DV and DVD Black Levels Part 1
by Bob Hudson
Note: If you need more info on the basics of DVD burning,
take a look at our DVD
burning instructional video.
DVD Pre-production
You worked hard - lots of preparation for the video shoot, a long day with
the camcorder, mics and lights and then a few very intense days of editing.
During the shoot and during editing you kept a video monitor plugged into
your DV camcorder so you'd have a better way to judge quality than just
using the camcorder's tiny LCD monitor or the computer screen (which you
know is not a good way to judge black levels and color adjustments for video
that is going to be viewed on TV's and other NTSC monitors).
After finishing up the editing you saved a master copy of the production to DV tape and then watched it all on your TV/monitor. It looked great.
Where did the levels go?
Then you went through the sometimes long and tedious process of authoring
the video to DVD, encoding, creating menus chapters and the DVD navigation
structure. After the DVD authoring was completed you burned it to DVD,
popped it into your DVD player (connected to the same monitor on which
the DV tape had looked so good) and...... "What happened to my video,
what happened to the black levels, how come it looks washed out?"
Sound familiar? It should, judging by the number of complaints about black levels on many DVD support forums. Once DVD producers figure out the basics of authoring and burning a DVD (including learning which MPEG-2 encoder and settings will produce clean MPEG-2 movies) this disappointment over DVD black levels is one of the most common complaints.
So what happened, why did the black levels on your DVD look different than the black levels on the DV tape and what, if anything can be done about it?
There are three main reasons why DVD's often end up with black levels that look different than the source tape: one has to do with the way DV camcorders are manufactured, one has to do with the MPEG-2 encoder used to convert your edited video into the proper format for DVD authoring and the third reason is improper conversion of analog video sources (such as VHS) to digital video.
The illustration above shows the typical setup for
external video monitoring during DV production. By "DV," we mean not just
DV camcorders but pretty much most DV video equipment and that includes
so-called mini-DV, Digital 8 and DVCAM camcorders and VTR's (even some
that cost thousands of dollars). With the exception of some professional
model DVCAM equipment, they all have a fundamental flaw for video producers
in North America or others who use the North America NTSC video standard.
Read more of this article in DV
and DVD Black Levels Part 2
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