Is there any way to get rid of some of the things that I see in my footage shot with a VX2000? I've done some research and they seem to be called "artifacts". Things like leaves and branches in the background of footage seem to flicker when viewed on a tv. Is there anything I can do during shooting to minimize this problem or is it something I have to live with while shooting in .dv?

You have to live with it in any format that is standard defiinition.

There are antiflicker filters in some editing systems. They blur the image somewhat.

Might try softening the sharpness setting and see if you like that result.

Definitely tweak the Sharpness setting. To quickly check and see if it's causing the problem, or, "enhancing" the problem, turn Sharpness all the way up and look at something you know to exhibit the flicker. Is it the same? Worse? Now, turn Sharpness all the way down, and observe.

If you would like to try yet another way of reducing artifacts, which can even get worse during encoding ( especially foilage in the background), try throwing your background out of focus by using nuetral density filters and lowering your f-stop; also set your camera further away from subject and zoom in, shortening the depth of field. Hope this helps a little.

Also, I don't know how the users are rated, but I am not a tourist !

Hey Brian,

I'm not sure that whether what you're describing are "artifacts", but I recently did some tests with different VX-2000 sharpness settings here (http://www.greenmist.com/dv/vxsharp) which might be of interest.

I think the term "artifact" applies to irregularities in an the image which are the result of data compression. From my own tests (http://www.greenmist.com/dv/garden) I concluded that what I'd always taken to be DV compression artifacts were really the result of the small chips and processing in our 1/3" and smaller camcorders.

Jeff: your "rating" in no way reflects on your abilities! It's simply triggered by the number of times you post something here. So like most things in life, the more you open your mouth, the more of an "expert" you will be ;-)

Brian, what you describe is, I think, not related to DV. It seems to me that interlace flicker( line twitter) and optical aliasing (difficult to eliminate in consumer cams)is what you see. Try to apply noise reduction filters ( in yr TV or in post). Also Jeff's input is good to remember if you want to avoid this "background noise". Also keep shutter settings at 1/60 (1/50) if possible. This avoids extra strobing when there is motion.