-
Kona 3 ProRes HQ – Progressive/Interlaced at 1080 – 29.97?
Hi Guys,
Can someone help explain something to me? I’m shooting with a Sony F900 at 29.97 PSF (Progressive)
I want to cut using Apple ProRes HQ which only has a 1080i option for 29.97. Do I have to move to something other than ProRes to get progressive capture/editing in 1080/29.97PSF? When I went to the AJA site to get information about this subject, I was surprised to find nothing in the latest PDF manual referencing the Apple ProRes codecs, even though they promote it as a feature on the site and it’s part of the latest version of the Kona 3.The reason its important is for the following: I’m editing a one hour HD special shot with the F900 in 29.97 PSF using the Kona 3 to capture via ProRes HQ 1080i. When I burned a standard def DVD of the first portion of the show for the sponsor, I encountered “buzzing” in the fine detail areas of the picture during playback. I’m concerned that I’ve interlaced my progressive footage during capture, which is causing the “buzzing” after the DVD encode. I tried a variety of ways to get rid of the problem with out success. Someone later told me I should reduce the detail on the problem scenes, but I would prefer a workflow that doesn’t require degrading scenes for a SD DVD.
Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks in advance!
Bill Paris
System:
Apple G5
Harpertown 3.o Octacore w/8 Gigs Ram
Kona 3 card
Final Cut Studio 2
HDCAM Deck -
21 Replies
-
[Bill Paris] “I’m shooting with a Sony F900 at 29.97 PSF (Progressive)
I want to cut using Apple ProRes HQ which only has a 1080i option for 29.97.”it is called interlace in the US and EU due to the limitations set by the EU (same as 25i)
PsF is progressive at capture and in an original data however even though it plays on a display as interlace- as a user you have little choice.
” When I burned a standard def DVD of the first portion of the show for the sponsor, I encountered “buzzing” in the fine detail areas of the picture during playback.”
are you monitoring the content on a proper SD device and not just your computer? How are you doing the downconversion? Some content will show these artifacts on downconverts no matter ( herringbone for example) did you convert directly from the ProRes file or something else? did you render out the project to a self-contained movie or did you just output from the timeline directly (never a good idea – no matter what apple says)
“I’m concerned that I’ve interlaced my progressive footage during capture, which is causing the “buzzing” after the DVD encode”
That makes no sense to me – the SD content HAS TO BE interlaced for playback andgary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows
Inside look at the IoHD -
Gary,
Thanks for the clarification regarding the Apple ProRes HQ 1080i PSF codec.
Regarding the DVD encode issue……
To test the DVD, I would take the disc to a consumer player/monitor to make sure it would play properly when my client played it on their system. I also monitored the playback on my Panasonic 17″ LCD HD multi-format production monitor.Before encoding I created a quicktime file using the timeline settings, then down-converted from there.
I wasn’t sure the best format to burn from so I tried a variety of SD formats for DVD Studio Pro and also tried to create a format IDVD would like and imported/burned from there. My preference for a quick client burn would be IDVD, since the templates are clean and easier to use than DVD Studio.
After running into the problem, I did some reading on the Cow Encoding Forum and read about de-interlacing footage before burning to DVD, (which is why I thought I might be working with interlaced files created at capture).
The way I ended up burning a viewable DVD for my client was to output the footage to Betacam…. recapturing as DVCPRO 50 and burning from there. Needless to say, the footage looked like &#(&(!
I suppose I could go back to the scenes that gave me the most trouble…. create a matte around the problem area and de-focus the area….. but what a pain!Should I be looking at changing my encoding program? I understand the Flip For Mac program is very good? Any other ideas? Any guidance would be greatly appreciated. It’s frustrating to take great care in the production and post production process to retain quality, only to have it destroyed in the encode/burn!
Thanks for you guidance!
Bill Paris
-
If you want an internally progressive workflow in FCP6 (at least till it plays out psf), what you have to do is capture your footage as 1080i. Then you have to change all the field orders of the clips in the browser to ‘None’ and then you need to make a 1080p timeline from your 1080i timeline by changing your field dom. to “none” in the sequence as well. That way you footage will be ‘interpreted’ as progressive and renders from there on out in FCP will be progressive. When you go to make a DVD in Compressor or where ever, make sure to tell the program that your material is progressive and that you want to keep your MPEG2 progressive. It sucks to have to do this, but it’s the way it has to be as you can’t tell FCP to change the field dominance of incoming clips to ‘None’ before you capture. So you, dear user, must do it afterwords.
Make sense?
Jeremy
-
Jeremy,
Very interesting! I never would have found this on my own! It’s surprising that FCP would not make that a capture option since it adds so much manual manipulation of the clips after the import. Thanks for the information….. once I get back to my edit system, I’ll give this a try with my problem clips and see what happens. Thanks again!
