pictures, and in my
(admittedly limited) experience, it doesn't happen. I worked on a HD
television
production once where we only had one HD monitor which failed on the second
day of
the shoot. We just carried on using for engineering monitoring the 625 line
downconverted output from the camera that we had already been feeding to the
production monitors, and apart from looking a tiny bit less sharp, it was
exactly
the same.

If you look at what I wrote again, you'll see that I was talking about
*broadcast* picture quality as viewed at home; specifically MPEG2 SD mush VS the
long-lost PAL broadcast chains.
Either you just didn't bother to follow what I wrote, or you're editing me down
and selectively quoting me out of contect to try and make me look stupid (a
technique often employed by TV programme makers when "airing" views which "go
against the grain").

Not that I should need to spell it out, but the obvious issue is that your
downconverted SD picture, coming straight from a downconvertor, won't have gone
through anything like the level of degredation which plagues a typical low
bitrate DVB MPEG2 video stream -- and yes this can include substantial reduction
of colour information.


jamie.
--

Component vs SCART
 

On 08/10/2010 19:54, j r powell wrote:

If you look at what I wrote again, you'll see that I was talking about
*broadcast* picture quality as viewed at home; specifically MPEG2 SD mush VS the
long-lost PAL broadcast chains.
Either you just didn't bother to follow what I wrote, or you're editing me down
and selectively quoting me out of contect to try and make me look stupid (a
technique often employed by TV programme makers when "airing" views which "go
against the grain").

Not that I should need to spell it out, but the obvious issue is that your
downconverted SD picture, coming straight from a downconvertor, won't have gone
through anything like the level of degredation which plagues a typical low
bitrate DVB MPEG2 video stream -- and yes this can include substantial reduction
of colour information.


IME colour loss is colour accuracy, not range. That bright red pixel is
still bright red. But the pink one next to it might not be quite the
same shade of pink. IYSWIM.

Andy