Why am I an idiot?

I

inthecity

New member
Hello DVX100 gurus,

I'm a total newbie with this stuff.... I shot with a DVX100 in 24p, and edited in FCP 29.97. I compressed with quicktime under that H264 thing and uploaded to vimeo, but the picture quality now looks like garbage! A lot jagged edges. I tried to search the forum a bit and read about other people who had the same problems but I figured I'd give a shout here for some instant gratification. Thanks for your help in advance!

Here's a link to the footage to see how crappy it looks (esp. during the live footage)
http://vimeo.com/3390050

and btw...the beginning of the footage is supposed to look like that..I used that "bad tv" effect, which I'm still on the fence about. blah.
 
needs to be deinterlaced. however i duno about FCP, i assume theres someplace u can check "deinterlaced"... but these fellas can help.
 
I had the same problem. I shot 24p and edited on Adobe Premiere Elements 1.0 on a 29.92 timeline. It looked great on DVD but when I uploaded to Vimeo, it was full of artifacts and jagged edges, just as you have experienced. I tried several things until I finally tried de-interlacing the footage before uploading. That did the trick. So, try de-interlacing your footage before uploading to Vimeo and see if that helps.
 
nice..thanks for the quick reply guys. yeah, I remember reading about that somewhere, but conveniently forgot all about it! I'll give that a try!
 
It's because if you export to an inherent progressive format like h.264, your footage will go through a deinterlacing process during export -- and you don't want to deinterlace 24p footage. You'll end up with a mess. Or, at best, you'll cut your vertical resolution by up to half.

The proper way to go is to shoot 24pA and edit as 24p. It may be too late for this particular project, but for best-quality results in the future, be sure to do it that way.
 
Thanks Dave. Ok, so I still have the dv tapes I shot in 24p. In order to edit in 24p do I need to recapture..or can I use the assets I have already captured? And how do I set up to edit in 24p on FCP?
 
I believe you can use what you already captured and run it through Cinema Tools. Then, you'd use a 23.98 DV-NTSC 24p Easy Setup template.
 
yeah, I think cinema tools is the only way to remove the pulldown when shot in 24P.

if you shoot in 24pa, you use the preset for pulldown removal in fcp, but not for 24P
 
Good lord, it looks like I've really gone from the frying pan to the fire now!

So, I ran my footage through cinema tools, and I followed this guy's advice: http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/film_digital_video_cinema_tools.html

As advised by kenstone, before conforming to 23.98 I made duplicates of my footage (.mov format) since conforming is irreversible from what he says.

After conforming I played back the footage in FCP to find that it's totally destroyed! The picture blacks out, jumps from scene to scene, the audio is in slow motion, and the picture drops and blinks with white and colored huge pixel blocks! WTF? AND even my copies, the footage I did not conform, are doing the same thing!! Where in the heck did I go wrong?
 
Do you have any good footage that plays OK? Sounds like it could be systemic instead of a problem with the clips.
 
yeah, i have about 4 hrs of various footage that looks ok when viewed through FCP or quicktime. with this particular project, the rough edit looks fine when viewing in fcp and also when compressed h.264 and viewed in quicktime, but when I uploaded to vimeo, that's when the jagged artifacts appeared. and now, after cinema tools, all of that footage has turned into a steaming pile of lincoln logs. wonder if i should just recapture everything from the original dv tapes?
 
inthecity said:
yeah, i have about 4 hrs of various footage that looks ok when viewed through FCP or quicktime. with this particular project, the rough edit looks fine when viewing in fcp and also when compressed h.264 and viewed in quicktime, but when I uploaded to vimeo, that's when the jagged artifacts appeared. and now, after cinema tools, all of that footage has turned into a steaming pile of lincoln logs. wonder if i should just recapture everything from the original dv tapes?
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There's something odd there indeed; if you made copies of the Quicktime files, then what you did in Cinema Tools shouldn't affect the copies.

HOW did you make the copies?
 
