FCP import of FHD GH1 footage

[reggietelly]

I am having a slight problem with the way GH13 footage is imported into FCP. When I do an import because of the 50i wrapper the footage comes into FCP as 25fps but with Field Dominance of Upper(odd). What this does if you look very carefully at thin hilights is to create a strobing watery effect , with straight lines turning wavy. From my experience this feels like a result of interlaced footage being converted to progressive and riding the interlace if you know what I mean.

This does not happen with 720p footage and the Field Dominance is blank.

Is there a better way to transfer FHD footage to stop this problem.

The wrapper check box has always caused my camera to stop and I think it is well documented that this is a problem. So I am reluctant to do this.

Any thoughts. I have posted an example of the problem on Vimeo. To fully see the issue it is best to view full frame.



all the best

Richard

 

[reggietelly]

Further to this I think the strobing effect is an aliasing problem. The footage shown was shot with the 20mm pancake lens. I did some tests changing the hack to 24p/25p native and it made no difference. The only difference was the camera had a write speed error when attached to a tripod in front of my usual stress test "bush". I also changed the format of the footage to NONE in the field dominance channel and that had no effect either.

The solution was suggested by Wanderer 63 over at Vimeo. He suggested that perhaps using a filter of some kind might soften the picture slightly enough to smooth some of these effects. I did try a different Canon FD 24mm lens and it seems that he may have hit the nail on the head. It's still there to a certain extent but nowhere near as much. Softening the focus just a touch seems counter intuitive but the result is better than when I used the 20mm lens which is pretty sharp.