Shadow Company is an insight into the world of the modern day soldier for hire (some call them mercenaries, others call them security contractors) .


Anyway's, We shot all the interviews in 24p with the DVX100, but we also had an equal amount of 60i footage from Iraq, Sierra Leone, the US and Canada in various 60i formats gathered from different agencies and by private soldiers Nick gave hired in Iraq. Nick made a decision early on that all post production would take place in a 23.976 timeline, so we needed a reasonable way to integrate those 29.97 sources into our 23.976 timeline.

Now many of you might say – well with Vegas/FCP/Premiere/Avid (delete as applicable) you can just drop the 29.97 clip into the timeline and edit away – and yes of course you can do that...but is that the best method ??

We set out to perform a small test to discover the best way to use 29.97 clips in a 23.976 timeline – here are the results of the test.

We tested three different clips – and we used three methods of converting the 60i files to 23.976

Method 1 – Directly from the NLE (Vegas 6) www.sonymediasoftware.com

Method 2 – DVfilm Maker 2.2 www.dvfilm.com

Method 3 – Magic Bullet Suite 2.0 within After Effects 6.5 www.redgiantsoftware.com

The clips we tested involved:

• a static camera shot of a slow moving, highly contrasted scene (in this case an american soldier walking in front of a humvee on a road in Baghdad)
• a static camera shot of fast moving objects (a contractor firing an RPD machine gun on a range in Iraq)
• a fast moving camera shot (bridge across the river Tigris in Baghdad)

In each instance (as shown on the thumbnails below) there are four separate files for you to compare.

1. Original - The original untouched 29.97 file with full interlacing

2. Vegas - Exporting 23.976 material directly from Vegas 6.0 (by putting a 29.97 clip in a 23.976 timeline directly with no pre-processing)

3. DVFilm maker - DVFilm maker 2.2 output of 23.976 file

4. Magic Bullet output via Plugin through After Effects 6.5

DVfilm maker 2.2

There appear to be a number of ways of de-interlacing a clip with Maker 2.2 – the method we chose was via the 24p Editing options and then selecting "Convert 60i to 24p and Output 23.976 exactly". This produced a quicktime file. This method is outlined in the manual (the online manual – since the software only downloads with a readme file) – and it is shown on the screenshot below.

Magic Bullet 2.0

Magic Bullet 2.0 installs as a plugin in After Effects. If you set your composition properties to 23.976 and then add a 29.97 clip when you “magic bullet” the clip is deinterlaced. Rendering out the movie then gives you a 23.976 file.

The following screenshot illustrates what the settings should look like once magic bullet is applied.

The Footage

These stills were taken prior to windows media compression, saved as max quality JPGs. For comparison download them into your favorite image editor and examine them at your leisure. All video files are 3Mbit square pixel 656x480 windows media 9 files. There are mild compression artifacts added by the windows media creation by they are consistent across the board.

Click Here to Download 800k Zip file of all twelve Still JPG images

Click Here to Download 30mb Zip file of all four WMV video files

The amount of time taken to process the “deinterlaced” was

Vegas 6.0 - 27.98 seconds

Maker 2.2 - 33.25 seconds

Magic Bullet 2.0 - 30min 5secs

Analysis

Let’s examine these images then – We have included (for ease of display on your computer screen) an excerpt of each of the images linked above to illustrate our results.

CLIP 1 – slow moving – high contrast

Original:

The interlacing artifacts are not as obvious on this shot as on some of the subsequent clips but can still be clearly seen. Look at diagonal line where the car door meets the glass window – as well as the soldiers helmet

Vegas 6 Only:

There is clearly less deinterlacing here (it looks very similar to a deinterlacing effect a still image manipulation program like Photoshop can produce) – but the image is slightly soft – almost as if it has been slightly blurred.

DVFilm Maker 2.2:

More sharpness than Vegas alone – and you can clearly see that the de-interlacing procedure has worked.

Some stepping effect is still visible on the diagonal line (car window) but it is less pronounced than Vegas alone

Magic Bullet 2.0:

Outstanding results. Note that there is a slight color shift applied with Magic Bullet (it is reminiscent of the addition of setup (or a change in Black level) – this was automatically generated – we did not add it in.

 
CLIP 2 – machine-gun

Original:

You can clearly see the artifacts here – look at the lines of the machine gun itself (near the shooters head) and you can see that due to the gun’s shaking the interlacing effects are apparent.

Vegas 6 Only:

Once again – it’s a bit soft – but clearly there is less interlacing than on the original clip.

DVFilm Maker 2.2:

In this clip Maker 2.2 has a bit of difficulty with some of the artifacts– while the clip is sharper than Vegas alone if you look at the side of the gun you will still see horizontal lines as artifacts

Some stepping effect is still visible on the diagonal line (car window) but it is less pronounced than Vegas alone

Magic Bullet 2.0:

These results look excellent once again.

CLIP 3– fast-moving driving

Original:

This needs no description – you can hardly see any detail on the houses in the distance and that vertical pole looks like two poles (both very blurred)

Vegas 6 Only:

In this particular case the softening confuses the image even further and it feels like you are looking at a blurred version of the interlaced image.

DVFilm Maker 2.2:

A noticeably better job than Vegas – however the house detail is still quite blurry and the one vertical pole is still split into two.

Magic Bullet 2.0:

Even with Magic Bullet you can see interlacing artifacts on the diagonal lines. This sort of fast motion footage is the most difficult for any de-interlacer to deal with. Notice that the vertical pole is now clearly visible – and you can see detail in the houses.

Conclusion

Well it’s fairly straightforward.

1. Magic Bullet kicks ASS – but is very very slow, make that very very very slow. and pretty expensive ($699 - $999)
   
2. DV Film maker 2.2 does a decent job on all but the most difficult clips – and is almost as fast as vegas alone. The price ($129) is attractive as well.
   
3. Vegas alone softens your footage somewhat but depending on the look you want and your budget – you may find it adequate for the task.

Both Magic Bullet and DVFilm maker 2.2 are downloadable as demos if you wish to experiment like this on your own with your own footage (note that you will need a demo of After Effects – 5.0 or higher – in order to try it out)

It is worth noting that DV Film maker 2.2 can batch process your files – whereas Magic Bullet cannot – so if you need to process a very large number of files you should take this into consideration.

In our case we will opt to use magic bullet – since we are after maximum quality (we are discussing the potential of a theatrical release with a number of distributors) – we may consider a Terranex box (a very very expensive hardware solution) depending on the budget. We will try and take these clips to do a test on the Terranex, if we are successful we will post the results here.