my 24P footage looks interlaced

R

Roshd Ghalleb

Member
Okay, so it does sound very amateurish and maybe you heard this over and over again, but I just need to understand what happened if anyone can help:

I've shot a short film with a DVX100A in 24P mode, also used the lens adapter "Letus35A" for that 35mm Deph of field look. Next, I've uploaded it into FCP 5.1.4. At the time, I didn't pay much attention to the look of the frames per se (interlaced or progressive), but rather to the 35mm feel that I was experimenting. This is my first time doing this. And yes it was stupid not paying attention to such essential information. I must say that I was under the impression that it might look like that because of the 35mm lense, and there's got to be a way to correct it in post. To make the story short, after awhile, I started noticing the interlaced going all over the project. I was pretty sure this wasn't suppose to look interlaced at this point of the process. I couldn't beleive my eyes since I was pretty sure that I've imported my footage as 24P, even probably through the easy set up. Unfortunately I was already too far out in the editing process to back out and retransfer the whole thing again. So I decided to finish the whole editing, throwing in a De-Interlaced filter temporarily, then after completion, figure out how to reconnect only the edited portion on my timeline of the overall project. Now I am thinking: Maybe I should'nt have...

The editing is suppose to be done sometimes this week finally. I am starting to worry about the eventual re-transfer at this point. Although I masked the whole project with a De-interlaced filter, I feel like I might get better results with the native footage. So I need help restoring it. I want to make sure if this is duable and how should I do it in the most effective way. When I check out Item Properties of any given clip, under Format, this is what it reads:

Type: Clip
Creator: QuickTime Player
Tracks: 1V,2A
Vid Rate: 24fps
Frame size: 720 x 480
Compressor: DV/DVCPRO-NTSC
Data Rate: 2.9MB/Sec
Pixel Aspect: NTSC-CCIR 601
Field Dominance: None
Alpha: None/Ignore
Composite: Normal
Audio:2Mono
Aud Rate: 48.0KHz
Aud Format:16-bit Integer

To have a better idea, check out some of the rought cut from the link below. However, the very first scene was NOT shot by me, was not recorded on a DVX and was not in 24P. From the second scene on, it was me with the DVX and on 24P mode. Keep in mind that there are De-Interlaced filters on this screening :

http://homepage.mac.com/mandrakfilm/iMovieTheater17.html

Thank you for your precious input.

-RG-
 
Where are you seeing this interlace problem? Is it a problem on your computer monitor or on an external monitor? If its a problem on your computer monitor, not a big deal. Computer monitors aren't really meant for playback quality control. Set your video out to firewire, hook up the DVX, run the DVX RCA to a TV set and then check again (might not look as good as going to a broadcast monitor, but can give you a little bit better idea of what you're dealing with than strictly the computer monitor).

You shot 24p and NOT 24pA correct? You might want to snag Noah's DVD(s) about the DVX and its usage and workflow. I know that 24p mode on the camera is meant to be cut at 29.97 and 24pA is meant to be cut at 23.98, but that's about it. Not sure if the 24p would also then actually be progressive and meant for say 30p in that case (I've never seen anyone say 29.97p).

What do you mean by re-transfer exactly?

You should never use the de-interlace filter as you're throwing away half of your resolution when you do. That's just what the filter does I'm afraid. Not really sure why anyone would use it (even if I'm sending interlaced footage out to VFX folks, I'll let them deal with that themself, with their applications, or use a hardware solution).

cheers.
 
Varicam,

Thanks for your comment. Yes I did the shooting in standard 24P, not advanced. Now I am learning from you that I might loose half of my resolution by throwing in De-Interlaced filters (or probably any kind of filter for that matter). I must say that I did notice a lower quality on my footage as the editing progressed. Never understood what might be the reason for that. So I guess you are bringing a possible answer here. I'll take some filters off and see what happens in the next step. As for the monitor where I saw the interlaced problem, it was first on my Macbook Pro. Then after I made a DVD containing the edited portion of my footage, I watched it on my regular DVD player connected to a TV monitor, and there it was too. But I'll set up the DVX out to a TV monitor as per your advise to see if there's any difference. You've also brought my attention to the fact that regular 24p mode on the DVX is meant to be cut at 29.97 with FCP, as opposed to 24pA that is meant to be cut at 23.98. According to this, I am supposed to cut in 29.97. Well, as I wrote previousely: when checking out Item Properties of any given clip, under Format, I read that my video rate is 24fps. Not sure if this means that my original footage is 24fps, or that I am cutting on 24fps. Maybe I am using the wrong cutting rate...Can anybody confirm ???

