24P squeeze mode aspect ration and interlace artifacts issues

D

downwithdecaf

New member
Hello,

I've two major problems when outputting 24P Squeeze mode footage to a quicktime file and a DVD- and hope that someone on this forum can help me out.

a) All images are stretched vertically
b) Once I make the DVD there are interlace artifacts.

Here is my workflow:

I've shot my footage on the Panasonic AG DVX100B, using 24P normal, in squeeze mode, thin line.

I captured this footage in FCP6 using NTSC 48khz 29.97

1) Exported using Quicktime Conversion- Changed size to DV NTSC 720 x 480 16:9 . "Preserve using..." was unchecked. It looked slightly vertically stretched in Quicktime, but when I exported it into iDVD it looked drastically vertically stretched. When I made a test DVD, the aspect ratio was slightly better but the picture had major interlace artifacts.

2) I also tried it this way: Export using Quicktime, current settings. Also vertically stretched.

3) Export using Quicktime conversion. Changed size to DV NTSC 720 x 480 16:9 . "Preserve using..." was checked. This time too, it looked slightly vertically stretched in Quicktime, but when I exported it into iDVD it looked drastically vertically stretched.

How do I resolve both issues

1) The vertically stretched appearance once I export the file
2) The seriously awful interlace artifacts.

I've begun to use 24P in recent times and am quite puzzled by this. Hope someone can help!
 
1) You need to make sure you have iDVD set for widescreen.

2) It's because you shot 24p instead of 24p Advanced, and you imported and cut it all as 29.97, not 23.98. In short, pulldown was never removed and the footage is still interlaced.

With FCP, you need to shoot 24pA, then import with 24pA pulldown removal, and edit on a 23.98 timeline. If you want to be rid of interlacing, do not shoot 24p standard when using FCP.

With your current footage, all you can do is use Cinema Tools to do an reverse telecine and then recut on a 23.98 timeline.
 
I would make sure that your sequence and capture settings are correct from the very beginning. So when you start a new project in FCP, and you shot in "Squeeze" on the DVX, make sure you select "DV NTSC 48kHz Anamorphic" as your project type. Then when you capture, make sure you capture "DV NTSC 48kHZ Anamorphic."

But with this current project, you should be able to go into your sequence settings and make sure the anamorphic box is checked. Then run through all the clips on your timeline and make sure they look the way they're supposed to. You may have to re-render the project after selecting Anamorphic.

After confirming the correct sequence settings and everything looks good, then Export to Quitcktime movie using current settings and "Make movie self-contained." This should give you an uncompressed, native-Widescreen, DV movie in a quicktime wrapper that you can use for iMovie.

Hopefully this helps. Also, if you have access to Final Cut Pro, do you also have access to Compressor and DVD Studio Pro? You should really be using those if you can as opposed to iMovie.
 
aspect ratio and interlace artifacts

aspect ratio and interlace artifacts

I did select anamorphic in sequence settings- the footage looks fine in the timeline. It's only when I export that the aspect ratio and interlace problems arise. I do have Compressor and DVD Studio Pro. Would you have suggestions on how I can work on this issue there? Thanks a lot for your help!

FlyThruDown said:
I would make sure that your sequence and capture settings are correct from the very beginning. So when you start a new project in FCP, and you shot in "Squeeze" on the DVX, make sure you select "DV NTSC 48kHz Anamorphic" as your project type. Then when you capture, make sure you capture "DV NTSC 48kHZ Anamorphic."

But with this current project, you should be able to go into your sequence settings and make sure the anamorphic box is checked. Then run through all the clips on your timeline and make sure they look the way they're supposed to. You may have to re-render the project after selecting Anamorphic.

After confirming the correct sequence settings and everything looks good, then Export to Quitcktime movie using current settings and "Make movie self-contained." This should give you an uncompressed, native-Widescreen, DV movie in a quicktime wrapper that you can use for iMovie.

Hopefully this helps. Also, if you have access to Final Cut Pro, do you also have access to Compressor and DVD Studio Pro? You should really be using those if you can as opposed to iMovie.
Click to expand...
 
Thanks a lot for taking the time to respond! I would be very interested in hearing why you believe that 24P Normal and FCP are not compatible- since this was not something that came up in my research before starting this project. Also, from what I understand, pull down is only an issue for 24PA- and that when you are working with 24P normal you need to capture in 29.97 - 23.98 is to be used for 24PA? I look forward to your feedback.



David Jimerson said:
1) You need to make sure you have iDVD set for widescreen.

