All,
  I'm just about finished a music video done completely
in POV I want to get on TechTV's EyeDrops show.  The technical
guidelines basically only tell me to encode it in MPEG.  I've
written TechTV and gotten no additional help.  I've rendered
all the frames in 720x540 per their recommendations.  I've got
several video programs which can assemble the files.  Are there
any pieces I may be missing?  Did I need to use field rendering?
I've rendered this at 15fps (again no direction from TechTV).

Any other suggestions?

Thanks,
    Emory

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I think you may find that you needed to render at 30fps (for NTSC). Rendering at 15fps
may be
an insurmountable problem. I would think that using field rendering here would be
definitely
beneficial too. You'll need to find out whether they require MPEG 1 or 2, as this will
have a
direct impact on the end size of the video file ie. MPEG 2 = better quality for
smaller size
than MPEG 1.

TMPGEnc will encode to both of the above formats. http://www.tmpgenc.net/

All the best,

Andy Cocker

"Gwen & Emory Stagmer" <emo### [at] comcastnet> wrote in message
news:3DDC5D18.9C9944D1@comcast.net...
> All,
>   I'm just about finished a music video done completely
> in POV I want to get on TechTV's EyeDrops show.  The technical
> guidelines basically only tell me to encode it in MPEG.  I've
> written TechTV and gotten no additional help.  I've rendered
> all the frames in 720x540 per their recommendations.  I've got
> several video programs which can assemble the files.  Are there
> any pieces I may be missing?  Did I need to use field rendering?
> I've rendered this at 15fps (again no direction from TechTV).
>
> Any other suggestions?
>
> Thanks,
>     Emory

Post a reply to this message

On Wed, 20 Nov 2002 23:12:08 -0500, Gwen & Emory Stagmer
<emo### [at] comcastnet> wrote:

>All,
>  I'm just about finished a music video done completely
>in POV I want to get on TechTV's EyeDrops show.  The technical
>guidelines basically only tell me to encode it in MPEG.  I've
>written TechTV and gotten no additional help.  I've rendered
>all the frames in 720x540 per their recommendations.  I've got
>several video programs which can assemble the files.  Are there
>any pieces I may be missing?  Did I need to use field rendering?
>I've rendered this at 15fps (again no direction from TechTV).
>
>Any other suggestions?
>
>Thanks,
>    Emory

Hi Emory,

The settings you've used should be OK but if you wanted to get the
best out of the target format (i.e. NTSC) I would render at 30fps with
field rendering enabled (odd fields) - this should give you the
smoothest animation. One caveat though is that POV's field rendering
option renders two image files per frame, one for each field, which
you must somehow combine using a suitable tool to give a correct
field-rendered frame.

Also, the 720x540 seems strange to me - I've only really seen 720x480
as a recommended NTSC resolution. If you do decide to re-render I
would use 720x480

Another thing to mention is that if you do decide to render to fields
you should encode to MPEG2 since MPEG1 can't handle fields.

Cheers and good luck,

Scott

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in article ppjptu4s8ab6154f8bmek2qb5832lgdh7b@4ax.com, Scott Moore at
noo### [at] nospamcom wrote on 21/11/02 12:43 pm:

> Also, the 720x540 seems strange to me - I've only really seen 720x480
> as a recommended NTSC resolution. If you do decide to re-render I
> would use 720x480

That's correct. For PAL TV it would be 720x576.

All the best

Fidel.

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The 720x540 resolution was the highest recommended by the 
Eyedrops submission page at TechTV.com:

http://www.techtv.com/eyedrops/story/0,24330,3373159,00.html

They're kinda short on details in my opinion...this is my first
try at a TV compatible animation, so any help is a 'good thing' :)

Thanks (all) for your suggestions.  I'd love to re-render at 30fps,
but I'm up to about 6CPU WEEKS on my 1.8Ghz P4 machine at 15fps.
I don't want to delay the release by another 12 weeks...