What I meant by retransfering, is that after finishing the editing, I was thinking of recapturing the same footage again from the original mini DV tape onto FCP, but do it more carefully throughout easy set up, in order for me to be able to cut in 29.97. However, I didn't want to recapture the entire original footage (over seven hours of material), because now that my editing is finished (about 30mn or so) I know what are the unused portions that I need to leave out. Reconnecting only the clips linked to the edited portion, seems like the right thing to do. That's what I've been trying to find out how to do, and was wondering if it is worth the hassle, or as you suggested should I just go ahead and send the interlaced footage out to VFX folks, I'll let them do their magic with their own apps...

Thanks again

RG
 
Anybody care answering the topic ? I know you guys like to watch the footage, but does anyone have something to say about the actual issue ? well...if you guys are just as perplexed as myself, at least leave some feedback about what you have watched. Negative feedbacks are very welcome. I like honest opinions as I need to learn, so please do not hesitate. Thanks.

-RG-
 
I suggest reading this again if you haven't already:

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=23355

if your clips are 23.98 and still have interlacing you probably capturing with the incorrect settings. 99% of the time, the simple mistake is setting the capture frame rate to 24 fps. But that's not what's on the tape, it's 29.97= 24p + 3:2 pulldown. Capturing at 24 throws away progressive frames and often keeps intelaced ones because the cadence is discarded entirely at random.

Solution- recapture at 29.97. Use Advanced Pulldown removal if you shot at 24pA. Use Cinema Tools if you shot 24p or cut at 29.97. The "film look" is preserved in all. This is a decent amount of what I spend my training DVD helping folks with btw.

Noah
 
Thanks Noah: I might very well recapture the whole thing ultimately.

Shane: There are De-Interlaced filters on the online footage that you've seen. That's why you don't see interlacing. I figured that thee's no need to go ahead and take off the filters and put the movie back streaming online, just for the purpose of showing people what interlacing looks like. I trust everyone knows the look.

Since the operation would be time consuming, I 'd rather use that time to correct the problem accurately, by recapturing the footage at the right rate, and then ultimately it will be a good opportunity to show it again. For now, the whole point of showing the preview screening is just to give an idea on what the raw footage looks like, regardless of the De-Interlaced filters. Also, considering this has been cut at the wrong rate, and even though I am planning on correcting that, I am curious to read some feedback about the rough cut as it is currently.

Thanks again.

-RG-
 
Hey guys,

I've just written a message to Noah K to thank him for his detailed post on how to digitize 24PA footage for a 23.98 Edit. I wanted to share the part of the message where I asked Noah for a little bit more of explanation related to my issue. Maybe some of you can help as well. Here it is:

"Ok, so I've read your post on how to properly digitize 24P footage from a DVX100A (my camera) for a 2.98 edit. You've pointed out that DVX100 24pA footage should always be captured at 29.97 and that FCP must be set at 29.97. My 24P (standard not advanced) footage shot with the DVX looked interlaced, and I proceeded to recapture it at the correct rate to be able to edit on FCP 5.1.4. A video professional friend of mine urged me to go to Easy setup and to make sure to select Sequence Preset for: DV NTSC 48 KHz-23.98. Then Capture Preset for: DV NTSC 48 KHz (29.97). So I did according to his advise. However when using 23.98 sequence preset, the footage still looked interlaced and a red bar on top of the video track on the timeline indicated that I must render that footage to start with. However, after rendering, footage still looks interlaced. I though maybe I should check capture setting and remove the 2:3:3:2 Pulldown, even though I shot on standard 24P, and not advanced. I just wanted to exhaust all possibilities. Still didn't work ! Footage was still interlaced. So at this point my capture Preset is DV NTSC 48 KHz (29.97) and then it hit me that you've insisted on editing at 29.97 fps. ( Until then, I was under the impression that capturing at 29.97 means that my entire project would be edited at 29.97 fps) So as an alternative, I tried to change my Sequence Preset from 23.98 to 29.97. IT WORKED. Sequence Preset at 29.97 makes my 24P footage looking Progressive ! Now what I need to know is the answer to three simple questions:

1- Am I doing ok ? (Sequence and Capture Presets are both at 29.97). as I want to edit at 29.97 but still output back at 24P for DVD and various other formats, which leads me to the second question:

2- After finishing the edit, would I be able to output it back into mini DV tape at 24P (for the purpose of transfering into Digi Beta since we are planning on doing a projection for a film festival).

