.h264 encoding issues

I am trying to transcode an hour-long program (Blackmagic 10-bit 1080i) to .h264 at a fairly high bitrate (25mbps). A lot of the film was shot on 16mm and telecined to 29.97 but there are also some graphics done in AE at 29.97. I have tried encoding to .wmv using flip4mac but the finished .wmv staggers/strobes a bit especially during pans and tilts. So, now I'm trying to encode to .h264 to take advantage of the greater controls in Compressor. I am also downsizing to 1280x720 and will be projecting the finished program from a fast PC (Dell Vostro w/Intel Core 2 Duo and 2 GB of RAM). In my first attempts it seemed like it was staggering the same as it was in .wmv. So, I tried using frame controls and selected reverse telecine in the deinterlace pop-up menu thinking maybe it had something to do with the 3:2 pulldown. I think that helped but now I'm seeing field lines on the leading and trailing edges of moving objects. In the summary for the .h264 setting I'm using it says it is outputting progressive so why am I seeing field lines? I also just discovered the "Cinema Tools Reverse Telecine" option in the tools menu of FCP. This is new to me so I'm not sure if that's something I can apply after the edit has been finished in a 30fps timeline. Any thoughts or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

(FCS2, dual 2 GHz, PowerPC G5, OS 10.4.10)

That's a big jump down - maybe you would be better served by dropping down to SD, and then going out to H.264 or WMV? Do a one minute test, in any case, and see what the results look like.

Apply the deinterlace filter in compressor to remove the field lines (by selecting progressive, you're merely throwing away 1 field, but haven't patched up that field yet so you will be seeing combing effects).

You can down res to SD, but I won't recommend that, since you're final video frame is going to be larger than SD. Also, giving Compressor more information provides more accurate results (but quality always runs at the expense of time). Converting to SD will reduce your frame size and then blow it back up to your resolution. Also, you'll losing more generational quality by doing so.

I don't know anybody throwing flowers at Cine Tools for its ability to remove 3:2. It can produce some really odd artifacts in the processed show.


You can also get what looks like strobing if during the edit and processing, some of the fields got saved backwards. It's rough to see that happening in Final Cut (or any video tools that I know of). We used to see it in Standard Def by blowing the show off to a tape machine and play the fields in slo mo one at a time. The bird flying would go the right direction in three of the four fields and back up on the fourth. Severe stuttering.

Another problem is the fighting scan rates on monitors. I have what passes for a "Digital TV" now and I still occasionally get a network show with motion problems--although most don't.

Quick, what's the standard digital TV to use as a reference?

Koz

Thank you all for your suggestions. Yeah, so I don't think I want to drop it down to SD because my final video will be 1280x720 and I don't want to lose any quality. As far as applying the deinterlace filter in compressor, I tried that, with the algorithm set to odd (while also applying the reverse telecine in frame controls) and it ended up looking low-res. The field issue was better but overall the quality was noticeably inferior to previous tests with only frame controls applied. I have read somewhere, in the compressor manual I think, that they recommend using the deinterlace frame controls instead of the deinterlace filter becuase the latter is a "legacy" filter and the quality is not as good as the frame control deinterlace. I can't apply both the deinterlace frame control as well as the revese telecine however as they are both options on the same menu and it's either one or the other it seems. I'm a little confused about the possibility that some of the fileds got saved backwards. How would that happen and how would I go about fixing it? As for the monitor, I'm playing it back on a new apple cinema display. Would that somehow introduce problems because of scan rate? Also not clear about the answer to your question about a reference for "standard digital TV". What exactly do you mean by a "digital TV"? The cinema diplay is all digital but how could the scan rate affect the video in such a way as to create the artifacts I'm seeing?

Can we get you to put a paragraph break in every so often? The solid block of words is a little rough to read. I'm putting a ruler on the screen so my eyes don't wander.

[paragraph break]

Back in the Good Old Days, you could create a standard movie DVD and view it on any glass TV set and you could see immediately if there were any motion artifacts or stuttering problems. And they were real, because the whole rest of the world was viewing the show on the same type of display system you were.

Fast forward to last Friday. If your video monitor (only sometimes TV monitor) is scanning the screen at an odd rate compared to the actual show, you can see very serious damage and still have the actual digital show perfect in every possible way. Or worse yet, it skips over damaged frames and you never see them until they hit Channel 4.

I bought a flat panel to watch TV on and I can tell you what a painful experience that was. I borrowed several different panels from work and I got all the variations; bad color, stuttering motion, dim raster, fuzzy detail, crushed whites, etc. etc. I found amazing differences in any one panel just by changing from the 15-pin to the DVI connection--and not just sharpness, either. Motion problems vanished.

What.
Oh, yes. The panel I settled on can not be used with the Compact 15-pin VGA cable. It's completely unacceptable if you try that.

I found a combination I'm very happy with and I still get motion problems on some HiDef shows, they're just not severe enough to worry about.

So to bring this around, which of those panels should we be using for Quality Control?

Which TV is America going to be watching my show on? Or worse yet, we can't cure sucky motion or stuttering. We can only cure "duplicated frames" or "4:5 pulldown" or "field reversals." So somehow, you have to figure out what's actually broken. I keep expecting to be put out of business with digital video, but I've never been so busy.

9 Paragraph breaks. Now wasn't that so much easier to read than that great block of text?

Koz

Didn't read that u clicked the frame controls- thought you just set the output to progressive, which does nothing to get rid of the combs.