Interlaced/progressive

Hi guys, i recently filled up a tape with half interlaced footage and half progressive footage, just wondering when capturing is there anywhere that will tell you what type of footage it is, if not what would be the best setting to import the footage?

Thanks heaps

>with half interlaced footage and half progressive footage

ughs. I hate it when they shoot blind. The difference is quite obvious, even more so if you're in an NTSC country, since they would imply different frame rates.

> if not what would be the best setting to import the footage?

Are the formats the same? I usually capture native. If they're of different video standards, you could capture everything over HD SDI, and depending on what your footage is, you may prefer to capture them over a Teranex. But there's no short answer to your question. You'd prefer to be more detailed.



www.strypesinpost.com

From which camera(s)?

Noah

Final Cut Studio Training, featuring the HVX200, EX1, EX3, DVX100, DVDSP and Color at [www.callboxlive.com]!
Author, RED: The Ultimate Guide to Using the Revolutionary Camera available now at: [www.amazon.com].
Editors Store- Gifts and Gear for Editors: [www.editorsstore.com]

Hi guys,

>if you're in an NTSC country, since they would imply different frame rates.

I'm from a Pal country and can see the difference, but when i'm capturing the footage it is sometimes hard to be 100 percent sure.

>From which camera(s)?

The camera i have is a sony HDR FX-1000 and i also use a sony HDR-HC7

>I usually capture native. If they're of different video standards, you could capture everything over HD SDI, and depending on what your footage is, you may prefer to capture them over a Teranex

I'm not sure what native, HD SDI or Teranex is.

Does it matter if i create a film with half interlaced and half progressive footage?

to check while capturing you have to run the output of your deck or camera into an external monitor.

CRT's are the best for picking interlacing, IMO
even an old TV wold do the trick.


nick

Hi guys,

>if you're in an NTSC country, since they would imply different frame rates.

I'm from a Pal country and can see the difference, but when i'm capturing the footage it is sometimes hard to be 100 percent sure.

>From which camera(s)?

The camera i have is a sony HDR FX-1000 and i also use a sony HDR-HC7

>I usually capture native. If they're of different video standards, you could capture everything over HD SDI, and depending on what your footage is, you may prefer to capture them over a Teranex

I'm not sure what native, HD SDI or Teranex is.

Does it matter if i create a film with half interlaced and half progressive footage?

"Does it matter if i create a film with half interlaced and half progressive footage?"

in my opinion, yes.
looks bad UNLESS it is for a specific effect.

remember those old BBC tv shows, half in studio (interlaced) and half on location (film)

don't know if you've watched much Seinfleld.
shot on film (progressive)
but when they cut to something on TV, it's interlaced video.
looks really weird to me.

also for sales to TV etc, these days, you have to be consistent, i'd say.


"but when i'm capturing the footage it is sometimes hard to be 100 percent sure. "

well it's done now, right?
why is the capturing stage so important?

best way to de-interlace is in post.

you're going to be working with this stuff for a while i guess?
as i said, a CRT monitor till help a lot.

Thanks very much. The capturing stage is what i'm unsure about because i dont know whether to set my 'Easy setup' to '1080i' or '1080p' as my tape has half of both interlaced and progressive on it. What would you recomend i set it to?

Also i'm creating a bodyboardign film that i want to sell around the country...would you reccomend interlace or progressive?

Thanks

of course, sorry, good point.

i'd say you should capture each format the way it was shot. (native)
someone with more experience may offer a different view.

i don't know that camera, but my limited experience,
the format is usually displayed somewhere on the screen.


so what are the actual formats you shot??? (include frame rate)
which country do you want to sell around?
(in other words, is your final delivery format PAL or NTSC?)

a video like that can have all sorts of crazy looks and styles.
adds to the experience.
but for me interlaced always looks cheaper.

nick

>so what are the actual formats you shot??? (include frame rate)
which country do you want to sell around?

I'm from Australia, so it is PAL, i'm not sure what format the sony hdr fx1000 shoots, I think its 25 frames per second progressive frames if thats what you meant.

Yeah i agree, i haven't had much experience with progressive but to me it looks more professional.

If i created a Progressive framed timeline and film, could i still incorporate the odd interlaced frame without causing any problems?

Even on many cams that shoot progressive, the image is stored in an interlaced format, but with each field representing the same point in time, rather than two spaced intervals in time. So, capture should be identical for both.

