• Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

  Upper field to Lower field

  Posted by Jonathan Thunder on October 27, 2009 at 2:53 am

  Hi all! I have been working on an HD project with tons
  of eye candy footage. My client no longer wants to output
  to HD for the final DVD. All of the footage was captured in
  upper field first. And when I export to Standard Def DVD
  proofs the footage develops artifacts that I can only assume
  comes from the field conflict. Please help.

  Neil Sadwelkar replied 16 years, 10 months ago 3 Members · 7 Replies
• 7 Replies

• 

  Rafael Amador

  October 27, 2009 at 3:06 am

  MPEG-2 can be Upper or Lower.
  If the original footage is Upper, the normal thing is to do the MPEG-2 Upper.
  Are you watching the DVD in a TV or a computer?
  rafael

  http://www.nagavideo.com
• 

  Jonathan Thunder

  October 27, 2009 at 3:44 am

  Ultimately this will go to DVD for TV and tape for broadcast.
• 

  Jonathan Thunder

  October 27, 2009 at 4:17 am

  I just tried that. I exported in HD as is (upper). My compressor isn’t working right now. So I compressed in DVDSP with upper field dominance. Looks good! Thanks Rafael. Much appreciated.
• 

  Rafael Amador

  October 27, 2009 at 5:41 am

  There is a kind of myth among the NTSC users that MPEG-2 must be Lower First.
  This is because all the NTSC tape based formats (DV, DVCPro50, DigiBeta,.) are Lower first.
  But you can export a 10b Unc NTSC Upper First. It won’t be standard to Print to Tape, but if you make a DVD Upper First, will be fully standard.
  But if you intend to Print to Video you must be careful about this.
  rafael

  http://www.nagavideo.com
• 

  Neil Sadwelkar

  October 27, 2009 at 11:39 am

  I think in PAL DV is lower dominant, while UC and other codecs (even ProRes) are upper dominant.
  In NTSC all codecs are lower dominant, aren’t they?.

  So DV is the only codec that is lower dominant across all standards.

  This field inversion hell is a part of PAL workflow which we all have to watch out for.

  ———————————–
  Neil Sadwelkar
  neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
  twitter: fcpguru
  FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
  Mumbai India
• 

  Rafael Amador

  October 27, 2009 at 11:44 am

  [Neil Sadwelkar] “This field inversion hell is a part of PAL workflow which we all have to watch out for. “

  But in PAL-land we have the advantage that we have been dealing with this since a long time.
  In NTSC-land now they are starting to mix Lower (SD) with Upper (HD) footage and many people are getting mixed up with the field order mix.
  Rafael

  http://www.nagavideo.com
• 

  Neil Sadwelkar

  October 27, 2009 at 3:17 pm

  I just made new sequences in FCP 7.0.1 and checked.
  And the field order is…

  All SD
  DV-PAL – Lower
  DV-NTSC – Lower
  DV50-PAL – Lower
  DV50-NTSC – Lower
  ProResHQ PAL – Upper
  ProResHQ NTSC – Lower

  And in HD
  ProResHQ 1080i50 – Upper
  ProResHQ 1080i60 – Upper
  DVCProHD 1080i50 – Upper
  DVCProHD 1080i60 – Upper

  So in NTSC SD all codecs are lower.
  In PAL SD DV codecs are lower and everything else is upper.

  In HD 50i and 60i DVCProHD and ProRes are all Upper.

  So if you’re doing SD-HD mixed in PAL better to work with ProRes clips for HD and SD in a ProRes timeline.

  And if you’re doing SD-HD mixed in NTSC you will see field order mixed. I wonder if FCP’s ‘Shift field’ filter that gets applied automatically handles this.

  ———————————–
  Neil Sadwelkar
  neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
  twitter: fcpguru
  FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
  Mumbai India

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