Paladin said:
Did you try to simply de-interlace the footage before uploading to Vimeo? It definitely worked for me:

http://www.vimeo.com/1868373
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OK.

I'm honestly not trying to be negative here; I know you didn't offer this for critique. But in the spirit of learning and improving, I have some comments. :beer:

This actually shows some of the problems inherent with taking 24p material and editing it as 29.97 -- and then, when you deinterlace it for Vimeo, you're essentially converting 24p to 30p. That's going to lead to problems, and some of those problems are apparent here.

Look at what's going on in some of your camera moves -- there's a little bit of ghosting apparent around some of your moving fgures/people. But worse is what's going on in the backgrounds -- it's really choppy and distracting. The backgrounds seem to jerk from place to place in an exaggerated strobe. Some of that strobe will happen with 24p anyway, if you move the camera too quickly. But converting it to 30p is simply making it that much worse.

Mathematically, in order to convert one frame rate to another and have it go smoothly, there needs to be either a sizable (like 24 and 60) or extremely slight (like 24 and 25) difference in frame rates. If you're converting from a lower frame rate to a higher frame rate, you need to duplicate frames, and to do that well, you need to be able to distribute the duplicates often and evenly. Or, you can do it sparsely, like from 24 to 25, where you only need to add an extra one here and there (though it usually isn't even done that way). The difference between 24 and 30 is an amount where it's difficult to do it well either way. It's too much of a difference for sparse duplications -- and you can't just speed it up, like you can from 24 to 25 -- and it's too little of a difference for frequent, even duplication. So, the only way to do it is through interpolation, the blending of frames, the merging of separate pictures and different moments in time, where moving objects are in different places in the shot. And there's just not enough info there, not enough time samples, not enough individual pictures, to do it well.

(And if, as you've said in other threads, you're shooting 24pA and editing it as 29.97, you're taking the problem a step further still and ramping up the choppiness that much more, because 24pA is inherently choppier when viewed in a 29.97 stream.)

So, that's some of what you're up against when you take that route. Again, I'm not bringing this up to be critical or to single you out. I'm trying to help everyone understand the possible problems so that everyone will do better work in the future. :)
 
i just have one simple philosophy: I NEVER SHOOT IN INTERLACED!!!!! IT LOOKS STUPID, ITS A PAIN IN THE ASS, AND I DEAL WITH LOTS OF NTSC/PAL ISSUES WITH MY WORK, SO PROGRESSIVE IS MUCH EASIER FOR ME
 
Granted, de-interlacing in order to remove the artifacts for Vimeo does exaggerate the judder inherent in 24fps, but it does remove the artifacts. This does not happen when the footage can be viewed in its original state (such as directly from a DVD to a TV or projected onto a screen). The films I have put on YouTube were uploaded without having to de-interlace and do not have as much judder and the motion is much smoother.

While Inthecity does have the 23.97 editing capability, his footage was shot in 24p and this, evidently, is what is causing his problems. Considering that everything else Inthecity has tried has apparently made matters worse, I offered the de-interlacing option as a way to upload to Vimeo without the artifacts. Not a perfect solution to be sure, but a compromise that can be lived with until a better solution presents itself.

That said, my posts have been geared to those who are in a position similar to my own: I do not have an NLE capable of editing in 23.97 and, due to limited finances, I will not be able to obtain one within the foreseeable future, so editing on 23.97 simply is not an option. I have to do what I can with what I have. At this point in time, I can either work with a 29.97 timeline or put my camera on a shelf and let it gather dust. The second is just not an option.

I am still conducting experiments aimed at the goal of producing the best video possible using the tools I have at my disposal. I try to share what I learn with others on this forum so that they, too, can produce their films regardless of the limitations imposed upon them.

A bit of trivia:

Because we live here in NTSC Land, even video edited on 23.97 is converted to 60i or 30p for viewing. When playing a 24p DVD, the player either adds 3:2 pulldown for interlaced TV or repeats frames at a 3:2 ratio for progressive scan TVs. Of course, this conversion is much smoother than what happens when, as you say, footage is converted for Vimeo.

