Viewing Problems

[mcb553]

Hello, my name is Michael and I've completed my first film. It's a short film of 8 minutes titled Dreams. I'm new to this site and don't know exactly what I should write, but I want everyone to know that I'm not a film student. I'm just passionate about film, have ideas, and had to try and finally make a film. I shot my film with a Samsung digital camcorder. Shot on digital miniDV and edited with Windows Movie Maker. Now, my problem is, on my PC the film looks good. Or, at least as good as it can and the whole time I was in post just wanted to finish and burn it to a DVD. I thought the film would look better. I was wrong. I can view my burnt DVD on my PC and my film looks like it always had. Once I put that DVD in my player and watch it on my TV it looks terrible. The questions I have are; is there anything I can do to fix this problem and what did I do wrong that caused this problem? I will be great full for any help. My best friend, Rob, and I are planning to shoot our next film this spring. I'd really like to make sure this doesn't happen again. Thank you.

 

[element80]

what kind of screen does you PC have, and what kind does the tv have? Also, when you say it looks horrible, what exaactly do you mean? Is the contrast off? The color? etc...

 

[mcb553]

Hello element80. Thank you for responding to my post. I have to admit I don't remember any details about my monitor for my PC. I have a Gateway and the monitor that came with it was just standard 17" flat panel. I have a Sanyo 31" regular TV. Don't know the resolution for either. After I posted I thought that I didn't explain my problem well enough. It's the contrast of the film, I guess? On the PC Dreams looks correct. The lighting I used was just natural and what's supposed to be dark and shadowy is; when I view Dreams on the DVD I burned it looks grainy and the dark shadows are yellowish. I did use some color correction on the editing program to lighten up a few scenes I thought were too dark. Other than that, I didn't do anything else. I guess I need better lighting? But, is there anyway to fix my current film? So, yes, the contrast and color are off when I burned my film to DVD.

 

[element80]

I'm assuming that the computer monitor is an LCD, since you said it's flat pannel. LCD screens and CRT televisions can look drastically different, expecially when you're dealing with a consumer CRT TV verses a professional CRT monitor. Odds are, if it looks ok on your comptuer, it's the TV and/or DVD player that's making it look bad. Try vieing it on a different TV, and see if that amkes a difference. Also, if your computer has some sort of video out that would let you hook the TV up to it and use it as an external monitor, you could make your color corrections based on what you see there, rather than what you see on the LCD. Let me know how it goes.

 

[movingyourvision]

Yes, the different screens are probably the reason for your problem. That's why professionals use incredibly expensive calibrated monitors for color correction. Is the difference that drastic when you compare the screens with a commercial DVD?
If your computer doesn't have a video out and you still want to use your TV as an external monitor, as element80 suggested, you might want to try to connect your camera to the computer via FireWire, while editing. Most editing software (don't now about moviemaker) can mirror the video signal on any attached video devices (->your camera in VCR Mode, with no tape inside). You can then connect the TV to the video out of the camera and there's your external TV monitor then!
This works quite well for me, except a small delay between LCD and TV screen, but that doesn't matter, it's about the colors...

 

[mcb553]

I'd like to say thank you to both of the people that have responded to my post. I'm working one the problem and greatly appreciate your advice. Just want to say that I don't have any programs that will let me adjust the color of my film. Are there any that I could get for this? And, I'm having trouble with something else...Does anyone know of a program that will convert video files , such as, .WMV to the DVD files .BUP, .IFO, ,VOB? I can't burn any of my video files using my Nero because of this. Thanks again for all the help.

 

[movingyourvision]

First of all: If you save a movie and want to do more work with it (e.g. convert it for DVD), always choose the AVI file format and the best quality available. It is almost certain that Nero will then be able to read and convert your file. WMV is only good for compressed web publishing and stuff.

Color correction: You might want to move on to a "real" editing software. Movie Maker is alright for a start, but it's not really powerful. I would recommend Adobe Premiere, but it costs money. But you can still try the demo version and see, if you find it's worth the cost.
There is a free Version of AVID available. ("Avid Free DV") Avid is a really professional software. But this means, it is a little more complicated.

If you want to do some color correction on the whole film, you can use the free VirtualDub program. It has some color/contrast/brightness filters built in and more plugins are available. It is a really good tool, but you can't do proper editing with it, just process whole files.