What's the "best" standard video format

[Niki Mundo]

I've heard rumors that MiniDV is a poor choice for chroma-keying because of the compression affects colour or something.

But if the final product with be B&W should it matter? I plan on removing all the colour in the final stages.

 

Is there an ideal standard video format for this (I've heard Hi-8 is good for green-screening).

 

Thanks!

[Scott Fritzshall]

MiniDV is a poor choice because it throws away a significant amount of data through compression and subsampling. It may matter less if you're going to end up as B&W, but you're still in danger of ending up with poor edges. DigiBeta is considered the professional format for SD video, and it has much less compression and subsampling (4:2:2 as opposed to 4:1:1 on NTSC or 4:2:0 PAL miniDV).

[David Auner aac]

Is there an ideal standard video format for this (I've heard Hi-8 is good for green-screening).

 

Hi Nikki,

 

is this one of your shrew jokes again or are you serious for once?

 

Cheers, Dave

[John Sprung]

The main thing to watch out for is the chroma sampling structure. It does matter even if you're going to make the final image B&W, because chroma keying uses chroma information to decide where to put the matte lines. For instance, in 4:4:4, chroma and luma have equal spatial resolution. In 4:2:2 or 4:2:0, chroma has only half the resolution of luma. In 3:1:1 it's one third, and in 4:1:1 it's one quarter.

 

 

 

 

-- J.S.

[Matthew Buick]

Hi8 has only 260 lines of luminance. So it won't work.