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Conversion of 60i to 24p is choppy using Nattres Film Effects..Help!
I’ve been reading other people’s posts about converting 60i DV to 24p, or at least trying to make it LOOK like it is 24p or film (and not DV) and I haven’t found any comments to help me…
I’ve got an edited 16:9 sequence in FCP 4.5 running at 29.97. The footage is 60i (in 16:9) and I wanted to give it more of a ‘film look’ so I used Nattress Film Effects’ G Film plug-in on it and selected the output fps as 24p with 100% motion blur and 70% anti-aliasing (and 15% tolerance).
But when I burn a DVD in iDVD of the rendered and exported final quicktime clip (exported as DV NTSC at the current frame rate, interlaced and/or progressive, with a native compressor frame size), the motion jerks a lot. Especially when there is a lot of movement in the frame or when the hand-held camera moves a lot. The motion is choppy (as if the DVD is using a strange key-frame). When I watch the clip in Quicktime I can see the same jerky thing, although less pronounced as when I watch it on a TV.
When I watch the clip frame by frame I can see that there is no interlacing, and that there are repeated frames to fill in the 30fps needed for NTSC video. It’s like the motion jumps for each of these doubled frames…I’ve edited another film last year in a 24fps timeline (using 24 fps reverse-telecined clips from cinema tools) and my exports never looked choppy like this…
How can I solve this jerking problem? Is it a problem with the plug-in itself or with my settings within the plug-in? Or maybe with the settings I used to export my quicktime file of the finished edit?
When I export the finished edit without any Nattress effect on it the movement in the DVD looks fine, just very ugly since it is regular DV. I’d love to have a final film that looks smooth and film-like but I’m at a loss for how to get it to look this way since I didn’t shoot it with that goal in mind (ie. using a 24p camera)…I haven’t tried Magic Bullet or any other plug-ins yet…
Thanks for your help!
Oh yeah, I’m using a dual 1.42 GHz Powermac, 2 Gb RAM, FCP 4.5.
Independent Producer/Director
Sure Shot Productions
Montreal, Quebec, Canada -
6 Replies
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David,
I am guessing you want mostly to deinterlace to create a progressive look. The Nattress film effects are designed to do a lot more than just deinterlace, including weave, grain & scratch FX. Also by going from 60i to 24p the plugin is playing with cadence on purpose which is going to make fast action look choppy.
I suggest you just use the Nattress deinterlace plugins and see if that is the look you are after.
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Thanks for the advice!
I’m also adding some bleach by-pass effects to the edit, as well as some color correction, so the film effects plug-in has come in handy.
As for Nattress’ deinterlace plugins, I assume you are referring to the Standards Conversions plugins. I haven’t tried using them because I thought they were only used for converting from PAL to NTSC and vice versa…But I guess it is worth a try…
As for Film Effects making things choppy, I didn’t realise that that was a normal thing when going from 60i to 24p. I just would like a more fluid look, something that takes the edge off of the 60i video look, and I thought that 24p would look nicer, even once it is mastered in 29.97 on a DVD…
I’ve shot native 24p with the Panasonic camera and it always looked great when mastered on a 29.97 DVD. But obviously it wasn’t 60i being converted to 24p and then back to 29.97…
Thanks for you help!
Independent Producer/Director
Sure Shot Productions
Montreal, Quebec, Canada -
“As for Nattress’ deinterlace plugins, I assume you are referring to the Standards Conversions plugins.”
No the Deinterlace plugins are different. They are part of the film effects bundle. Try the Smart Deinterlace.
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I did use this plugin. It’s part of the G Film plugin. I used the smart deinterlace with 100% motion blur, 2 fields, 70% anti-aliasing (with 15% tolerance). And I got choppy motion…
So what I’m trying to figure out is why the 24p rendered final movie doesn’t play as smoothly as the 60i video. Yes, it is missing 6 frames a second (or 12 interlaced frames) but I thought that the motion blur would have taken care of that. Instead I get really jumpy frames that are a distraction to watch.
Maybe I’ll try 3 fields next time. But the render times are killing me so I was hoping for some advice before I started just going at it through trial and error.
I may also try the 30p conversion and see if that gives a bit of a film look with smoother motion than the 24p. Again, the render times make this a time consuming effort.
Next time I’ll just shoot the DV with a different shutter speed and frame rate and avoid all this!
Thanks!
d.
Independent Producer/Director
Sure Shot Productions
Montreal, Quebec, Canada -
“Next time I’ll just shoot the DV with a different shutter speed and frame rate and avoid all this!”
It sounds like you have made the same discovery so many of us have already…..
…converting to 24p re-introduces JUDDER.
Basics from film school….Pans too fast, etc., wrong shutter speed etc, introduce judder.
All the same motion issues with FILM become video issues when you convert 60i to 24p video as well.
You answered your problem with the above statement….
I edit video. I post sometimes.
I fix things. I eat marshmallows.
I play drums. I drink scotch.
I like TV.Done typing now.
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I agree with you about the film school basics. But the conversion from 60i to 24p adds jumps in the image that are not film-like at all, more like key-frame jumps and sampling jumps.
So while I would be willing to accept strobing from panning too fast, just like you see in a 35mm film, I can’t make any use of this type of video jerkiness. It’s not native to the filmed action, that’s the whole problem. It’s something that’s been added in post, which is obvious when you watch the movie, and makes it disturbing to watch because of this. It’s like if your DVD player wasn’t reading properly. It’s unwatchable.
cheers!
Independent Producer/Director
Sure Shot Productions
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
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