Thanks again everyone,
   Emory


Fidel viegas wrote:
> 
> in article ppjptu4s8ab6154f8bmek2qb5832lgdh7b@4ax.com, Scott Moore at
> noo### [at] nospamcom wrote on 21/11/02 12:43 pm:
> 
> > Also, the 720x540 seems strange to me - I've only really seen 720x480
> > as a recommended NTSC resolution. If you do decide to re-render I
> > would use 720x480
> 
> That's correct. For PAL TV it would be 720x576.
> 
> All the best
> 
> Fidel.
>

Post a reply to this message

Gwen & Emory Stagmer wrote:

> The 720x540 resolution was the highest recommended by the 
> Eyedrops submission page at TechTV.com:
> 
> http://www.techtv.com/eyedrops/story/0,24330,3373159,00.html
> 
> They're kinda short on details in my opinion...this is my first
> try at a TV compatible animation, so any help is a 'good thing' :)
> 
> Thanks (all) for your suggestions.  I'd love to re-render at 30fps,
> but I'm up to about 6CPU WEEKS on my 1.8Ghz P4 machine at 15fps.
> I don't want to delay the release by another 12 weeks...
> 
> Thanks again everyone,


For TV compatible animation, especially for broadcast,
beware of the TV overscan (upto 10% of the image near a border might
get mangled/eated by a TV). So check that no crucial part of the 
animation happen in that zone.
Otherwise, some might see it and some other won't.

Post a reply to this message

Le Forgeron <jgr### [at] freefr> wrote in news:3DD### [at] freefr:

> For TV compatible animation, especially for broadcast,
> beware of the TV overscan (upto 10% of the image near a border might
> get mangled/eated by a TV). So check that no crucial part of the 
> animation happen in that zone.
> Otherwise, some might see it and some other won't.
> 

The other big conversion issue is color saturation.  What looks great on a 
monitor can be just plain awful on ntsc or pal.

http://www.psu.edu/dept/cac/viz/sem_notes/cg_for_video/

or

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/info/colorguide.htm

Post a reply to this message

Thanks alot for your suggestions and websites.  I think I'm OK
on the color saturations since I tended to use very natural colors
in this animation.  Also: I've framed these images in such a way
that the 10% overscan probably isn't a problem.
I posted two stills to p.b.i: the titles are
"ezekiel 0" and "ezekiel 1".  Your comments are appreciated!

Emory

Tom Galvin wrote:
> 
> Le Forgeron <jgr### [at] freefr> wrote in news:3DD### [at] freefr:
> 
> > For TV compatible animation, especially for broadcast,
> > beware of the TV overscan (upto 10% of the image near a border might
> > get mangled/eated by a TV). So check that no crucial part of the
> > animation happen in that zone.
> > Otherwise, some might see it and some other won't.
> >
> 
> The other big conversion issue is color saturation.  What looks great on a
> monitor can be just plain awful on ntsc or pal.
> 
> http://www.psu.edu/dept/cac/viz/sem_notes/cg_for_video/
> 
> or
> 
> http://www.camcorderinfo.com/info/colorguide.htm

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 22 Nov 2002 20:26:42 -0500, Gwen & Emory Stagmer
<emo### [at] comcastnet> wrote:

>Thanks alot for your suggestions and websites.  I think I'm OK
>on the color saturations since I tended to use very natural colors
>in this animation.

Hi,

Actually, black (RGB 0) can also cause problems - in fact any RGB
value less than 16 or more than 230 are not 'NTSC-safe'. I wouldn't
worry too much about this. Since TechTV don't mention this on their
website I assume they will handle this.

Cheers,

Scott

[Side Note]
Earlier on I was puzzled by when TechTV list 720x560 as a recommended
resolution - a quick search on the net revealed this was related to
aspect ratio. NTSC 'pixels' are not square - they're tall rectangles
(aspect ration of 0.9091) so if your rendering software doesn't allow
you to control aspect ratio (i.e. assumes square pixels) you should
render at 720x560 and then resize to 720x486 to pre-quash the image -
this will then ensure circles look like circles when displayed on the
TV. However, since POV does let you control aspect ratio you could
have saved yourself some CPU time by using

right     x*image_width*0.9091/image_height

in your camera statement and rendering to 720x486

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Andrew Cocker wrote:
> 
> I think you may find that you needed to render at 30fps (for NTSC).

I have, for years, said #declare FPS=30;
But these days, making actual VCDs with synched audio played on a real 
live TV and not a Windows Media Player simulation, i have discovered that 
#declare FPS=29.97;
is much more correct.
(I couldn't figure out: "if the drum machine runs at 120 beats per minute, 
why is not one beat exactly 15 frames?")

dik

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