3- when I checked my sequence setting, frame size indicated: Width:720 x Height 480. Aspect Ratio: NTSC DV (3:2). Isn't it supposed to be: 640 x 480 NTSC (4:3) ? "

Thanks a ton everyone. I can imagine that just like myself, some other people are still confused about this whole issue, and I sincerely hope this would help anyone correcting their work flow so we can truly enjoy making movies without the technical hassle.

Cheers.

-Roshd Ghalleb-
 
(1) Your long paragraph has me a bit confused to your logic, but basically just remember that DVX100 24P = film look, capture and edit at 29.97 (no advanced pulldown) and 24PA = film look, capture and edit at 23.98 (use advanced pulldown). I'd talk to Noah, and perhaps get his DVD, but I think you can take 24P stuff into Cinema Tools and conform that to 23.98 (I believe both he and Mench have talked about this before).

(2) Ah I guess see above. Never tried that, but don't just plunk it into a 23.98 timeline and hit render. I think it might be a painful solution to get it done though.

(3) Standard Defintion Digital Video is 720 x 480, VHS/DVD are 720x486 (line 21 for CC and the like). DV is rectangular pixels (0.9 ratio), the 640x480 is square pixels and meant for like computer screens (web videos and the like).
 
Varicam,

Thanks a lot. Yes I do understand how easily confused one can be after reading the above paragraph. Something else I should work on :-)

At the end of the day, and thanks to all of you, I am now understanding that I should capture and edit my 24P video at 29.97 fps. That is perfectly clear. Thank you all for your precious assistance.

I also wanted to point out that we are not planning on doing a transfer to film. We shot this on 24P standard and plan on doing a video projection at the festival. They carry special projectors for that effect. Here's a note from the director I've just got: (note from festival: If your film is shot in anamorphic format please submit a letterbox version for screening. If not anamorphic format, please ensure that the aspect ratio on your film is 4:3.). That's why question number 3 above, was brought up (Wether or not should we go 640 x 480). Our movie is not anamorphic, but I am putting a 1.85 widescreen on it, just to get even closer from the film look feel.

Color correction is scheduled for Saturday, then sound mix is next before we transfer everything to digi beta for the festival.

I'll keep you posted for updates. If we can pull this off, then this would be officially a training experience to write and shoot low budget features in the same fashion, and target independent distribution outlets. If anyone is curious to find out more about the futur of digital, I find the following statistics highly entertaining :
http://www.zoom-in.com/spotlights/Ira_Deutchman/the_digital_future_of_independent_film

-Roshd-
 
If you didn't shoot anamorphic then your frame sizing is already the standard 720x480 (which from the sounds of things is what they need). If you chose to put a filter/slug/mask/etc. on your footage to give it that widescreen/film feel that doesn't change the fact that the frame is still 720x480 and 4:3. The 3:2 pixel aspect ratio is about the shape of the pixels not the frame size, so don't worry about that at all. Good luck.

cheers.
 
Thanks again Varicam.

Well, the very first scene that you can see online, is a clip that has been shot in 29.97 fps from someone else than myself, not using the DVX, and most importantly in squeeze mode (Letter boxed natively). I guess the director changed his mind about the format that he originally decided to shoot with, once they switched to me for the cinematography, or maybe he was never aware of the squeeze, or thought it didn't matter...Go figure. Being that I am also the editor, I have to handle it for what it's worth. I don't know if I should interprete Squeeze mode as anamorphic or not. A bit of confusion there. What's important is to recapture that portion of the footage, the right way. I still didn't figure out how to do that. So if anybody can shade some light, dinner is on me at your favorite pizza place :-)

