Chapter 2: Capture
14
Keep Detail to a Minimum
Keeping the detail within the scene to a minimum helps the individual frames of video
compress more easily, giving you better results than video with lots of detail. It also makes the
video easier to see when the movie is reduced in size for desktop delivery.
If you are shooting an interview, keep the background simple — plain backdrops are often a
good choice. If you have the experience and equipment, bluescreen or greenscreen can work
very well for interviews.
It is fairly common to film people indoors in front of windows. If there is a lot of detail or
movement outside, you can throw the background significantly out of focus, which makes the
file easier to encode.
Trees are often used as backdrops for interviews filmed outside. The excessive detail of the
leaves poses a challenge for encoding and should be avoided if possible. If you must film
against a background that uses trees, use a shallow depth of field to blur the leaves and
improve the final movie. Beware of trees moving in a breeze — the high detail and subtle
changes between frames make both temporal and spatial compression very difficult.
Ask the subjects to wear clothes that do not have high-contrast patterns or lots of detail. Plain
colors are best — bold stripes or checked patterns can do very odd things when resized and
encoded.
Proper Lighting
Generally speaking, video that is well lit encodes better than under- or over-exposed material.
Most codecs work best with moderate-contrast material, and many codecs do not work well
with dark scenes.
Adequate lighting is critical to producing superior streaming movies because low-light
conditions also produce excessively noisy video signals that lack details in the shadows. Over-
exposure is usually less of a problem but should also be avoided.
You should not shoot video that you know is incorrectly exposed and plan to fix it in post-
processing. Missing detail and excessive noise can never be fully corrected after the fact.
Properly lighting the scene is the only way to ensure the highest-quality results.
Blue Screen and Green Screen
Properly executed blue screen or green screen can significantly improve the quality of
streaming movies. For example, if you use a bluescreen to composite an actor in front of a
digital still, make sure the background image is perfectly steady and noise-free. The lack of
video noise and movement in the background improves both temporal and spatial
compression of the movie, which produces higher-quality results.
Summary of Contents for 64006-051108-9001 - Discreet Cleaner - Mac
Page 1: ...from discreet November 2000 ...
Page 8: ...Contents viii ...
Page 16: ...Chapter 1 Introduction 8 ...
Page 24: ...Chapter 2 Capture 16 ...
Page 54: ...Chapter 4 Projects 46 ...
Page 68: ...Chapter 5 Settings 60 ...
Page 148: ...Chapter 7 Formats 140 ...
Page 160: ...Chapter 8 Encoding 152 ...
Page 220: ...Chapter 8 Encoding 212 ...
Page 248: ...Chapter 11 Workflow 240 ...
Page 254: ...Chapter 12 Troubleshooting 246 ...
Page 284: ...Glossary 276 ...