Jumping horizontal lines

S

sewolla

Well-known member
I just shot a game tape for my daughter's soccer team, to be used in team training efforts. Shot it with an HMC150, at 720/60P pretty much on automatic. Shot on a high school footbal field with lots of horizontal lines in it from empty stands, track field lanes, etc. Not sure if that is significant....

Came out looking really good, when I plug the SDHC chip straight into my Panny Blue Ray player to my Samsung #5053 720P 50" plasma. In fact it looks really good, no problems of note. Edited it using Adobe Premiere Pro CS4. No transcoding was used.

I then burned the MPEG file in Premiere Pro's Media Encoder set on NTSC widescreen progressive high quality, VBR 2 pass, and resulting file looks good when viewed on my 24" Dell 2408 monitor.

But....when I actually burn the DVD, and play it back on my plasma, all of a sudden I am seeing horizontal lines jumping all over the place. For example, the game was shot on a high school football field. The lane markers running around the track, and the empty stands behind it all seem to intermittently strobe, or "jump" around.

This time I used Roxio Creator 2010 to burn the DVD. I was very careful to set project settings for high quality progressive. Usually I don't have a problem with this program.

Is what I am seeing a program issue, or are my settings incorrect? The effect is quite unsettling to watch, and while this is not a paid job, I do video for a living now and have concerns about letting anyone see this with my name on it. Any comments on how to fix this, or help of any sort would sure be appreciated--
SW
 
i noticed this the other night watching monday night football on a HD channel with my SD tv.

Im thinking the lack in resolution makes the device decide what line of resolution the line will fall on... sometimes its in between the 480i (240) lines the SD produces per frame... thus shifting it back and forth with any movement.

Best fix, don't use SD if you don't have to.
 
If the problem doesn't exist until the footage is processed and burned to DVD, it's probably a software issue (as you suspect). Try different software and/or settings.
 
This is interline flicker. Interlaced video must die. Either live with it, or shoot 24p (strobing) or deliver in HD.

DVD-video cannot be progressive. 24p DVDs are basically a hack, but modern players support it. 30p is supported in very few players. 60p does not exist for DVD-video.
 
Cranky said:
This is interline flicker. Interlaced video must die. Either live with it, or shoot 24p (strobing) or deliver in HD.
Click to expand...


So you think its the plasma set? Would it help if I were to set DVD setting to make it interlaced?
 
Did you make it as progressive? You cannot have 60p DVD-video, so is it 30p? You are losing frame rate and most likely losing vertical resolution because the player cannot handle 30p properly.

I would render as 480i60 DVD. At least you will keep motion. As for flicker, the final result is interlaced, but the original frames are progressive, and with the scan lines on the progressive-scan panel being at the same position for both fields (previously, frames) I am not sure where exactly flicker comes from...
 
I've been reporting this issue for about 10 months.

I don't see this with the 170.

I believe this is incidental to AVCHD acquisition. Wish it weren't so.
 
David S. said:
I've been reporting this issue for about 10 months.

I don't see this with the 170.

I believe this is incidental to AVCHD acquisition. Wish it weren't so.
Click to expand...

If that's the case--do you believe that transcoding to DVCProHD via the Main Concept transcoder might fix the problem?
 
Barry, I've experienced this with progressive footage and a progressive encode.

Sometimes, from my experience, the AVCHD codec falls apart in certain situations with artifacting, etc.

We've learn to avoid those situations. But what the OP shot is a primary circumstance to shoot around or avoid
 
sewolla said:
If that's the case--do you believe that transcoding to DVCProHD via the Main Concept transcoder might fix the problem?
Click to expand...

No.

I tried that and at least five alternative workflows.

pro res
pro res HQ
converting to DVCProHD
converting to NeoScene
going native AVCHD in Premiere

You have to be aware of the issue and shoot around it.
 
Let me clarify.

We shot footage at a sports event with a 170 at 720/24pN and with a 150 at 720/24p.

