de-interlace or no?

[venezia79]

Hi,

I recently filmed a 35mm project at 24fps, did a telecine to Digi-Beta and from that had a file loaded to my Lacie external hard drive. When I watch the footage, the images violently stutter at any sign of motion (camera, actors, etc.). Frame by frame there are beautifully detailed images, but for the most part it looks decimated by all these horizontal lines of stuttering. I tried de-interlacing in Final Cut Pro, thinking that was the right approach, but it only marginally worked and seemed to rob the footage of much of its detail. I'm wondering what the right approach is, and, also, is this normal for footage coming back from telecine? Here are some specs to help along - and thank you for reading this!

hardware:
powerbook mac OS X 10.3.9
1.67 GHz PowerPC G4
2 GB DDR SDRAM
200 gig Lacie external hard drive

software:
final cut pro HD 4.5
quicktime ver. 7.1.2, player version 7.0.1

file format:
uncompressed 8 bit, 720 x 486, millions
24-bit integer (big endian), stereo (l r), 48.000 kHz
FPS: 29.97
playing FPS: 30
data size: 43.60 GB
data rate: 170.12 mbits/sec
duration: 00:36:42.23
normal size: 720 x 486 pixels

thanks!

[Matt Grunau]

Hi,

I recently filmed a 35mm project at 24fps, did a telecine to Digi-Beta and from that had a file loaded to my Lacie external hard drive. When I watch the footage, the images violently stutter at any sign of motion (camera, actors, etc.). Frame by frame there are beautifully detailed images, but for the most part it looks decimated by all these horizontal lines of stuttering. I tried de-interlacing in Final Cut Pro, thinking that was the right approach, but it only marginally worked and seemed to rob the footage of much of its detail. I'm wondering what the right approach is, and, also, is this normal for footage coming back from telecine? Here are some specs to help along - and thank you for reading this!

hardware:
powerbook mac OS X 10.3.9
1.67 GHz PowerPC G4
2 GB DDR SDRAM
200 gig Lacie external hard drive

software:
final cut pro HD 4.5
quicktime ver. 7.1.2, player version 7.0.1

file format:
uncompressed 8 bit, 720 x 486, millions
24-bit integer (big endian), stereo (l r), 48.000 kHz
FPS: 29.97
playing FPS: 30
data size: 43.60 GB
data rate: 170.12 mbits/sec
duration: 00:36:42.23
normal size: 720 x 486 pixels

thanks!


How can your file format be 30fps when you filmed 24? That may be some of the problem. If your project settings dont match your file settings, you are in for a heap of trouble.

You shouldn't have to deinterlace in FCP, since your source isn't interlaced. If enabling de-interlacing is cleaning up your footage, it is being interpereted wrongly.

[Barry_Green]

Sounds like you have your field order reversed. Try changing your FCP project to be upper-field first (or lower-field first); anyway, reverse it from where it is.

And don't de-interlace, de-interlacing is evil.

[venezia79]

interesting suggestions but nothing yet... the distortion is happening in the uncompressed quicktime file before i even go into fcp, so changing the fields (which i tried) doesn't effect it... the fields are actually marked as "not set" for the original file.

no de-interlacing though, i got that :)

my understanding of the telecine is that whatever frame rate you shoot at in camera, it's all transfered at 29.97 because it's creating a video file, so 29.97 is required. is it possible that the telecine screwed up and should have transferred the 30fps footage at 30fps, and made a seperate file for the 24fps footage to be transferred at 24fps?

when i called the telecine to report the issue intially they sort of didn't seem to know why there was a prob and never really answered why this happened or how it could be corrected - maybe i should take this issue back to them?

-mike

[Barry_Green]

If you're seeing it in the original telecine'd QT files, then by all means take it back to them.