Director developers often need to record their movies onto
videotape. Unfortunately, television and videotape are lower-quality
mediums compared to typical computer graphics systems and digital video,
especially in terms of resolution and color artifacts. Therefore, you need
to put extra effort into the design and testing of your Director movies so
they look and sound good when output to videotape and
broadcast.
Great hardware + great technique = great
video The final image quality obtained using the methods described
below is typically proportional to price: in general, the more the
hardware costs, the better the potential image quality. However, your
authoring techniques have a significant affect on image quality. For
example, use of fonts that are too small will result in illegible text on
the final videotape. One-pixel thick horizontal lines will result in video
artifacts. In addition, many other parameters impact television videotape
quality, including color saturation, "safe area" considerations, stage
size, etc. For more information, there are many third party books and
on-line resources (search on-line for references) on the subject of
television video and good graphic design for television.
Director
includes many features and capabilities which allow high quality output to
videotape. For example, use a stage size appropriate for video; typically
640 x 480 pixels. Keep sprites within video's safe area, which is
approximately the middle 80% of the video raster. Use large Text sprites
rather than Field sprites because Director automatically anti-aliases
(smoothes) Text sprites. Also, you can use Director's NTSC palette to
limit graphics to "legal" broadcast colors. However, you should test your
output using television test equipment (e.g.: television video monitors
and TV sets, video waveform and vectorscope monitors, etc.). Whether
you're working with 8-, 16- or 24-bit color images, the only way to know
for sure if your final output will be acceptable is to test using this
equipment.
To output a Director movie to videotape, use one of
the following methods
1) Use the built-in composite / SVideo /
component video and audio output jacks available on some computers (refer
to the system documentation and manufacturer for more information);
or
2) Use the composite / SVideo / component video output jack on
third party video cards for both Mac and Windows PCs, and the computer's
built-in or sound card audio output jacks (refer to card vendors for more
information); or
3) Use the computer's built-in or video card RGB
video-output connector, normally used to connect to a computer monitor.
Connect the RGB signals to an external device called a scan converter to
convert the non-interlaced RGB signal to interlaced composite / SVideo /
component video for videotaping; or
4) Use the Export feature in
Director to save the movie as a digital video file on disk, for use with
other applications to output to tape using the methods above (see the
previous section "Exporting Director Movie as Digital Video").
All
of these methods convert whatever is displayed on the computer monitor to
television video, including a Director movie. The resulting signal can
then be recorded onto videotape.
Frame-by-frame
recording It's also possible to record a Director movie
frame-by-frame to an editing VCR using a combination of special software
and hardware, but in most cases the "real time" methods listed above will
suffice. DiaQuest and other vendors make systems that allow control of
edit VCRs. Note that the computer imagery must also be converted (using
one of the methods described above) in addition to it being recorded
frame-by-frame to the VCR.
Video signal and videotape
formats Some videotape formats yield higher quality results than
others. For example, BetaCam is better than DVC, which is better than Hi8
and SVHS, which are better than regular 8mm and VHS. Also, the type of
video signal and cable connections used is very important: component video
(especially "RGB") usually yields the highest image quality, and SVideo
(also called "Y/C") generally yields better quality than composite ("RCA
pin jack") connections. The higher quality signals and connectors are
often found on the more expensive equipment.
Refer to third party
vendors and manufacturers of the above-mentioned equipment, and also
digital video trade magazine product reviews, for additional information
on this topic.
Last updated:
January
15, 2003
Keywords:
digital
video, videotape, safe area, NTSC, scan conversion
