-
field question
hi,
I have a FCP project that has a variety of footage with different video fields, the stuff I have shot with my DV camera is lower fields, some other archival footage is upper field, The Jpeg images are no fields…now all this plays back fine in my monitor and off DV tape. however once I transfer that same mini dv tape to Digi Betacam I get some weird playback issues. So I therefore thought I would go back to my project and turn all the clips fields into lower, expprt them and bring them back in however this also causes weird playback issues playing from my FCP timeline and viewing on a monitor. I am not sure what to do ? should I set all my clips to NO fields and record to mini DV and then transfer to Digi Betacam ? will this avoid playback issues ? or instead of recording the project directly to Mini DV then to Digi Betacam, should I make a DV movie (which will have lower fields) and then transfer the movie to mini dv and then to Digi Beta ?any thoughts ?
ian -
8 Replies
-
You have to be viewing the FCP timeline on an external CRT monitor to check field order.
When you have that set up you can play through the clips and add a shift fields filter on the clips that are giving you a problem. Which should be the Upper first if you are in NTSCland.
-
thanks for reply,
yes I am viewing everything on an external CRT monitor, the frustrating thing is, the mixed fields FCP project plays back fine…its once I try and turn everything into lower fields (i am DVPAL) that I get weird things happening, would changing the settings in my project to NO fields re render the while thing as DV pal, solve this ? as I guess once I make a dv PAL movie it will be lower fields
ian -
In PAL everything except DV is upper fields. You need to choose what your sequence is going to be and as has already been said, add the shift fields filter to the shots that differ from your sequence.
I would recommend making a sequence in 10 bit uncompressed if your drives are fast enough and copy your edit sequence into that. All the DV shots then need to have a shift fields filter applied and all the other material has no shift field filter.
That should then play correctly. From there if you are playing out to digi beta then that is also upper as are PAL DVDs. The advantage of making the final sequence uncompressed 10 bit is also your titles and graphics will look much better than DV codec would allow. My golden rule for PAL is to avoid DV codec at all times.
-
I have tried a test with this, made a new sequence uncompressed 10 bit (upper fields) copied my sequence into this put a shift fields filter on the DV PAL footage to lower however on playback the DV footage on CRT monitor now looks stuttery…am I missing something here ?
thanks -
Check the clips to make sure there is just the one shift fields filter on the DV footage. Sometime FCP tries to be helpful and automatically apply the shift fields filter.
-
I am using only the one shift fields filter. and still looks bad on playback
if I set all fields to lower in the item properties in FCP the playback looks fine for all my footage, is changing the field dominance in item properties really shifting the fields ? as it doesn’t want to be rendered after doing this ?
I don’t have a problem so much with DVPAL as you know what you are getting, can I have a DVPAL project with footage that has lower fields, upper and NONE, will this cause problems going out to digi betacam ? or will be work around above solve this ?
thanks
-
Don’t change the field settings in the item properties. I am not sure what yo8u are doing but the golden rule is to have all PAL sequences as upper except DV. All PAL sources should also be upper field except DV source material.
So if everything is correctly set and the shift field filter only applied to the DV footage, then there should be no interlace issues. The only outstanding problem might be caused by DV clips that are sped up or slowed down. That is another issue with a work around of making new quicktime files of those shots, baking in the speed changes.
-
Before you use a uncompressed upper sequence, are you having to do out to DV because you don’t have a digibeta deck and you have the DV dubbed to Digibeta somewhere else?
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up