HELP!! AE frame rate conversion contrast problem in rendered converted clips.

[Deuceofspades]

David,

It so happens that I just rendered 1 hr worth of my docu for my sneak preview screening coming up thursday. When i rendered it, I coincidentally had everything set the way you instructed above (disable resample for the 60i clips + project settings set to None & to Interpolate fields, which is my default custom "FAITH 24P TEMPLATE". So I just went and looked at the resulted rendered docu, and here is what I noticed:

1- You are correct, no ghosting and no stripes, so clean footage.
2- However there is a problem. the problem may not be too noticeable on static shots but it becomes quite noticeable on pans etc. If you view your pan frame by frame you will notice vegas skips a frame every 4 frames. It's like it is playing frame 1,2,3,4 and then skips 5 and then plays 6,7,8,9 then skips 10. AS a results when you look at the pan, it seems that every 5th frame the camera "jumps", (staggers). Have you noticed that? I believe this is why everyone was recommending to slow down 60i footage by 0.8 to have everyframe show up on 24p timeline, which of course results in smooth footage but in slow motion.... THEN to speed it back up using Twixtor or AE to get back to normal play back speed. This produces the smoothest footage, but you are right in that other problems are introduced. In AE the problem I encountered (other than a lot of time spent rendering) is the contrast problem. With Twixtor, there is a lot of tweaking needed to get footage without warped lines, I am still learning twixtor and have not given up yet. AE is easier, but more rendering time involved. If only I could solve the contrast problem, I'd be home free.

WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT -- I messed up a little before; I was responding in two different threads about two different problems and turned myself around a bit.

You want the deinterlace method to be Interpolate Fields -- absolutely not Blend Fields, and not none. When coverting 60i to 24p, you ARE deinterlacing, as opposed to working with 24p.



It technically shouldn't matter, but do it in a 24p timeline just to be tidy.



Again, it technically shouldn't matter. But if you're working in a 24p timeline, you're already working with a field order of None. So, just do that.



As noted above, set the deinterlace method to Interpolate Fields. And yes, disable resample in the clips.

Your render settings should be 23.976 and field order of None (progressive). If you're changing resolution, you want the render quality to be Best. Also, if the format gives you a choice, choose a high bit rate (ex: at least 10,000,000 for AVCHD).




I can't for the life of me imagine why you'd ever need to slow anything down in order to do this. Using Interpolate fields will prevent ghosting; you'll get ghosting with Blend fields. Disabling resample means you're working with single images, as opposed to resampling, which will blend images/fields together, producing ghosting.

What the settings I gave you will do is take a single 60i field and create a whole frame from it, drop the next few fields, then take another 60i field and make a whole frame out of it, and repeat the process in the equivalent of a reverse 3:2 pattern.

You will lose some resolution -- you can't avoid that no matter what you do -- but the result should be nearly identical to what you'd have if you'd shot 24p from the beginning.

You will open yourself up to the possibility of even MORE artificating and ghosting if you slow it down and then speed it up again. That's a completely unnecessary step.

I've done this conversion quite a few times, and Vegas is very good at doing it.

The worst you can do by trying is take up a little bit of time. Just choose a few clips which are a few minutes long and see what you get. Make sure they have some degree of motion in them.

Good luck!

 

[David Jimerson]

I would have to see the footage to get an idea of what you're talking about there. I have not noticed this as a problem myself.

Pans are often tricky when converting from 60 to 24 because it's a lot easier to pan too quickly for 24 fps when you're shooting at a fast frame rate.

 

[Deuceofspades]

well if you do the math it makes sense: 30 fps - 24 fps = 6 frames. So there are 6 frames extra every 24 frames (every second) that Vegas does not know what to do with. If it skips one frame every 5th frame = 6X5 = 30 then it now has 24 frames
You may not "see" the stagger so much as you can "feel" it , your eyes can feel it and will become tired after watching the footage for a few minutes. Kinda like having a camera that is shaking cause it's in a car bouncing around on a bumpy road, after a while you start getting nauseous visually. if its' only a couple clips, great solution, but with an hour worth of footage, maybe not such a good solution in the end? :/

I'll test my eyes resilience to the "imperceptible stagger" Thursday during my ADVENTURERS CLUB presentation, since we are showing 1,5 hr of my docu. if it bothers me, then I'll have to find another way.

slowing down the original 30p footage by 0.8 means that now, on a 24p timeline, each frame is getting its own "frame spot", hence you can see ALL frames, and you are not losing any. Of course this results in slightly slow mo play back. Then using Twixtor (or in AE, MATHEW KRAMER PLUG IN) you make the footage the correct speed (length) so it will sync back to audio. The reason beeing that twixtor or M.K. plugin in AE are better equipped at altering speed without losing frames or creating unwanted artifacts, creating a SMOOTH playback. in AE the plug in works GREAT. Smooth as a baby's butt. If I can resolve my contrast issue, I'll be home free.