We saw what the OP saw when we encoded the similarly shot footage to SD DVD.

We tried five alternative ways to ingest the footage from the 150, and still saw what the OP saw and has reported.

While I respect your opinion, I'm not commenting on Barry's "hunch," but on our real world experience.

What have you shot with the 150 that can produce some insight here, with all due respect?
 
David S. said:
What have you shot with the 150 that can produce some insight here, with all due respect?
Click to expand...
Nothing. But I've shot with another Panasonic native 1080p24 camera. Also, I am trying to be scientific. If you don't see any questionable artifacts in progressive footage with either 170 or 150, then anything converted from this footage should also look fine. Maybe this is a software problem?
 
Our experience led us to conclude that is wasn't a software problem.

It is an acquisition codec problem.

You can be scientific, but I'm being real world. The 150 has artifacting issues when encoding to SD DVD when shooting certain scenes.

Raw footage looks fabulous. But when yoy shoot thin lines on a football field, or on a basketball backdrop, we saw shimming, etc. with a 150, that we didn't see it with a 170.

We shot the 170 and 150 side by side and compared.

Then we reshot it at another event.

Then we spent a weekend pursuing alternative ingest and encode workflows.

As I said, "say it isn't so." But it is. Now we shoot around these issues with our 40
 
Thank so much for all the responses, your inputs are all really appreciated!

I just re-authored the DVD as 480i per one of Cranky's earlier posts. Played it back thru the Panasonic BD30 Blue Ray to my Samsung 720p plasma and this change seems to have cleared up 90% of the problem. Most of the jumping lines effects are now gone. It is significantly better, and I can now use it.
However when played back thru my computer its not as clean as the progressivly authored DVD.

Similarly, the progressivly authored DVD has a much better picture when played back on the computer but falls apart at times when played back thru my DVD player and HDTV.

It seems that going forward its going to be important to know just what device a customer is likely to play back these discs on. IF an HDTV, probably authoring an interlaced disc is best: if computer is the preferred playback device then go progressive. That seems to be the result of this project, however I am not sure why that would necessarily be so.
 
Here's my experience, which is similar to yours sewolla. I've been freelancing for the Seattle Sounder's FC (Major League Soccer) the last couple of months shooting their coaches video for home games. Same issue... first game I shot was 720p60, played it back through the same BR player to a 1080p DLP, and it looked splendid. None of those issues at all.

Burnt it to DVD via Encore and got the same issues you did. Transcoded to DVCProHD first... still same issues. Since the first game was basically a "practice" for me, next time I shot it at 1080i, transcoded via the Mainconcept transcoder to 480i this time, and most (but not all) of the issues went away. Mind you, this is played back on a HD set... I have no idea what it looks like on an SD set.

They're happy with it, so I've been using that as my workflow for the rest of the season.

BUT... I have noticed that when I had a crappy little 13" tv set up next to me while shooting and was outputting via the composite cable to it, there were *ZERO* issues and it looked great (well at least as good as downconverted HD sent via composite to a crappy 13" TV can look). So I think David is probably right about the AVCHD codec once it gets downconverted. I'm thinking the workaround is to get a DVD burner and burn it live that way, bypassing all compression.
 
Was this crappy little 13" TV a CRT-based one?

When you shoot 60p then convert to 60i, you scale and interlace. When you shoot 60i and convert to 60i then you deinterlace, scale, and interlace. I just cannot believe that using interlaced video at the first place yields better results. But then again, I haven't shot with the 150, like, ever.
 
Yes, the crappy little TV was an SD CRT... but as I said, I've only watched the final product on a 1080p TV. It may very well look worse on an SD TV... but so far none of the coaches, nor the video guys for the Seahawks (whom I'm going through for this gig) have complained, and all have said they're happy with it. But looking at it straight out of the camera as I'm shooting on the CRT looks just fine, whether 1080i or 720p60.
 
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