Bill Paris
-
Bill
To clarify first:
When shooting:
Progressive shooting means all video lines are captured at the same instance in time, in your case every 1/30 of a second (ignore the 29.97 for now)
Interlace means that first the odd lines (1/3/5…) and then the even lines (2/4/6…) are captured. This happpens every 1/60 (fields as oppose to frames) of a second effectively creating a full frame every 1/30. So if you shoot interlace and display one frame of your 30 showing all lines there is a difference in time between the alternating lines. Think of a ball traveling from left to right through the picture. When shooting progressive you will have 30 pictures with all lines showing the ball. When you shoot interlaced you will take a ‘half-resolution’ frame every 1/60 of a second so a full frame will have a slightly different position of the ball between the odd lines and the even lines (1/60 later).
When editing
AJA doesn’t give you any 1080p settings for now (I think it’ll change soonish) because in the Broadcast world 1080p as a delivery format is virtually not in use (I don’t know of any Broadcaster that uses it).
But this doesn’t really matter BECAUSE once you shot your footage progressive putting it into a interlace sequence doesn’t change it. You have 30 complete frames. At the receiving end will be no difference if I send these frames 30 times per second complete or if I split them into odd and even lines and send those at double the freq of 1/60.
So putting a progressive clip into a interlace seq doesn’t make it interlace. To make things clear the techo therefor created the term PSF=progressive segmented frame to be able to tell somebody that the video was shot progressive but is transmitted using the interlace method.
So hard cutting progressive footage in an interlace seq doesn’t change the footage. What does change it is anything effecting speed. Because FCP creates new frames by combining fields you could end up taking the odd lines from 1 progressive frame and the even lines from the next progressive frame creating a new frame that is now interlaced (2 instances in time in one frame). You might think this is bad but I actually think its good 🙂 Because the end user (anybody watching it on a TV) wants a smooth slo mo and they will appreciate you using more time information from your source footage. (This is the reason I wouldn’t change the field settings from what FCP uses by default. If you for whatever reason want to avoid any interlace frames in your final seq e.g. for film prints you should use the none setting for both footage and seq as Jeremy said)So my conclusion to your problem is that the buzzing has nothing to do with interlace but more with the down converting methode you use. Do you use Compressor to convert from your 1080 timeline to your SD Mpeg? And if you do do you switch on the frame control tab in Compressor? I would export the seq from FCP using compressor. Doing this there is no need to export a quicktime first. In Compressor choose the DVD-SD setting from the presets you like (I use the 120min DVD settings for best compatibility with most players) and make sure that the frame controls are switched on. Most likely there are not on which will cause a very bad downscaling quality, which in turn is probably what is causing your buzzing right now.
Sorry that this got a bit long but I think once you understand the whole progressive – interlace thing problems become much more easy to solve.
Hope this will help a little 🙂 and everybody else please pitch in for corrections or additions!
Carsten
-
Jeremy,
One more question…… what’s the best way to change the field dominance of the clips in the bin? Via the edit menu… item properties…… format?
-
[Bill Paris] “what’s the best way to change the field dominance of the clips in the bin?”
If they are in the bin, then simply find the ‘Field dominance’ column, select all the appropriate clips and right click and choose “None”.
If they are already in the timeline, then you have to right click on the clip, choose time properties, find the Field DOminance clip and change it from Upper to None.
Jeremy
-
[Carsten Orlt] “But this doesn’t really matter BECAUSE once you shot your footage progressive putting it into a interlace sequence doesn’t change it.”
Except if you put a clip that’s marked as ‘Upper Field First’ into a progressive timeline, it will look crappy. The field doms of the clips and timeline must match name wise, otherwise FCP interprets them wrong.
[Carsten Orlt] “So putting a progressive clip into a interlace seq doesn’t make it interlace.”
No it doesn’t, but anything you add to it, such as motion or filters will render interlace as that’s what the timeline is set up for, so it does matter what your footage and timeline field dom is set for in FCP.
-
Thanks Jeremy!
-
[Jeremy Garchow] “[Carsten Orlt] “But this doesn’t really matter BECAUSE once you shot your footage progressive putting it into a interlace sequence doesn’t change it.”
Except if you put a clip that’s marked as ‘Upper Field First’ into a progressive timeline, it will look crappy. The field doms of the clips and timeline must match name wise, otherwise FCP interprets them wrong. “
It only is a problem if your clip is opposite to your seq. but I have progressive footage as upper field and the seq as upper field or none and both look just fine.
[Jeremy Garchow] “[Carsten Orlt] “So putting a progressive clip into a interlace seq doesn’t make it interlace.”
No it doesn’t, but anything you add to it, such as motion or filters will render interlace as that’s what the timeline is set up for, so it does matter what your footage and timeline field dom is set for in FCP.
“Correct but in practical terms it only shows in anything effecting time. if you do CC on a progressive clip in a interlace timeline the result is still progressive or I guess i should say PSF.
Carsten
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up