PiP quality

[OBroschart]

We're trying to get a decent picture-in-picture effect with the VT2 and wondering if there is a best way to do this.

Because this would typically be done in a live situation, we're figuring that doing this through the switcher and a DVE (8019) is the way to go.

We're seeing, however, quite a bit of compression artifacting and noticeable resolution loss going on the shrunk video. Along with jaggy horizontal edges and chroma shifts. This is most notable with moving images and faces.

Is this something that can be adjusted in preferences, or improved with future versions of Toaster? Since we're running dual Xeon 3 gigs chips, there's still quite a bit of CPU cycles available to do additional rendering on these effects.

If there's a better way to do this, please pass it along.

Thanks.

[mrjaialai]

This seems to be a weak point of the toaster. I went through this a while back, and never could get it resolved.

I went through resolutions, fields, etc and couldn't find anything. The closest I could come to finding an answer is that depending on how much the fader bar was moved, the amount of interlacing changed. I had a spot where it would only be one horizontal line of interlacing, and at other spots the whole thing would be screwed up.

I even had my engineer out and he said it appeared that was just how the toaster handled it.

Luckily for me I layer four switchers anyway, so I just do my compression effects on my Panasonic and patch that feed through the toaster.

I would imagine that it is a fixable problem, though, as my engineer said that digital boards can do this, but it's not the toaster's strength. But then again, I don't know of anything that does everything well.

But if you do figure it out, please pass along the knowledge.

[shall]

I have the same question. Of all the Toaster DVEs I have tried, this one has serious problems. This PIP DVE is also the one we will be using for live productions 99% of the time (to insert an instructors face in the upper right hand corner of the screen while writing notes using the document camera). Is this a problem with how the code was written for this particular effect or could it be something else? Perhaps Paul could comment on this for us.

[OBroschart]

Hrmmm.... No bites from Newtek support on this topic as yet?

I'm very curious to know if this effect's quality is limited by the Toaster's design, or by PC architecture constraints, and if it can be improved on computers with faster CPUs.

When we were considering the purchase of this product, we were comparing it with the Globecaster, which has a professional-looking PiP effect. Even though I saw a few demos of the Toaster's excellent capabilities, I never really noticed VT[2]'s PiP problem until I had my own unit to play with.

I'm very impressed by VT[2], I'm excited by it and want to show it off. But the PiP effect is common and needs to look good to pull off a successful demo to our executives.

[Paul Lara]

Yes, there's serious aliasing in the PiP series effects. I can see it as well. Highly likely that it can be fixed with a re-compile, since the other scalable DVE's don't exhibit this.

I'll pass this along to Engineering.

[OBroschart]

Thank for your help Paul.

While you're at it, can you ask them to bring back the position-adjustable PiP that was available on the Toaster 2000?

This was the PiP effect whose on-screen position was moveable with the mouse. The t-bar controlled its size, but the mouse controlled the position.

Thanks,
Olivier

[mrjaialai]

I'll 2nd that. Use that a lot on my other switchers.....

[Paul Lara]

Will do.

[Tom Wood]

Oooo, I'm gonna -really- need the PIP DVE soon. Hope it's not a CPU issue 'cause I already bought...

TW

[OBroschart]

Well, I installed VT3 along with the first patch and the PiP effect in the switcher still looks as rough. Too bad.

Is there any work being done on it for the next patch release?

The mouse-positionable PiP isn't there either.


The frustrating bit about all this is that the scaling and positioning in TED works great in real time. Which makes me think....

How about if we were able to bring in a LIVE source in TED. Say... Have my switcher inputs (C2A or CP2 for example) selectable as a live CLIP that can be manipulated using the TED edit controls.

I could then add a drop shadow, crop it, play it with another live source or a disk-based clip. This would turn my T3 into a feature-packed video effect box.

I could select the TED output through T3's own switcher, or, ONCE YOU HAVE ALPHA OUT ENABLED, I could use it upstream to a production switcher with full key capability.

Or... just give me the same editing controls for my switcher DVE's as what I have in TED.

That'd be cool. No.... THAT'D BE FREAKIN COOL!
:D