Plugin Solutions For Final Cut Pro, Color, & Motion
Articles
 
   
   
   
Film Effects
FAQ
Movies
Presets Explorer
  FILM EFFECTS
 

G Nicer 4:1:1

G Nicer is a DV video Chroma Reconstruction Filter. DV digital video is a great format that has many advantages, not least size and cost, but this comes at the price of compression. Most digital video, whether it be DV, DVCAM, DVCPro (50), Digital-S, Digital Betacam, Betacam SX, HDCAM etc. is compressed in some way. One way in which these formats differ is in how they compress the colour information in your video signal. Colour information is routinely compressed by reducing it's resolution compared to that of the luma part of the video signal. Digital video records the video picture as one luminance component (Y’) and two chroma components (Cb & Cr). The resolution of the Cb & Cr chroma components is often recorded at half the horizontal resolution of the luma component. There are a set of short-hand descriptions of the various ways that the colour can be recorded as a fraction of the resolution of the luminance signal:

Y'
Cb
Cr
 Notes
4
4
4
 No reduction in chroma resolution. The resolution of the chroma is identical to that of the luma.
4
2
2
 Standard for broadcast video - the resolution of the chroma is 1/2 that of the luma; used by Digital Betacam, DVCPro 50, Digital-S etc.
4
1
1
 The resolution of the chroma is 1/4 of that of the luma; used by NTSC DV and DVCAM, and PAL and NTSC DVCPro.
4
2
0
 The resolution of the chroma is 1/2 of that of the luma in both horizontal and vertical directions; used by DVD, PAL DV and DVCAM.

This filter is designed to help you work with NTSC DV and it’s 4:1:1 chroma sampling when you are doing chroma-keying (blue screen or green screen) or "bumping" it up to a higher chroma sampled format like Digital Betacam.

G Nicer does not work by blurring the chroma component of your video, although this is a useful and fast technique for helping with chroma-key work. G Nicer analyses the chroma and luma for each pixel on your image, and works out how best to fill in the missing chroma information. Because the luma of each pixel is analyzed along with the chroma information, a much more accurate and better looking guess as to the correct chroma can be made. This filter can take a long time to render due to the intensive processing used
 
   
 
 
   
 

G Nicer is designed to be used on an uncompressed 4:2:2 timeline or 4:4:4 (Animation codec, 100% or PhotoJPEG100%) timeline. Rendering a G Nicer on a DV timeline will not improve the chroma of the clip it is applied to. However, under the special circumstance of using a chroma key effect on a DV timeline, the G Nicer filter can be useful to temporarily improve the chroma when placed before the chroma key filter.

Control
Settings
Notes
Diagnostics final
Cb
Cr
Detail Control Mask
Cb Original
Cr Original		 Allows you to view the final effect or to see the chroma components Cb and Cr so that you can easily see what the filter is doing. The Detail Control mask allows you to see what the filter sees as detail with the sharpen option.
Cb Original and Cr Original allow you to compare what the filter is doing with what the chroma channels looked like before the filter was applied.
Linear to Smooth 0% to 100% Controls the amount of the G Nicer effect that is used to reconstruct the chroma.
Sharpen Edges
Inner Detail
Everything 		Some false detail can be added into the reconstruction. This controls allows you to decide whether edges, inner detail or everything gets the added detail.
Sharpen 0% to 100% Controls how much false detail is added in.

 

 
 
   


©2007 Nattress Productions Inc.