Interlaced, Progressive, 30p, 60i, and All That Stuff

J

Joe_Hicks

Well-known member
I've done some reading on other posts about deinterlacing footage. As well, I've come to the understanding that all DVX100 footage, no matter how it's shot, ends up interlaced in Premiere. I've also learned that there doesn't seem to be any decent way to deinterlace DV footage.

So, with all this said, am I to assume that just about anything I shoot on my DVX100 is gonna look like crap when viewed on any non-interlaced display (computers, projectors, etc)?

If this is the case, I guess it will be useless to expect anything at a professional level for non-interlaced displays.

I'd love to hear from anybody and anyone to shed some light on this whole thing.
 
No worries. The DVX simply outputs the progressive images as interlaced frames so that they can be recorded in the DV format. They are still progressive images, and will not look like crap. (Unless they were crappy progressive images!) You do have to make sure your field rendering is correct, but Premiere's default is correct: lower field first.
 
Make sure you choose a progressive preset in Premiere.

If you choose a preset that renders with "No Fields" or make a custom preset with that same option, then you should be fine. I would recommend using Adobe Encoder to export your footage and then make sure your export presets are also set to progressive.
 
Ok, two questions:
1. Premiere offers no default setting for 30p. What would be a proper preset for this frame rate?
2. Ok, so your saying Adobe Encoder does a better job at deinterlacing? In my humble opinion, Adobe Encoder requires a degree in something to understand all options that are available to you. Yeah, anyone can click one of the presets, but I'm not impressed with the quality of any.
What format offers best quality?
What settings for each format will render you the closest to an avi quality? (if compression isn't needed)

Thx!
 
HI,

Someone correct me if this is not accurate.

When editing in Premiere, the timeline is always interlaced. To my knowledge there is NO Setting to edit in progressive frame Mode. HOWEVER, when you export your project as a finished, rendered file, Choose "NO FIELDS" in the drop down menu prior to export. This is where the settings are to get your progressive framed video. The interlacing in the timeline will not be seen in the finished file. I believe it will return your progressive video to it's original state. It is not Processing it with NO FRAMES selected. If LOWER FRAMES is selected, it is indeed processing the Progressive Frame Video to Interlaced. That is undo-able without further DE-Interlace processing. Garbage in Garbage out.

To check and make sure you have done this correctly, you can do the Idiot test. Open the AVI or finished video in a Media Player, Pause it during a scene where there is a lot of motion or better yet, a fast pan of the camera, . If you see the classic Interlaced tearing in the paused frame. You have done this incorrectly. A Computer monitor will show this off with ease.

It is my understanding that Premiere treats everything as interlaced in the timeline, at least as far as DV 29.976 video is concerned.. If you export a captured clip or finished edit as "Lower fields first", then try to de-interlace that, it will look bad. Again, Export your finished project as a "NO FIELDS" file right off the bat.

A suggestion: "Bump Up" your export to a higher "Non Lossy" format like an Uncompressed AVI with the "No Fields" option Selected. The file will be HUGE, but next time you go to edit it, it should take a beating without noticable loss.

I think Uncompressed AVI is a different res. It is like, 720x486 or something. But because it has twice the color sampling of DV, it will hold up better. Someone chime in on this if I am wrong or inaccurate.


I have been editing with Premiere since version 5. I dropped it to go to Avid when we started shooting P2. I have now come back with the latest DVCProHD abilities. Im very pleased with Premiere Pro CS3 Ver 3.10.

Premieres ARROW tool is like the Duct Tape of the editing world. I can accomplish a lot of different things with one simple tool. Avid is all about Hot keys. There is a tool or "Mode" for everything you want to do. IMHO, Avid is probably a little more "Politically Correct" in that it was seems to have designed from the perspective of a Linear Editors mind-set. They are used to a button for everything. Personally, I find Avid cumbersome to work with.

...But maybe that is because my real Tool drawer only consists of 6 Items, A bottle of Asprin, A Hammer, A Flathead and Phillips screwdriver, a pair of Pliers and a big roll of Duct tape....
 
If I may add another question to this subject, how would you go about making a progressive DVD in Encore?

Lets say that we shot in 24pa like Premiere likes, we made sure that we imported it with the setting "NO FRAMES" and edited it. What are the optimum steps for output to a progressive DVD using Encore? -Thanks!
 
Newer versions of Premiere have more presets. In Premiere Pro 2 and CS3 there are presets for progressive footage when you first load the splash screen (By default). The 720p presets under DVCProHD are all progressive. As far as the DV presets, only the 24p ones are progressive. If for some reason you do not see any progressive presets (presets with a "p" like 30p or 24p, you should be able to click on the "Custom" tab and choose desktop video to give you access to be able to make a custom preset that does not have an interlaced timeline. You should take note that in the field dropdown box for "field order" you will have three choices: Upper Field, Lower Field and None (Progressive).

I believe that Encore CS3 has progressive transcoding options. However, the easiest way to make a progressive DVD in Encore would be to render to a progressive MPEG2 DVD codec preset in Adobe Encoder in Premiere, import it into Encore and set the clip to "Do Not Transcode" and the original progressive MPEG2 file will remain untouched as far as re-encoding goes.

Hope this helps.
 
Ok, two more things.
1. I've been contemplating going to an HD camera from my DXV. How does Premiere handle HD footage? Does it break it up into fields? Seems almost sacrilegious if it does!

2. We've tackled 24p and 30p here. What about 60i footage? Is there any way to get it to look good on a progressive screen such as computer or projection? I've had no luck at this.
 
