Interlacing Artifacts at 24PA + Capturing quality dilemma

thomstitt

thomstitt

Member
Hi, hopefully someone here will be able to help me figure out a few problems I'm having in FCP...

Firstly, the age-old interlacing artifacts.
Footage was shot in 24P Advanced mode - a 4-camera shoot. Most of our footage looks fine, but for some reason 2 of the 4 cameras have captured with jagged interlaced frames. They were captured in Avid and then brought over to FCP for editing (I'll explain why later). Capture settings were 23.98 FPS with advanced pulldown cadence (2332). What I'm seeing is 2 solid frames followed by 2 interlaced frames. 2, 2, 2, 2, etc.
With a couple older captured tapes we've noticed it's every 4th frame. But most of our footage looks totally solid.

I should note that we are not intending to finish at all on video tape or for TVs in general - we're finishing for high quality Flash web video.

Does anyone know what the problem is and how to solve it or prevent it in the future?

Secondly, capture issues.
Capturing in FCP is yielding ugly, ugly results. I can't figure this one out for the life of me - We've tried every capture setting under the sun. 720x480, uncompressed, at the capture pre-set 23.98 Advanced Pulldown Removal (2:3:3:2). I've tinkered with other cadences at framerates just for the hell of it, but it doesn't seem to do anything.
No matter WHAT the settings, no matter what - after it's captured, the footage looks like low-res garbage, and it always looks the same. We've tried exporting this footage, assuming it's some kind of low-res temp preview, but the exports look just as gross.
So for now we're capturing in Avid, which is giving us solid quality, and then transferring quicktime reference to FCP via an external drive.

Any questions, just ask, I'll be checking in. Hopefully you guys can help me get to the bottom of this.

Thank ye kindly.
 
You're confusing quicktime's line doubling with low quality. Try watching the footage through VLC.

Your Avid problem is incorrect pulldown. Try setting a different in point and recapturing.
 
To correctly capture 24pAdvanced you need to capture at 29.97 with the advanced pulldown removal option selected.

Remember... what is ON the tape is 29.97... that's the way you have (HAVE) to capture it.

Lots of information I can send your way to verify this if needed.

CaptM
 
CaptainMench said:
To correctly capture 24pAdvanced you need to capture at 29.97 with the advanced pulldown removal option selected.

Remember... what is ON the tape is 29.97... that's the way you have (HAVE) to capture it.

Lots of information I can send your way to verify this if needed.

CaptM
Click to expand...

That makes perfect sense to me. Curious why some of the footage came in smoothly.

I guess the followup question would be... If the footage is already captured and edited... Is there anything I can do now to fix it?
 
OH, and another question... And I know this is sorta the wrong forum, but it's more convenient... But does AVID have a similar option to remove the advanced pulldown at capture?

Also, VictorS: in regards to Quicktime's line doubling - are you referring to line doubling being the cause of my jagged interlacing artifacts, or the inexplicably poor quality of our captured footage? They're too very distinct and separate problems I'm having. Everything I've captured into FCP, and this is across a vast experimentation of varying settings, looks exactly the same: crappy crappy low-res.

Unfortunately it may be a while before I'm able to personally get my hands on the gear to try things out and experiment further, but I can pass along information.
 
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