‘combs teeth’ lines in HD footage

[Steve Eisen]

There are many flavors of HD these days. You need to tell us the exact one you are working with. HDV, Flip Camera, AVCHD, etc. Is the video 720 or 1080? What is the frame rate? 24, 29, 30, etc. Your sequence settings. How you are exporting?

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Vice President
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[Richard Cooper]

Hi Rachel,

What flavor of HD footage are you working with? (HDACAM, P2 DVCPROHD, XDCAM,DSLR, HDV, Flip cam?) and how are you getting the footage into your edit suite? If you are trans-coding from P2, SxS or DSLR to another format there may be a problem with your workflow, if you are capturing through a Kona or simmilar i/o card there could be other issues.

Give us your work-flow, I am sure someone cam pinpoint your problem.

Richard Cooper
FrostLine Productions, LLC
Anchorage, Alaska
http://www.frostlineproductions.com

[Arnie Schlissel]

Do you mean interlacing?

If so that’s normal. You should use an external video monitor connected to a capture card if you want to see interlaced video in it’s proper state.

Arnie
Post production is not an afterthought!
https://www.arniepix.com/

[Rachel Fletcher]

The footage is all HDV and I’m importing it from my camera into FCP 7.
Sequence setting: HDV 1080i60
Capture setting: HDV
Frame size: 1440 x 1080
Rate: 29.97

Should I be importing things differently? I haven’t been doing any transcoding.

[Rachel Fletcher]

I’ve made DVDs of the footage and watched it on a TV and I still see the lines. When I export the video from Final Cut I just use current settings. I just tried Compressing the file with Quicktime H.264 settings and the lines disappeared. However, now there is a weird jumpiness to the video.

[Rachel Fletcher]

Here is an example of the weird lines I’m getting, and its worse when there is movement.

[Varun Saxena]

U can try de-interlace filter.

[Richard Cooper]

Hi Rachel,
Definitely interlacing you are seeing. It should look fine playing on a TV from a DVD but not on a computer monitor… if all things are correct.
You say “…when I watch the video on TV it almost unbearable to watch because the lines are so bad….”

I think Dave L. nailed it. If you are seeing these on a standard TV, playing from DVD you may have a field dominance (Field order) issue. The 1080i time line wants upper fields first and your HDV footage wants it lower first you will have problems…. Once you do what Dave suggests and change the field order you should see this problem go away.

Good Luck!

Richard Cooper
FrostLine Productions, LLC
Anchorage, Alaska
http://www.frostlineproductions.com

[Rachel Fletcher]

I double checked these settings and they were all set to upper field dominance. Any other ideas? Could this possibly be a problem due to the fact I am importing/exporting footage via my camera instead of a deck? I spoke with one other person and they said there might be an issue with camera chip sensor. Thanks everyone for their input.

[Larry Lach]

Hi folks. Last year I bought a Samsung digital memory camcorder. Not HD or extra special in any way. I have preferred to use my older Sony digital still camera (also does video) instead because the Samsung slices and shifts all vertical lines in the image creating the “combs teeth” effect. The faster the motion the more shifting occures. My Sony does not do this but it eats batteries voraciously. I have seen many youtube videos that display the “combs teeth” effect so I know that I am not the only one suffering from this. Has technology taken a giant leap backwards or are we not using our equipment properly? I should not have to be an engineer to use these things. Please Help!