I did spend days reading up on all this crap (sigh)...

 

[David Jimerson]

well if you do the math it makes sense: 30 fps - 24 fps = 6 frames. So there are 6 frames extra every 24 frames (every second) that Vegas does not know what to do with. If it skips one frame every 5th frame = 6X5 = 30 then it now has 24 frames

Well, when I asked if the footage was 30p or 60i, you said:

It's 60i interlaced...

If it's 60i, then it's not 30 frames per second. It's 60 fields per second, and each field is a separate motion sample, giving you 60 motions per second, so the difference is 36, not 6. Vegas works on the individual field level and interpolates frames from individual fields, not two fields mashed together into a "frame" (this is why you choose to Interpolate fields and disable resample).

So the math is fine when converting 60i to 24p. There's plenty of difference. It's the same as converting 60p to 24p, except you're working with fields instead of whole frames.

What you say is completely true of 30p, which is why I asked if the footage was 30p or 60i. I've been running under the assumption that it's 60i, because that's what you said.

Later, though, you say:

slowing down the original 30p footage

So, was the footage actually 30p? Was it possibly 30p recorded in a 60i stream (which works out to the same thing)?

If so, then you can't make a clean real-time conversion from 30p to 24p, for the reasons you state above. There's no software that can do it, because the math is the math. There isn't enough of a difference in motion samples to do it. It doesn't matter if you slow it down then speed it up, whatever; there's simply no pattern for dropping frames which will make a clean conversion, because a difference of 6 is not enough to work with.

 

[Deuceofspades]

i apologize, I shoudn't have said 30P, I am going from 30i (which I believe is called 60i?) to 24P:

I wish I could say I am an expert, but I am not, I am barely able to make ANY sense of all of this. here is the clip media properties, you tell me what I have, but it is definitely interlaced (and I was told that 29.970 interlaced is called 60i ? which of course confused the heck out of me, but I accepted it ):

General
Name: 00894.MTS
Folder: G:\frame rate conversion folders\POST PRODUCTION
Type: MPEG-2 Transport Stream
Size: 10.85 MB (11,108,352 bytes)
Created: Monday, January 07, 2013, 11:11:37 AM
Modified: Sunday, May 10, 2009, 1:09:26 PM
Accessed: Sunday, March 22, 2015, 7:05:17 AM
Attributes: Archive

Streams
Video: 00:00:07.508, 29.970 fps interlaced, 1440x1080x12, AVC
Audio 1: 00:00:07.508, 48,000 Hz, 5.1 Surround (stereo downmix), Dolby AC-3
Audio 2: 00:00:07.508, 48,000 Hz, 5.1 Surround, Dolby AC-3

Well, when I asked if the footage was 30p or 60i, you said:



If it's 60i, then it's not 30 frames per second. It's 60 fields per second, and each field is a separate motion sample, giving you 60 motions per second, so the difference is 36, not 6. Vegas works on the individual field level and interpolates frames from individual fields, not two fields mashed together into a "frame" (this is why you choose to Interpolate fields and disable resample).

So the math is fine when converting 60i to 24p. There's plenty of difference. It's the same as converting 60p to 24p, except you're working with fields instead of whole frames.

What you say is completely true of 30p, which is why I asked if the footage was 30p or 60i. I've been running under the assumption that it's 60i, because that's what you said.

Later, though, you say:



So, was the footage actually 30p? Was it possibly 30p recorded in a 60i stream (which works out to the same thing)?

If so, then you can't make a clean real-time conversion from 30p to 24p, for the reasons you state above. There's no software that can do it, because the math is the math. There isn't enough of a difference in motion samples to do it. It doesn't matter if you slow it down then speed it up, whatever; there's simply no pattern for dropping frames which will make a clean conversion, because a difference of 6 is not enough to work with.

 

[Andrius Simutis]

Faith, I'll let David handle your framerate concerns in more detail, but the "contrast issues" you're having are because of the codecs used and nothing to do with the frame rate. Think of the codecs as language. You shot in French and are exporting in German. They're going to sound different and not have the same nuance even if the same idea is there. In order to retain the most out of your image, you need to stay in the same codec or move to one that has more room to accurately display your image.
I'm guessing you shot in some kind of compressed codec like h264, AVCHD, or MPEG2. That's not a bad thing necessarily, but you have to be careful in where you go from there. The recommendations for ProRes422 earlier were your best bet. If you go from a compressed codec to another compressed codec you're going to lose information. That information could be how many shades of each color you have.
The other possible culprit is what's called Gamma. Take a minute to read this basic intro on Gamma: http://www.cgsd.com/papers/gamma_intro.html
Does that look like what you're seeing with your output image? If so, then the likely culprit is Gamma correction being applied in either the conversion or on the playback.
After Effects is a very powerful program. It has a ton of options that can change your image any way you like, and if you're not careful and push the wrong button it can change it in ways you won't like. Video can get complicated too, and sometimes it's worth taking some time to learn the underlying concepts so that you can understand what each of those buttons is going to do.
Your third and final option of course, is to find someone who has studied all this stuff and pay them to do it for you. I'm a big fan of DIY but I still pay my doctor and dentist.

 

[David Jimerson]

The terms "30i" and "60i" refer to the exact same thing. It's 60 interlaced fields per second. The term "30i" really needs to go away.

It also doesn't help that both are said to be "29.97." That's true of 30p. It's not true of 60i/30i. That, too, needs to change.

The clip properties below say it's a 60i clip, but here's the question -- how was it shot? What was the frame rate of the camera? The recording was 60i, but was the frame rate being shot 30p?

i apologize, I shoudn't have said 30P, I am going from 30i (which I believe is called 60i?) to 24P:

I wish I could say I am an expert, but I am not, I am barely able to make ANY sense of all of this. here is the clip media properties, you tell me what I have, but it is definitely interlaced (and I was told that 29.970 interlaced is called 60i ? which of course confused the heck out of me, but I accepted it ):

General
Name: 00894.MTS
Folder: G:\frame rate conversion folders\POST PRODUCTION
Type: MPEG-2 Transport Stream
Size: 10.85 MB (11,108,352 bytes)
Created: Monday, January 07, 2013, 11:11:37 AM
Modified: Sunday, May 10, 2009, 1:09:26 PM
Accessed: Sunday, March 22, 2015, 7:05:17 AM
Attributes: Archive

Streams
Video: 00:00:07.508, 29.970 fps interlaced, 1440x1080x12, AVC
Audio 1: 00:00:07.508, 48,000 Hz, 5.1 Surround (stereo downmix), Dolby AC-3
Audio 2: 00:00:07.508, 48,000 Hz, 5.1 Surround, Dolby AC-3

 

[Deuceofspades]

Doing more research in regards to smooth frame rate conversion (please note this has NOTHING to do with the contrast problem in AE), I found some threads about MAGIC BULLET plugin called "Frames" and looked at their videos and it sounds like it is specifically designed to do conversions quite well. Including 60i to 24P. Has anyone tried it and what was your experience like?

 

[Deuceofspades]

Andrius, I know that the contrast problem has nothing to do with frame rate, I already stated that in some of my posts. You are correct about the compressed codecs, but I did render from AE to uncompressed quicktime and had same outcome. As far as DIY, I am also in communication with a pro company that does frame rate conversions and exploring both avenues, (have been for 2 months now). Giving 64 minutes worth of 60i footage to convert is both expensive and also a bit of a pain, because it's even more of a headache to send the footage out and reorganize it when it comes back, then keeping it in my own PC and gradually replace the clips. I'd rather find a way to do it myself also because it would allow me to convert other clips in the future, or even if I want to change my edits of this docu and replace some clips etc, if I can do this conversion myself it give some more flexibility in the long run, cause I will not be dependent on someone else do get the work done. So I think it is a good idea / cause, worth investing some research and tests in.

 

[Deuceofspades]

David, the cast used their little camcorders, and I don't believe any of those give you options to change frame rate. I checked my SONY camcorder, used for some of the clips, and it only gives me options to shoot in HD or SD, no frame rate options. I think it safe to then assume that none of us shot anything in 30P? What's your take on this?

The terms "30i" and "60i" refer to the exact same thing. It's 60 interlaced fields per second. The term "30i" really needs to go away.

It also doesn't help that both are said to be "29.97." That's true of 30p. It's not true of 60i/30i. That, too, needs to change.

The clip properties below say it's a 60i clip, but here's the question -- how was it shot? What was the frame rate of the camera? The recording was 60i, but was the frame rate being shot 30p?

 

[David Jimerson]

David, the cast used their little camcorders, and I don't believe any of those give you options to change frame rate. I checked my SONY camcorder, used for some of the clips, and it only gives me options to shoot in HD or SD, no frame rate options. I think it safe to then assume that none of us shot anything in 30P? What's your take on this?

Sounds like it's probably plain 60i, then. I only ask because 30p recorded in a 60i stream will have the same problems coverting to 24p that straight 30p does. It's about the number of motion samples. 30p recorded in a 60i stream still has only 30 motion samples per second.

Now, as I said before -- when you're shooting 60i, when you do a pan, you can pan quickly and it will still look fine. If you shoot 24p and do a pan, you have to do it very slowly or you'll get jumpiness and stutter in the pan.

BUT, if you convert 60i to 24p, what you end up with is what you'd get if you shot 24p all along. So a pan which is no problem in 60i will still look jerky when converted to 24p, and will look the same as it would have if you had shot 24p in the first place.

As you're only seeing problems in the pans, it's possible that this is your problem, especially as no one using the cameras was likely aware of what you have to do in order to get smooth pans in 24p, if they had 24p on their minds at all, which it seems like they most likely didn't. There's no software or conversion-method solution to this. It's just the math.

 

[Deuceofspades]

what you said makes sense, and you are right to a certain degree, however when i compared conversions done in AE to simple rendering from 60i to 24P (as you had suggested initially) the footage converted with AE plays much smoother. I can totally see the difference. So not all the jerkiness can be blamed on the 24P rule of slow panning.

Sounds like it's probably plain 60i, then. I only ask because 30p recorded in a 60i stream will have the same problems coverting to 24p that straight 30p does. It's about the number of motion samples. 30p recorded in a 60i stream still has only 30 motion samples per second.

Now, as I said before -- when you're shooting 60i, when you do a pan, you can pan quickly and it will still look fine. If you shoot 24p and do a pan, you have to do it very slowly or you'll get jumpiness and stutter in the pan.

BUT, if you convert 60i to 24p, what you end up with is what you'd get if you shot 24p all along. So a pan which is no problem in 60i will still look jerky when converted to 24p, and will look the same as it would have if you had shot 24p in the first place.

As you're only seeing problems in the pans, it's possible that this is your problem, especially as no one using the cameras was likely aware of what you have to do in order to get smooth pans in 24p, if they had 24p on their minds at all, which it seems like they most likely didn't. There's no software or conversion-method solution to this. It's just the math.

 

[Deuceofspades]

As I said before, I am happy with the conversion done is AE - EXCEPT FOR THE CONTRAST. Therefore, it would be nice if we could find a solution to this problem, rather than trying to tell me how to convert, since I already have figured that part out, tested it and the converted footage plays smoothly and syncs back with audio OK.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I just realized that AE is giving me an error message when i first fire it up, and I should mention it here because I don't know what it means, but it could posibly affect the way the clips are imported (thus creating more contrast)?


ERROR MESSAGE = "the following plug ins have failed to load: mediaCore\cineform\CFHD_AVI_importer.prm (and also it lists) mediaCore\cineform\CFHD_MOV_importer.prm"

I have consistently pressed OK and ignored it, and have been able to drag both avi or mov clips into my project without apparent problems, but now I am wondering whether ignoring it is a mistake LOL. Could it be causing the contrast problem?


It is asking me to reinstall the plugins, how do I do that? Reinstall the entire CS5.5 Production Suite? Or??

 

[arco1]

Faith,

This problem has puzzled me since I learned my responses were NOT the solution. I also think that there are several discussions occurring here relating to the contrast problem, interlace vs progressive and also terminology regarding 30/60/i/p frame rates. I am not sure that your specific error message is related to the contrast problem, but I think it might be. One fix for the errors is to remove the importers and can be found here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzTE52djLrk
OR
https://bhivelogs.wordpress.com/2015/01/07/after-fx-plugins-failed-to-load/

Since you said that "the cast used their little camcorders," I'll assume that might have included GoPros. The Cineform importers were probably installed or damaged when you loaded something like GoPro studio.

Whether on not that fixes the problem, I think you have established that the footage looks too contrasty even before the rendering, so that means that any improper "corrections" occurred upon IMPORT. Meaning that something (codec, importer, settings, whatever) is changing the way AE interprets the file prior to rendering.