As for my own TV, it is 720p progressive scan only, so everything is converted to progressive. 60i is converted to 60p by line doubling and 24p is converted to 30p. 30p is, of course, left as is but I do not shoot in 30p. Hmm. Perhaps I should try a few experiments with 30p.
 
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That said, my posts have been geared to those who are in a position similar to my own: I do not have an NLE capable of editing in 23.97 and, due to limited finances, I will not be able to obtain one within the foreseeable future, so editing on 23.97 simply is not an option. I have to do what I can with what I have. At this point in time, I can either work with a 29.97 timeline or put my camera on a shelf and let it gather dust. The second is just not an option.
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I understand that; we all have to make do with what we have. :)

I don't mean any of this personally; I'm just making a general point. From time to time, the idea will crop up that editing 24p as 29.97 and outputting from there is "just as good" as editing as native 24p. I'm not saying YOU'RE saying it is, though. Again, just making a general point, and trying to fend off that idea as a general matter by pointing out some of the problems. Take it for what it's worth. :beer:



Paladin said:
Granted, de-interlacing in order to remove the artifacts for Vimeo does exaggerate the judder inherent in 24fps, but it does remove the artifacts. This does not happen when the footage can be viewed in its original state (such as directly from a DVD to a TV or projected onto a screen). The films I have put on YouTube were uploaded without having to de-interlace and do not have as much judder and the motion is much smoother.
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Should be smoother, absolutely, because if you didn't deinterlace, then you're outputting at 60 hz. That's not a problem, as far as smoothness.



Because we live here in NTSC Land, even video edited on 23.97 is converted to 60i or 30p for viewing.
Click to expand...

Well, no; no player or TV will convert native 24p material to 30p; it'll usually be 60i/p. However, some TVs, and a lot of projectors, will display at 48 hz or other multiples of 24, repeating 24p frames at 2:2 or equivalent ratios, essentially giving you "native" 24 fps. (This is NOT true of a number of 120 hz TVs I've seen, particularly Sonys, which make 24 fps matieral look and move like 60 fps. Infuriating. At 120 hz, a 5:5 pulldown should be perfect.)

The only way 24p material will be displayed as 30p is it's coded that way before display.


When playing a 24p DVD, the player either adds 3:2 pulldown for interlaced TV or repeats frames at a 3:2 ratio for progressive scan TVs. Of course, this conversion is much smoother than what happens when, as you say, footage is converted for Vimeo.
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Right, because a 24-to-60 conversion is wide enough to make an even, frequent dispersal of duplicated frames. A 24-to-30 conversion isn't. So, it's not a problem with Vimeo's encoders or processes; it's just the math involved between the frame rates. Converting 24p to 30p is the problem, not Vimeo.

Again, please don't take any of this personally. I'm just trying to further the learning process. 24p is a thick subject and it's very easy to get totally lost in all of it.
 
Curious. Why not simply shoot in 24p Advanced and output to 24p in Cinema Tools. I did that and had Quicktime output as an M4V file then uploaded the file to vimeo. Check it http://www.vimeo.com/2692704 I shot this at mock 16:9 (put tape over the screen) then rigged it in FCP to take on the appearance of 16:9 so the file plays true 16:9 at 24p. It even fixed an interlace problem we had in one of the freeze frames at 3:12 minutes in. This may help in the future.

When I shot my first film I used regular old 30p mode with the cinegamma on and edited on a 30p timeline and simply exported out. I never even tried to make it 24p and no one on the consumer side seemed to notice. One person mentioned it but that was basically it. Keep in mind we were looking to self distribute this until York stepped in.

-Nate
 
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inthecity said:
When I copied the file I just right clicked and selected "duplicate".
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Well, that shouldn't happen -- what you do in Cinema Tools shouldn't affect the copies. If other DV files still play with no problems, then that's mysterious indeed.

I guess if the files are messed up, and you want to proceed further, you'll have to recapture. But it sure is odd.
 
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