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1. I've been contemplating going to an HD camera from my DXV. How does Premiere handle HD footage? Does it break it up into fields? Seems almost
sacrilegious if it does!
Click to expand...

Premiere handles HD footage great! There are both progressive and interlaced presets to choose from. Everything is as it should be.

2. We've tackled 24p and 30p here. What about 60i footage? Is there any way to get it to look good on a progressive screen such as computer or projection? I've had no luck at this.
Click to expand...

The only way to do this is to deinterlace the footage. By doing this, you lose half of the scan lines and the blanks are filled in with duplicates of the remaining scan lines. There are programs, such as the deinterlacer from Revision FX, that will interpolate information from the thrown out scan lines to help get a better quality in the deinterlacing result. The quality is a little closer to what you would get if you had shot progressively in the first place. Still, deinterlacing causes a loss in overall resolution but can still make the picture look better on a progressive display monitor.

On a progressive display monitor, deinterlacing will still tend to sharpen things up visually in contrast to interlaced footage, just because it will eliminate all of, or at least most of, the interlace flicker and will help to solidify and lock down fine lines and detail so they aren't jumping in and out of place.
 
Joe_Hicks said:
Ok, two more things.
1. I've been contemplating going to an HD camera from my DXV. How does Premiere handle HD footage? Does it break it up into fields? Seems almost sacrilegious if it does!

I had these very same questions, Mr Green was very kind in responding to my inquiries regarding 30p footage. It is my understanding/interpretation that if you are shooting to DV Tape. It is Interlaced. Done Deal, no matter what the setting on the camera is. I know the HVX offers 30p to DV Tape, but I think it is interlaced video upon playback, due to the limitations of the DV format.

Only the P2 pure digital format offers true Progressive scan video at 30 frames in DV25, DV50 or DV100 Video.

If you have premiere CS3, you may try goofing around with a DVCPro 50 timeline sometime. Import your DV footage into a DVCPro50 project. All of the other tricks mentioned in this thread regarding "NO Frames" apply. It will instantly bump up your footage to the 4:2:2 DV50 format upon export. It will hold up better in editing due to the doubled colorspace.

You may wish to export your imported DV25 clips to a DVCPro50 P2 MXF file format, then re-import that, to cut down on rendering time.

I have shot identical scene between DVCPro50 and DVCPro25 on the HVX using the P2 Cards. The colorspace difference was surprising. The DVCPro50 stuff was Brilliant and robust.

MagicCat
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Magiccat: Good info- thanks.
The HVX seems like an awesome camera and not too expensive, but... the stinkin' P2 cards are rediculous! 1600 for a 32gb card- that's nuts.
A couple of questions:
1. Out of curiosity, how many minutes of recording will go on a 32gb card?
2. How much computer horsepower is needed doing HD editing? I've got a dual AMD Opteron 254 system, SCSI host card and drives, 4gb ram, on a Tyan Thunder board.

Thx,
Joe
 
MagicCat said:
It is my understanding/interpretation that if you are shooting to DV Tape. It is Interlaced. Done Deal, no matter what the setting on the camera is. I know the HVX offers 30p to DV Tape, but I think it is interlaced video upon playback, due to the limitations of the DV format.
Click to expand...
The footage is progressive scan, at 30p and 24p. But the recording format is interlaced. If your NLE understands the progressive format (and I think by now they all do) then it makes no difference, and you're getting true progressive scan at 24p and 30p. And the same applies whether it's to tape or to P2.
 
Barry_Green said:
The footage is progressive scan, at 30p and 24p. But the recording format is interlaced. If your NLE understands the progressive format (and I think by now they all do) then it makes no difference, and you're getting true progressive scan at 24p and 30p. And the same applies whether it's to tape or to P2.
Click to expand...
Is this true for both the DVX and the HVX?
 
Joe_Hicks said:
1. Out of curiosity, how many minutes of recording will go on a 32gb card?
Click to expand...

Depends on how you shoot.

If you shoot 1080, you'll get a little better than a minute per gigabyte, about 34 minutes.

If you shoot 720 in the "P" modes (which always record 60 fps), then you'll get about the same.

If you shoot 720 in the "N" modes, you can get substantial card space savings, depending on how many frames per second you shoot. For example, if you shoot 30pN, you can get twice the amount of time you'd get shooting 1080 or 720/60p. With 720/24pN, you get about 2.5 times the amount, etc. The formula varies depending on variable frame rates, etc..

Shooting DVCPRO 50 in SD mode gets you twice the recording time as 1080. Shooting DVCPRO 25 or DV gets you four times as much.


2. How much computer horsepower is needed doing HD editing? I've got a dual AMD Opteron 254 system, SCSI host card and drives, 4gb ram, on a Tyan Thunder board.
Click to expand...

You've got plenty of RAM; performance depends on your processor speed (and your editing software). As for hard drives, a striped SATA RAID should (in theory) give you the best performance.
 
Wow, that's nuts. Hmmm- $1600 P2 card or a 10 dollar tape. I'll have to pass. For a normal day of shooting I would need at least 2 of these cards. Panasonic sure is lining their pockets on this one.

The 254 processor runs 2.8ghz. Running Premiere 2.0 but will probably upgrade to CS3. As far as hard drives, your not gonna beat the throughput of scsi. If I go to HD, I probably would stripe a couple of scsi drives for added speed over SATA.
Sad thing about that RAM is that XP won't recognize all of it-- a bit of a waste of money. The system only sees 3gb of it.
 
I just read today that, as of Dec. 01, Panasonic is now shipping the HVX with one 16gb P2 card included. That makes the deal much more inviting.
 
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