Can you confirm that the imported footage looks too contrasty upon import? If you would like, can you send me a second or two of the footage to verify there is nothing related to the footage itself?

Jim
Colorburst Video


BTW, I have heard that RedGiant Frames works pretty well, but so does Kramer's.

 

[Deuceofspades]

Hi Jim,

I was able to solve the error messages by uninstalling Gopro studio, a few days ago

Bad news is, the error messages had nothing to do with the contrast problem, since after they are gone the contrast problem is STILL HERE.

I think a lot of replies here were not helpful because they did not deal with the problem I was posting about, we got lost in other topics. THE PROBLEM IS AE COLOR SPACE. I read up for a few hours on AE color management, color space etc etc (very complicated) and I am now convinced that AE is not able to read the color information contained in the clips (or, if the clips don't have any color info, AE is making up its own, and not quite nailing it).

SO WHAT I NEED TO FIX MY PROBLEM IS FIND WHICH COLOR SPACE WOULD APPROXIMATE BEST MY ORIGINAL CLIPS.

problem is, I am running into problem when trying to change the project's color space property and then going to "INTERPRET FOOTAGE" because for some reason the options under "color management" tab are greyed out and I cannot select them or change them.

FURTHERMORE I AM GETTING VERY VERY VERY FRUSTRATED WITH ADOBE BECAUSE THEY OFFER NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO SUPPORT FOR CUSTOMERS LIKE ME WHO PAID OVER $1,000 FOR THEIR PRODUCTION PREMIUM SUITE. Unless you join their cloud dictatorship, you get NO HELP. forum is the only option and I have been on it for 10 days now and received NO HELP.

SO WHAT GIVES??? WILL I BE STUCK FOREVER?

Faith,

This problem has puzzled me since I learned my responses were NOT the solution. I also think that there are several discussions occurring here relating to the contrast problem, interlace vs progressive and also terminology regarding 30/60/i/p frame rates. I am not sure that your specific error message is related to the contrast problem, but I think it might be. One fix for the errors is to remove the importers and can be found here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzTE52djLrk
OR
https://bhivelogs.wordpress.com/2015/01/07/after-fx-plugins-failed-to-load/

Since you said that "the cast used their little camcorders," I'll assume that might have included GoPros. The Cineform importers were probably installed or damaged when you loaded something like GoPro studio.

Whether on not that fixes the problem, I think you have established that the footage looks too contrasty even before the rendering, so that means that any improper "corrections" occurred upon IMPORT. Meaning that something (codec, importer, settings, whatever) is changing the way AE interprets the file prior to rendering.

Can you confirm that the imported footage looks too contrasty upon import? If you would like, can you send me a second or two of the footage to verify there is nothing related to the footage itself?

Jim
Colorburst Video


BTW, I have heard that RedGiant Frames works pretty well, but so does Kramer's.

 

[Andrius Simutis]

Gamma.

 

[Deuceofspades]

After 10 days of battling this problem, I was finally able to find a work around it . hallelujah. Worked like a charm . Since AE is able to read the embedded color info of JPG and TIFFS and PNG just fine without shifting the contrast, I simply made vegas render my test clip into a TIFF sequence and imported it back into AE and it looked identical to my original clip. I then had AE render it to lossless .mov to see if clip retain contrast integrity. I then imported the rendered .mov file back into vegas and compared it with my original: IDENTICAL and in perfect sync. Just to be sure, I then imported the .mov file back into AE to see if it would once again shift contrast but it did not. I assume it embeded color info into the .mov file when it rendered it, so it now can read it just fine, no more mistakes.

Since I had to pre-render my clips anyway before bringing them into AE (I'll skip the details) this workaround is actually not going to add too much more work to my plate. It's a bit of a pain to organize sequence renders, as opposed to video clips, but hey it is what it is. At least I am no longer STUCK. No thanks to Adobe support though.

 

[arco1]

Faith,

Very glad to hear that you have found a suitable workaround. I sometimes resort to TIFF sequence -> output file for very long programs or those with complicated renders.

I think that your 'solution' might even give us a few hints as to what is actually happening/happened. You even hinted at it when you said, "AE is able to read the embedded color info of JPG and TIFFS ... fine without shifting the contrast." AE is a powerful and complex program and can do many things. Since AE rendered the TIFs to an mov correctly, we can probably assume that AE itself is working and configured correctly. If you would like to continue troubleshooting, and after you finish your current project, let me know. I am still curious as to exactly where this was all going south.

Then again, this glitch might never occur again and our time might be better spent working on our next project.


Jim