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Going crazy with old PD150 Progressive SCAM material
Dear all,
I have some footage shot a couple of years ago for a short film with a 35mm adapter on the old PD-150 in its “Progressive Scan mode”. The footage is indeed Progressive, and runs at 29.97, but every frame is repeated once, so it’s more like 2x15fps. When viewed correctly, it doesn’t look bad, but the problem is I can’t get FCP to view it correctly (or After Effects, for that matter, because “Interpret Footage has only a limited set of options).
Captured at normal DV NTSC, FCP seems to interpret it as interlaced footage, and apparently what happens is that it repeats an absent “field”, creating intense stair stepping (I think it’s eliminating half of the vertical resolution, generating almost a Venetian Blind effect). BUT viewed in Compressor’s Preview panel or in an app. such as MPEG Streamclip, you can see the right thing and there is absolutely no stair stepping or Venetians, it’s perfect, and as you play frame by frame you see the repetition at every frame (which you also get playing the wrong FCP interpretation. This is a many-fold question (ultimately I’ll try to get this material into a standard finishing format, and I’ll ask some more about this). But for now I’m desperate to know: is there any way I can make FCP interpret this footage right? (as 29.97 Progressive footage with every frame repeated once). I have tried changing sequence presets to “progressive”, doing de-interlacing (which is silly), inverting fields (which is also silly), using 15fps presets (which is not exactly the point) et cetera. Nothing of this makes FCP see it the way MPEG Streamclip or Compressor see it. I have also tried exporting via Compressor to Quicktime Progressive, which is also pointless, and it actually gets worse. The only two things I did that got me something that FCP reads right are things I would avoid for different reasons. One was exporting it to a 24p Quicktime via MPEG Streamclip using “frame blending”: it gets the frames right and adds the extra frames through its very crude frame blending. FCP then sees the clip alright. But this would be adding a completely custom pulldown that I would be afraid of not being able to remove afterwards in case I wanted to try a better method than frame blending. The other hit was exporting it using Prores 422 in Compressor for progressive material. Both these options are bad because I would have to process all the footage before editing, and being DV, and cuts having already been made, I’d rather stick to something re-composable.
SO, Would there be a proper codec for capturing this PD150 Progressive Scan footage or playing it back so that it gets tagged the right way in Final Cut? (Is there such a thing as capturing SD via Prores 422?, would that be a good idea?) If not, is there any good program to Adding/Removing pulldown in a completely custom way (telling it exactly what to do), using a better algorithm than frame blending? Re-shooting is not an option.
I hope someone can help, I’m pretty desperate trying to fix this material.
Thanks all for reading.
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9 Replies
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You have to set the clips ‘field dominance’ in the browser to ‘None’ and then make sure your timeline is set to ‘none’ ‘field dominance’ rendering as well. If you already have clips in a timeline, you will have to change them as well by sleeting all and choosing Item Properties > Format and find the Field DOminance row. Any clips that you add to the timeline will be okay once you change them in the browser.
Hope that makes sense.
Jeremy
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Wow, thanks so much! I thought I knew FCP inside and out, but I guess not! When capturing, should I make a capture preset for this (is there one?), or is it indifferent, and I can just Log/Capture with standard DV NTSC and then change the Field Dominance in the Format and then in the Sequence? Would you reckon there is a way to work with normal interlaced clips in a same sequence alongside these odd types, or would I have to convert one or the other? Thanks.
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[Ernesto Crvalo] “Would you reckon there is a way to work with normal interlaced clips in a same sequence alongside these odd types, or would I have to convert one or the other? Thanks.”
WEll, it depends on what you want and by the I mean if you want a progressive or interlaced master. I work progressive all the time, so if I have interlaced material that needs to go in a progressive edit, I deinterlace it.
To work with progressive SD material in an NTSC timeline, simply leave everything set to Lower field first (timeline, clips, everything).
To use the interlaced material in a progressive timeline, you can change the clip field dom to ‘None’ (just to keep FCP a bit happier, although it is technically kind of the wrong way to do it) but then at some point you will need to deinterlace it to make it look like the rest of the footage.
It’s totally up to you and your project.
Jeremy
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Hi Jeremy,
i was having the same problem with some progressive footage from the PD-170, I figure it out and i change the timeline settings to non field dominance and deinterlaced the rest of the footage that wasnt progressive, but my problem comes at the moment of upload the compressed QT for internet streaming (youtube for example). It seems that it recompresses on an interlaced video codec and the result is again a jattering image.
THE PANIC PROPAGANDA
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Can you get progressive material from a PD170?
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Yes u can, but only with the half frame rate (15 frames x sec)…
THE PANIC PROPAGANDA
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Yeah, that’s the thing, you get 15 progressive double frames, I’m still wondering what the best way to deal with this material would be, as I have plenty shot in this mode from a couple of years back. I’ve trying to get them into a usable format, such as 24fps, and I’ve been using Shake to achieve this. My main dilemma as of now is if I should export sequences in FCP at double speed without frameblending (in a way that I suppose every-other frame is being thrown away) and than get this 200% speed material into Shake for conversion OR if I should convert the original material material straight into 24. The first idea sounds a little better because I know that the frames are repeated, but shake may not realize this (as if it were a person…).
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[Ernesto Crvalo] “Yeah, that’s the thing, you get 15 progressive double frames”
Crazy. I have never seen that before. So it’s not truly 30p, it’s some approximation there in.
[Ernesto Crvalo] ” but shake may not realize this (as if it were a person…).”
It is, you didn’t know? 🙂
Any chance you can post a second or two of the dv footage? I’d like to see the motion characteristics.
Jeremy
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Hey Jeremy, I’m so glad you take interest. I’ll post some footage tomorrow or Friday, maybe you help me (or us) decide what the best approach with this type of material is. The curious thing is, that even though it’s a funky setup (“15 double frames”), I am still not sure I would have come out happier with interlaced material in the current attempt to make it into 24fps. The stuff was shot with a homemade 35mm adapter back in the day, and looks a lot sharper than the footage of one of the scenes we accidentally left the camera on interlaced mode. Maybe there’s some extra lines in the progressive stuff… I don’t know, you’ll see.
Are you telling me Shake is actually a person and has feelings??? That changes everything! I’ll have to rethink all my past accomplishements and frustrations with it under this new light…
Best, Ernesto.
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