1440 * 1080 vs 1920 * 1080

[Michael Gissing]

Peter, the main area of concern to me is the uprez DV material. The settings appear correct for all the other footage, right through to the DVD, except that the compressor line “Deinterlace Filter: Fast (Line Averaging)” shouldn’t be necessary.

Your quicktime should scale to 1920 x 1080 as this is correct for 16:9. Your 1440 shots should scale correctly and not look either fat or stretched. The distort settings you report are correct. The converted DV material may have the interlace error so it is worth trying the shift fields filter on these shots. If you can monitor these shots on an external interlace monitor, you should be able to see if the filter fixes it. Hopefully it can be corrected and the problem isn’t baked in.

Looking at the mpeg on a computer screen may show interlace issues because computer monitors are progressive. Deinterlacing for web based material makes sense because of this. The best test is on a DVD player onto an interlace monitor.

[Peter Dunphy]

Hi Michael

Thanks so much for the info. I’ll post back again soon with my findings.

All the best

Peter

[Peter Dunphy]

Hi again Michael

For the DV clips in my sequence, I added a +1 shift field filter (which I’m assuming means Upper (Odd) to them in order to ‘match’ the Upper (Odd) field order for my HD footage. After rendering the applied Shift Field Filter, the Item Properties for each of the DV clips still states:

Field Dominance: None
Vid Rate 25 fps
Frame Size 1920 x 1080
Compressor Apple ProRes 422

I was hoping that at least the Field Dominance would state Upper, or ‘+ 1’ to reflect the +1 Shift Fields Filter I’d applied. Does seeing Field Dominance as ‘None’ suggest the problem is ‘baked in’ do you think? Is there a way to overcome this?

All the best

Peter
I went ahead and exported from FCP to a Quicktime movie.

Once I added the Quicktime Movie File to Compressor and added the DVD Best Quality 90 minutes setting. I’ve gone into the Frame Controls area of Inspector and instead chosen “Off” so that the Deinterlace:Fast (Line averaging) is hopefully deselected (it’s greyed out so I’m assuming it’s now switched off).

In the “Encoder’ area of the Compressor Inspector it states:

Stream Usage: SD DVD (my final DVD should be SD DVD but should I select HD DVD or Generic here for better quality?)

The Inspector summary states:

Name: MPEG-2 6.2Mbps 2-pass
Description: Fits up to 90 minutes of video with Dolby Digital audio at 192 Kbps or 60 minutes with AIFF audio on a DVD-5
File Extension: m2v
Estimated file size: 1.2 GB
Type: MPEG-2 video elementary stream
Usage:SD DVD
Video Encoder
Format: M2V
Width and Height: Automatic
Selected: 720 x 576
Pixel aspect ratio: PAL CCIR 601 (16:9)
Crop: None
Padding: None
Frame rate: (100% of source)
Selected: 25
Frame Controls: Off
Start timecode from source
Aspect ratio: Automatic
Selected 16:9
Field dominance: Top first
Average data rate: 6.2 (Mbps)
2 Pass VBR enabled
Maximum data rate: 7.7 (Mbps)
High quality
Best motion estimation
Closed GOP Size: 12, Structure: IBBP
DVD Studio Pro meta-data enabled

In DVD StudioPro I opted for:

SD DVD Menus, Tracks, and Slideshows:
Display Mode: 16:9 Pan-Scan & Letterbox

HD DVD Menus, Tracks, and Slideshows:
1920 x1080i
Display Mode 16:9 Letterbox

Encoding:
Aspect Ratio 16:9
Field Order Top
Mode Two Pass VBR
Bit Rate 4.0 Mbps
Max Bit Rate 7.0 Mbps
Motion Estimation: Best
Method: Background Encoding selected

I put the DVD in a DVD recorder and watched it on a Philips television set (not sure if it’s interlaced despite checking it on Philips’ website, model 21Pt4456/05)

The resultant DVD seemed pretty good on the television, although there was a very slight ‘jaggedness’ on the edges of clothing, particularly dark clothing and dark hair. Is this normal do you think, or is there anyway I can tweak things to make them look cleaner?

[Peter Dunphy]

Just noticed this “The Shift Fields Filter is located under the Effects tab in the Browser Window inside of the Video Folder. To determine if your sequence setting is set to lower or higher field dominance, look under Sequence > Settings. The default is Lower (Even).”

I’ll try again as before, except this time with the Shift Fields filter on the clips set to -1…

[Peter Dunphy]

This is the bit I actually meant to quote: ” If the clip you are making the adjustements for has an upper field dominance and your sequence is set to lower, set the direction control parameter to +1. If the clip is lower and the sequence is upper, set the control to -1.”

[Peter Dunphy]

Just saw this mentioned in the forum history to a chap with a similar issue as me:

“drop a de-interlace filter on the whole lot… ”

I’m not sure if this is the way to go, or if it might cause me to lose quality :o/

[Peter Dunphy]

Update: Again when applying the Shift Field filter as -1 when I click on the item properties of the clip I’ve applied and rendered the filter on, Field Dominance is again ‘None’. Is this normal?

[Peter Dunphy]

I tried the sequence with shift field -1 on the dv clips with no frame controls in Compressor – the resultant DVD looked very good quality but was speeded up :o/

Now i’m going to try to burn a DVD using the following frame controls in Compressor, in an effort to ‘lock’ the speed to an acceptable frame rate:

RESIZE BEST

OUTPUT TOP FIRST
DEINTERLACE MOTION COMPENSATED

RATE CONVERSION BEST
duration so source frames play at 25fps

Will post my findings shortly :o)

[Peter Dunphy]

Unfortunately using the frame controls whacked up to their ‘best’ levels results in a 300+ hour compression time :o/

Any suggestions to help me out would be really appreciated – I thought I was close to ‘cracking it’ but am determined to get on top of it now.

[Timothy Palmer-benson]

I have an XHAI and XLHI and have been capturing in Apple Pro Res at 1920 x 1080. However I am wondering if I should instead be capturing in 1440 x 1080 since this is the true resolution of the CCDs

Also I am wondering how I should be capturing from an HV30….I use the HV30 as a deck to import my tapes. I have been doing it with 1920 x 1080. After reading a bunch of posts I have become alarmed that I am doing things incorrectly!

I’d like to use the HV30 as a second camcorder in my productions. If I shoot in AV at its fullest resolution and in 601, should I again be capturing in 1440 x 1080?