2) It's because you shot 24p instead of 24p Advanced, and you imported and cut it all as 29.97, not 23.98. In short, pulldown was never removed and the footage is still interlaced.

With FCP, you need to shoot 24pA, then import with 24pA pulldown removal, and edit on a 23.98 timeline. If you want to be rid of interlacing, do not shoot 24p standard when using FCP.

With your current footage, all you can do is use Cinema Tools to do an reverse telecine and then recut on a 23.98 timeline.
Click to expand...
 
I'm sorry I'm not right in front of one of our production machines with FCS, but hopefully I can remember all the steps. Also, Compressor is extremely counter-intuitive, but it makes very good MPEG-2 files.

1) In FCP, select File>Export>using Compressor (or it might be File>Send To>Compressor, depending on your version of Final Cut)
2) In Compressor, in the lower left window, select Settings>Apple>DVD>DVD: Best Quality (and the number of minutes just above your movie's length, if it's a short film, DVD: Best Quality 90 minutes works well)
3) Two elements will show up in that window, Dolby Digital AC3 and MPEG-2. Drag them both up into the top left window of Compressor (I forget if you have to do it separately, but make sure both get up there). This is about the time when you'll be wondering what the heck is going on.
4) Back in the lower left window, select Destinations>Custom, then you should see a little plus sign on the right side of that window. Select the "+" and then choose the folder in which your movie resides.
5) Now for the zany part. Drag that destination twice up into the upper left window, once over MPEG-2 and once over Dolby Digital AC3. Why you do it this way is beyond me.
6) Then in the upper left window, hit Submit, name your project, and hit Submit again.

Compressor will now be making your MPEG-2 movie that you can open in DVD Studio Pro. It'll probably take some time. After Compressor finishes, I recommend restarting your machine.

The next thing to do is now open DVD Studio Pro and start a new project. I won't go into all the steps, but you should be able to import the new .mp2 and .ac3 files into a DVD Studio Pro project, drag them onto the DVD Studio Pro timeline, and burn your DVD. DVD Studio Pro should recognize the movie as 16:9, but it will default your menus to 4:3, so you'll have to change that if you want them to be widescreen also.

What David said above about 24p and 24p(Adv) is absolutely true. But if you shot in 24p, edited on a 29.97 timeline, and will only be showing this movie on NTSC televisions, the finished product will look like 24 fps without interlacing. However, if you're showing it on computer screens or a new TV with high refresh rates, you probably want to shoot 24p(Adv) and edit on a 23.98 timeline, or at a very minimum de-interlace your 29.97 project.

Let us know how it goes.
 
downwithdecaf said:
Thanks a lot for taking the time to respond! I would be very interested in hearing why you believe that 24P Normal and FCP are not compatible- since this was not something that came up in my research before starting this project. Also, from what I understand, pull down is only an issue for 24PA- and that when you are working with 24P normal you need to capture in 29.97 - 23.98 is to be used for 24PA? I look forward to your feedback.
Click to expand...

I didn't say it was "incompatible." I'm just telling you why you're seeing interlacing.

Both 24p standard and 24pA are recorded to tape as 29.97, because they have to to be in DV. In order to take the 24 frames per second and fit them into 29.97, extra fields have to be inserted to pad it out. This is pulldown. The difference between 24pA and 24p standard is the pattern used to do it. Either way, though, if you don't remove the extra fields, the pulldown, you'll see interlacing.

FCP can strip out the extra fields automatically if they're in the 24pA pattern, but not if they're in the 24p standard pattern.

So, with your 24p standard footage, you're seeing it as 29.97, and you're seeing interlacing. The motion and everything will still look like 24p, but the interlacing will still be there.

If you want to have footage which is interlace free -- and you do want this for DVD -- you need to shoot 24pA, edit as 23.98, and export as 23.98.
 
FlyThruDown said:
or at a very minimum de-interlace your 29.97 project.
Click to expand...

But if you do that with 24p footage in a 29.97 project, you'll likely end up with ghosting, strobing, etc. It's pretty much the same as converting 24p to 30p, and that's usually not a very good conversion. Just something to be aware of.
 
This makes perfects sense. Thanks for explaining! I will definitely follow the 24PA workflow from my next project on.

At this point, since I've already shot on 24P (and this project is intended for NTSC television, DVD as well as to be played on computers, with potential for later conversions to PAL), is there anything I can do avoid this problem? Such as re-capturing at 23.98 will pulldown? Or does this only work with 24P Advanced?

Will your earlier suggestion, "With your current footage, all you can do is use Cinema Tools to do an reverse telecine and then recut on a 23.98 timeline." will this take care of the interlacing artifacts without resolution loss?