Now my friends, let me tell you something else that 's really starting to get on my last nerve. I don't know if it's a curse, but here it is: Now that I know what to do with my 24P footage, I spent the past couple of days trying to figure out what can be the most effective and less time consuming way to recapture the original footage at DV NTSC 48 KHZ (29.97 of course). First problem was about the amount of space available on my disk. I kept having warnings pop ups telling me that capture has been ended due to lack of disk space, and that my current capture scratch drives are too full. Which didn't make any sense, because I had about 60 GB still available on my external hard drive. I checked system settings, under minimum allowable free space on scratch disks, where I've selected a value of 20048 MB. I downsized it to 2048, tried again and: Voila! Capturing resumed and I seems to work fine (for how long ?...we'll see about that). Second and major problem was about the method in which I should recapture. I've been editing this piece up until now from media captured as 23.98 and edited on the wrong sequence preset. So the whole point was to recapture at 29.97 and edit at 29.97, but in order to be able to relink the edited portion to the recaptured media. Each single clip had to have the exact same IN and OUT points for that effect. First thought was to batch capture everything, but It didn't work because timecode did NOT match the stored ins and outs on the current media data with the new timecode of the newly captured clip. FCP started batch recapturing about 10 seconds earlier... I guess the lenght is suppose to change since I am recpaturing at different speed.

Another method I've tried, was to recapture media with enough handles, (after eyeballing the original media to match), regardless to non-matching timecode. After capturing is done, find the new QuickTime file in my capture Scratch, open it and slide an IN and an OUT points where it seems to be ok, and save as... the new reference media, to which I would reconnect clips in my browser ! It would be very time consuming indeed to do a whole seven hour footage like that, but at least it seemed possible. Guess what ? It wouldn't work either, because eventually, I would run into a drop frame during capturing. As an alternative I went back to system settings, and under User Preferences, I checked off "report dropped frames during playback", "Abort ETT/PVT on dropped frames", and "Abort capture on dropped frames".:crybaby:

After a new capture attempt, I would constantly get pop up warnings :
"You are about to capture non-drop frame media to a drop-frame clip. If you proceed, you may experience changes in logged IN and OUT points, problems relinking media or removal of master clip relationships". Right now I am out of the editing room, taking a break away from this madness before I start losing it, or worst: before I end up in the kitchen and randomly kill some comfort food...

-Roshd-
 
OK this is my 2cents......... When is the movie coming out and how can I get my advance copy, I was laughing through the whole thing, the fat kid i funny as hell this seems like it is going to be a good one.
 
Thanks a lot brother. The little kid is a natural. We were blessed to have him on set. He's a little ball of energy. Never gets tired. He's not intimated by anyone. He's on his way to become a star atcually. And you can see him in the current Subway commercial playing a video game like Pacman that eats burgers and gets fatter. :-)

We're planning on exhibiting the piece in a few festivals, mainly in the New York Area for now. Not sure what the director's intentions are regarding a DVD release or what kind of distribution is he targeting, but I'll keep you posted as soon as I know more myself. We're supposed to lock the cut sometimes by Wednesday, after we run it by a small audience., so we can transfer it to color correction, then sound mix, by the end of next week. Needless to say that I am starting to freak out about my little technical predicament. I just can't miss the deadline. Worries and stress are just part of the job. We knew that when we started doing it. Thanks again for the word of encouragement.

Cheers.

-Roshd-
 
Roshd Ghalleb said:
Thanks a lot brother. The little kid is a natural. We were blessed to have him on set. He's a little ball of energy. Never gets tired. He's not intimated by anyone. He's on his way to become a star atcually. And you can see him in the current Subway commercial playing a video game like Pacman that eats burgers and gets fatter. :-)

We're planning on exhibiting the piece in a few festivals, mainly in the New York Area for now. Not sure what the director's intentions are regarding a DVD release or what kind of distribution is he targeting, but I'll keep you posted as soon as I know more myself. We're supposed to lock the cut sometimes by Wednesday, after we run it by a small audience., so we can transfer it to color correction, then sound mix, by the end of next week. Needless to say that I am starting to freak out about my little technical predicament. I just can't miss the deadline. Worries and stress are just part of the job. We knew that when we started doing it. Thanks again for the word of encouragement.

Cheers.

-Roshd-
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Man I wish you the best with the movie let me know when I can get my copy or any screenings in baltimore.:thumbsup:
 
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