It's very hard (and slow) to convincingly convert progressive footage to look like and be interlaced.

So, I'd instead take your interlaced footage and make it look progressive by deinterlacing it. But, there's one advantage of interlaced footage - it can make for much better looking 2x slowmo than progressive footage, so in your movie if you want to do some cool slowmo shots, run the interlaced footage into something like my G Map Frames plugin (set fields to frames) which deinterlaces each field in turn and converts to a frame, thus slowing things down by 2x.

Mixing interlaced and progressive can look jarring and distracting, as mentioned above like old BBC shows where both film and video was used to shoot a programme.

Graeme

[www.nattress.com] - Plugins for FCP-X

>So, I'd instead take your interlaced footage and make it look progressive by deinterlacing it.

Oh ok, I'm not sure how to deinterlace footage?

>so in your movie if you want to do some cool slowmo shots, run the interlaced footage into something like my G Map Frames plugin (set fields to frames) which deinterlaces each field in turn and converts to a frame, thus slowing things down by 2x.

Yeah I definitly want to do some slowmo stuff, that works really well with surfing footage! Do the G map frames come with final cut pro? Also would the field for me be 25p?

G Map Frames is a plugin I created: [www.nattress.com]

To de-interlace, you can try the in-built FCP filters, or a 3rd party one like mine:[www.nattress.com]

Graeme

Oh ok, would shooting footage at a higher shutter speed (say 1000fps) and then slowing down the clip on fcp be similar efftect to the G map filter?


Thanks very much for all the answers.

Quote

I'm not sure how to deinterlace footage?

by applying a de-interlace filter.

read up on using filters in FCP.
you don't have to worry about this before, or even during your edit,
but once you are done editing,
you'll want to use filters to make the image look as good as it can.
one you start you'll be blown away with what you can do.

FCP does have a de-interlace filter,
and there are some freebies out there,
but Graeme's is definitely the best looking one, IMO,
with less noise and grain. (and more control)

i'm not exactly sure what happens when you put interlaced footage in a progressive timeline.
you probably get a low-is res de-interlace?
maybe you get both fields "Blended" into one frame, which is a really bad look, IMO

Quote

would shooting footage at a higher shutter speed (say 1000fps) and then slowing down the clip on fcp be similar efftect to the G map filter?

no.
you do slow-mo by shooting at a higher FRAME RATE.
you shoot something at 100 frame per second,
then when you play it back at 25fps, it looks 4x slower.

not many video cameras can record that may frames per second.
the ones that can are pretty expensive.

the interlaced slow-mo trick works well because interlaced footage uses 2 interlaced fields (2 different images) for every frame.
so you're really getting 50 discrete images every second.
(this is a big part of why interlaced footage looks like it does, and film looks like IT does)

theoretically you can use each field for a whole frame, and get half-speed slow-mo.

FCP does a pretty bad job of this on it's own,
as it's only trying to deal with the FRAMES,
either playing each frame (both fields) twice,
or doing a blend on both frames, with the fields all mushed up in there somewhere.

so you need a bit of extra help to do it.


i stumbled across a trick to do this last year, that doesn't require Graeme's filter,
(sorry Graeme)
slow down to 50%
leave frame blending on
apply the de-interlace filter set to "Lower"
you wont see it work until you render.

now i don't really understand why this works.
it only worked for me on HDV footage.
i couldn't get it to work with DV (even with de-interlace set to upper)

also, every second frame was a little, tiny bit softer.
Graeme's filter probably does it right!


to properly judge any of this stuff,
you really need an external monitor.
the Canvas in FCP is a low res display, it doesn't show fields
(while it CAN show fields it doesn't really show them properly)

you might be able to edit just in FCP,
but of you want to make a product to SELL, you want to do it right,
and make sure it looks good on a TV by using an external monitor.
(read up on that, do some searches here, and other places to get lots of opinions.
when you have questions about it, maybe start another thread!)


i suspect there is a sharp learning curve ahead of you,
but it should be a lot of fun and very rewarding.



nick

No worries, is there any monitor and required cords that you would reccomend for me in Australia?

Thanks very much for everything you guys have been great help!!

best to post another thread for the monitor question, IMO
write what sort of media you are using,
and what you plan to deliver / create.

also what computer you are using.