• Apple Final Cut Pro Legacy

  Field Dominance? Upper odd or lower even? Or none?

  Posted by Eoin Ryan on December 19, 2008 at 7:45 pm

  Hi, hope someone can help with this question please.

  Shooting PAL 50i 16:9 SD with Canon XL2. Just looked at my sequence presets in Final Cut Pro 6 and see that my Field Dominance is set to ‘lower even’? The other options are ‘upper odd’ and ‘none’. I guess this refers to interlaced footage, since I’m shooting 50i. Should I keep it at lower even?

  Would changing to upper odd make a difference. If so, what difference? What does ‘dominance’ refer to?
  Thanks

  Walter Biscardi replied 17 years, 5 months ago 2 Members · 1 Reply
• 1 Reply

• 

  Walter Biscardi

  December 19, 2008 at 10:03 pm

  [Eoin Ryan] “I guess this refers to interlaced footage, since I’m shooting 50i. Should I keep it at lower even? “

  You leave it set correctly for the type of footage you’re shooting. 50i is a fancy way of saying 25 frames per second being created by 50 interlaced fields. Since high def routinely refers to 60i and 50i, I guess everyone has to refer to standard definition the same way.

  [Eoin Ryan] “Would changing to upper odd make a difference. If so, what difference? What does ‘dominance’ refer to?
  Thanks”

  Dominance simply refers to the which field comes first. Upper field means the odd line comes first. Even field means the even line comes first. You cannot reverse this order or your video will fall apart. DV PAL is Lower Field First. I believe 8bit Uncompressed Standard Definition PAL is upper field first.

  Simply switching to “None” means you drop 1/2 of your video information and instead of displaying 50 interlaced fields to make up one second of video, you’re only using 25 interlaced fields to make up one second of video. In theory this is turning interlaced video into progressive, but in reality, you’re just mucking up the quality of the video.

  There is a pretty good explanation of Fields and Interlaced Video in the Manual.

  Final Cut Pro > Help > Search Interlaced Video or Video Fields.

  Walter Biscardi, Jr.
  Biscardi Creative Media
  HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.

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