25p timeline to DVD jitters.

[Bret Williams]

It was shot progressive. It will have the progressive look. Easier to DEinterlace something than to interlace something. Even if you edit in an interlaced timeline, that just means that any motion you add would be benefitted by the interlacing. Like a push or a keyframed motion motion, etc. The video itself will be interpreted as interlaced, sure. But since each field is from the same moment in time, it will still APPEAR progressive.

If it was shot correctly, with a 1/50 shutter speed, then you should have had enough motion blur on most subjects to not have much flicker. Depending on how you define flicker. I’d call it a stutter or strobe, like when you see a pan that is too fast for the frame rate or shutter speed. Your eye picks up that there are gaps in the temporal information.

But, surely someone will have some expensive plugin to suggest that will “add” in temporal info to all your footage and take days to render/transcode.

[Jeff Kirkland]

Firstly, I can’t understand why you’d shoot at 25p and then actually want it to look like it was shot interlaced – apart from home movies what DVD isn’t encoded progressive? And who still plays them on a screen old enough to be interlaced?

Just curious… I have a broadcast station that needs everything delivered 576i but that’s the one and only. I had thought the need for interlaced material pretty much over these days.

I’m not sure what you mean by flickery progressive look – I’d expect a flickery interlaced look, not the other way around.

I personally used to edit at 25p, export 25i ProRes , and let DVD Studio Pro do the encoding, although I haven’t used DVD Studio Pro in a long time. It may result in a whiskers lest quality but it always seemed to get it right and I’ve never had a client complain.

Last thought is double check that Compressor is getting the fields order right – lower first for PAL. That’s usually the cause of flicker.

Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland

[Bret Williams]

Shouldn’t make a difference what order the fields are when they’re both the same. But you never know.

I know the stuttery look of progressive. It’s half the frame rate. Interlaced is still great for graphics. A few years ago we had to animate a sort of scrap book created in AE. It was filled with newspaper clippings and stuff that needed to be read. So motion blur wasn’t an option. As you pan across it was completely unreadable t 24 or 30p. But in 60i it was completely clear as could be. It was a DVD so 60i was the only choice. If it was bluray we could have done 60p or 1080i.

[Jeff Kirkland]

It shouldn’t matter what a field contains, the specification for a PAL interlaced (50i) DVD is lower field first – otherwise you’ll get judder and horrible motion artifacting.

And yes, I guess sometimes you just need that higher frame rate so interlaced it is. A friend shoots for a ballet school who always get 50i on a DVD as they hate seeing motion blur on a dancers movements.

But I think the original poster’s issues mainly stem from the original footage not being shot at 50i/50p in the first place. 25p footage, jitter aside, is never really going to have the ‘interlaced’ look he seems to be after.

Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland