I'm making a new short film using the new Canon HDV camcorders.
I've been using HDV since 11/2003. Overall it is a decent codec, considering the output size. I have always been disappointed by the horrible color banding though-- it behaves rather like DV in this regard.

Our 10-minute film is nearing completion, and most of the camera shots look great.
BUT- we have an opening sequence that was created in Shake and After Effects. It is beams of light and "color trails" with some titling over it.

As you might imagine, these this sequence looks pretty bad -- it's loaded with banding and artifacting due to the HDV compressor.

What can I do? Should I use another compressor for the entire project (other than HDV)? Is there a way to have just the opening sequence render in the Animation compressor and the rest in HDV?

The opening Seq. is about 2 mins, the entire film is about 19.
The rest of the film looks good.

Any insight would be appreciated.

thanks

steven galvano

follow-up. I read this on another thread talking about HDV banding (editing on a Avid)
I, BTW am on FCP

<<The banding you're probably seeing is because you're working int 8 bit color and not 16 bit or 32 bit float. Go into your FX settings and change the default to 16 bit instead of 8 bit and you'll see a tremendous (100X) improvement in your color corrections, particularly agaist gradients like the wall scenario that you've mentioned.>>

thanks
steven