Finally, do you think perhaps Avid can handle the 24P Normal footage better?

Thank you very much for your patience. I do appreciate everyone taking the time to respond to this!


David Jimerson said:
But if you do that with 24p footage in a 29.97 project, you'll likely end up with ghosting, strobing, etc. It's pretty much the same as converting 24p to 30p, and that's usually not a very good conversion. Just something to be aware of.
Click to expand...
 
Thank you very much. I will try this out and keep you posted with the results.

FlyThruDown said:
I'm sorry I'm not right in front of one of our production machines with FCS, but hopefully I can remember all the steps. Also, Compressor is extremely counter-intuitive, but it makes very good MPEG-2 files.

1) In FCP, select File>Export>using Compressor (or it might be File>Send To>Compressor, depending on your version of Final Cut)
2) In Compressor, in the lower left window, select Settings>Apple>DVD>DVD: Best Quality (and the number of minutes just above your movie's length, if it's a short film, DVD: Best Quality 90 minutes works well)
3) Two elements will show up in that window, Dolby Digital AC3 and MPEG-2. Drag them both up into the top left window of Compressor (I forget if you have to do it separately, but make sure both get up there). This is about the time when you'll be wondering what the heck is going on.
4) Back in the lower left window, select Destinations>Custom, then you should see a little plus sign on the right side of that window. Select the "+" and then choose the folder in which your movie resides.
5) Now for the zany part. Drag that destination twice up into the upper left window, once over MPEG-2 and once over Dolby Digital AC3. Why you do it this way is beyond me.
6) Then in the upper left window, hit Submit, name your project, and hit Submit again.

Compressor will now be making your MPEG-2 movie that you can open in DVD Studio Pro. It'll probably take some time. After Compressor finishes, I recommend restarting your machine.

The next thing to do is now open DVD Studio Pro and start a new project. I won't go into all the steps, but you should be able to import the new .mp2 and .ac3 files into a DVD Studio Pro project, drag them onto the DVD Studio Pro timeline, and burn your DVD. DVD Studio Pro should recognize the movie as 16:9, but it will default your menus to 4:3, so you'll have to change that if you want them to be widescreen also.

What David said above about 24p and 24p(Adv) is absolutely true. But if you shot in 24p, edited on a 29.97 timeline, and will only be showing this movie on NTSC televisions, the finished product will look like 24 fps without interlacing. However, if you're showing it on computer screens or a new TV with high refresh rates, you probably want to shoot 24p(Adv) and edit on a 23.98 timeline, or at a very minimum de-interlace your 29.97 project.

Let us know how it goes.
Click to expand...
 
downwithdecaf said:
This makes perfects sense. Thanks for explaining! I will definitely follow the 24PA workflow from my next project on.

At this point, since I've already shot on 24P (and this project is intended for NTSC television, DVD as well as to be played on computers, with potential for later conversions to PAL), is there anything I can do avoid this problem? Such as re-capturing at 23.98 will pulldown? Or does this only work with 24P Advanced?

Will your earlier suggestion, "With your current footage, all you can do is use Cinema Tools to do an reverse telecine and then recut on a 23.98 timeline." will this take care of the interlacing artifacts without resolution loss?

Finally, do you think perhaps Avid can handle the 24P Normal footage better?

Thank you very much for your patience. I do appreciate everyone taking the time to respond to this!
Click to expand...

You can't remove 24p standard pulldown at capture in FCP; you can only do it after capture in Cinema Tools. If you try to capture it as though you're removing 24pA pulldown, you will end up with a mess far worse than what you're seeing now.

Yes, you can capture and remove it in Avid.
 
FlyThruDown said:
Back in the lower left window, select Destinations>Custom, then you should see a little plus sign on the right side of that window. Select the "+" and then choose the folder in which your movie resides.
5) Now for the zany part. Drag that destination twice up into the upper left window, once over MPEG-2 and once over Dolby Digital AC3. Why you do it this way is beyond me.
Click to expand...

Great job of step by step from memory. Here's a bit more info.

For destination, I believe he would choose any folder or location he wants the encoded file to be placed. It doesn't necessarily have to be in the directory where his movie resides.

The AC3 and MPEG-2 files could essentially be encoded and saved to different locations, so you have the option to do them separately if desired. I usually do as you suggest and drag the destination to each one but some people save their audio encodes in different locations than their video encodes.

Regards, Dan.
 
Thanks. I just recently made myself learn Compressor.

Yeah, sorry. Wasn't meaning to imply that the files had to be in the same location as the original movie file or even as each other. I was just thinking for convenience.
 
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