Converting animation to progressive

[Chris Blair]

I don’t use Final Cut, but converting an animation from fields to frames could be dicey depending on the amount of motion. We take 60i video and convert it to progressive all the time using a variety of plug-ins in either After Effects or Digital Fusion, but there are times when even that produces some odd motion artifacting, especially if there is a fast pan or tilt… or a fairly quick diagonal camera move.

I’d say you’d have to go outside Final Cut to achieve this, but Final Cut users might know better on that.

We use re:Vision fields kit, Film FX, a fields module within Digital Fusion, as well as a slow-motion feature in Fusion that allows you to blend fields (we set the speed at 100% but blend the fields). One of the plug-ins will work great on one set of footage, but suck on the next. So that’s why we have a multitude of tools we use. There are half-a-dozen other fields/frames plug-ins out there as well. But there’s no magic solution to this other than having the animator render the thing progressive with motion blur.

Another popular technique is to convert 60i to 30p using upper fields, and 60i to 30p using lower fields and then blend the results together at 50% (in a compositing program like AE or Fusion you can do this in one pass). Heck, you can probably even do it in one pass in Final Cut. By using both fields you can often improve the results of the conversion to progressive frames by capturing information of fast-moving objects that can be lost when using only 1 field.

RE:Vision also sells a motion blur plug-in that adds the slight frame blurring you’d get if you shot or rendered something progressive. We’ve demoed it but I don’t have experience with it and can’t really comment on it’s value.

Here’s a link a to a plug-in a lot of Final Cut users mention that also claims to do what you want:

https://www.nattress.com/Products/filmeffects/G_Fast_Deinterlace_Blend.htm

Again…I can’t comment on it’s quality, but it looks to be very inexpensive and works within Final Cut.

Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com

[Brian Alexander]

So if I’m reading this right your animation is interlaced to begin with, correct? Did you ingest this from an interlaced tape by chance?

You are doing the right thing by de-interlacing the animation with Compressor using ProRes with Frame Controls turned on and output field set to Progressive – not Same As Source. Of course ProRes does not support alpha so you’ll need to change your codec in Compressor to Animation (output field progressive) if you’re trying to keep an alpha channel with your animation. This is not going to be nearly as fast as a ProRes transcode but it should do the trick.

You’re Final Cut sequence settings should be set to a Field Dominance of None to keep everything progressive based.

As far as jumpy animations go, make sure you’re not doing any frame rate conversions along the way; if your original animation was built or capturred at 29.97 fps your sequence settings should be set to 29.97 and not 30 fps or vice versa.

I would suggest you verify that your file was encoded correctly using QuickTime before you add it to your FCP project; this will save you some time troubleshooting any issues later.

[Daniel Low]

Didn’t we cover this a couple of weeks ago?

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/20/861393

__________________________________________________________________
Please post back saying what solved your problem. It could help others, and saying ‘thanks’ is free!

[Paul Campbell]

Yeah, but the thread was broken. My question about why my clip properties were still showing interlaced was never answered. Sorry to double-post, but I never got closure. (Well, the latest replies today may get me there.)

[Paul Campbell]

Brian, I do have one animation that’s transparent, so in Compressor I used the Animation NTSC with Alpha setting and set my output frames to Progessive. However, this clip still indicates being interlaced in FCP. I figured the Prores codec was responsible for the jumpy animation, but I just couldn’t figure out how to make the animation progressive in Compressor using the Animation codec.

As Daniel mentioned, yes, I did post this a few weeks ago, but my original question about why the clip remains interlaced was never answered, so I’m back once again to nag you guys. Thanks,

Paul

[Daniel Low]

So, you’ve definitely deinterlaced in compressor by using frame controls and yet FCP reports that it’s still interlaced?

Personally, I’d ignore what FCP is telling you, it’s certainly not infallible.

Can I ask why you want it progressive?

__________________________________________________________________
Please post back saying what solved your problem. It could help others, and saying ‘thanks’ is free!

[Paul Campbell]

My timeline is progressive, and the original animations just look pixelated and nasty in the timeline when I just drop them in natively. As soon as I deinterlace them, bang, they look fantastic…but the motion is jerky and weird. It almost makes me wonder which is less offensive to the eye.

Yeah, FCP still tells me the clip is lower field first after I convert. I’m either not doing it right in Compressor, or like you said, FCP isn’t being accurate.

[Daniel Low]

What will you be doing with this timeline/sequence? Will you be laying it to tape or DVD or exporting it to another codec?

Whatever, just try exporting a portion of the timeline including the problem clip to an output codec and see how it plays

__________________________________________________________________
Please post back saying what solved your problem. It could help others, and saying ‘thanks’ is free!

[Chris Blair]

Again…I’m not a final cut guy, but I think the key comments here are:

“the interlaced animation looks crappy in my progressive timeline…”

and…”the animation converted to progressive looks fantastic but has jerky motion”

Things that come to my mind immediately would be:

1. Are the fields reversed in the original animation from what they should be for the format, codec and editing platform?

2. If it’s standard def, was the animation produced at 720×480, and the timeline is at 720×486. If so, this results in a field shift of one scan line, which reverses the fields and can cause the video to look like crap in any timeline. Deinterlacing doesn’t fix it, it only blends or interpolates the reversed fields, resulting in a better looking image, with motion still out of whack.

If it’s none of those…a better method of deinterlacing sounds like the answer. The best solution is to re-render the animation progressive with motion blur. If that’s not possible, the next best is to use a better deinterlace process that reduces motion artifacting. But from my 25+ years of experience, animation is more difficult to convert cleanly than video that’s shot interlaced.

So finding out if the fields are reversed or finding a better method of converting the animation to progressive should be the goal, not figuring out why Final Cut still shows the clip as lower field or upper field or whatever it’s showing.

Hope that gives some additional things to look at.

Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com

[Paul Campbell]

Hi, Chris. What you describe in Option 2 is almost right on, only it’s reversed. The original animations are 720×486, and my timeline is 720×480. When I drop the animations in the timeline, they show up as being 98.something of scale, which I then just change to 100 to fill up the entire screen. Is this small amount of upscaling possibly what’s making the graphics look jumpy?

I could use a timeline of 720×486, but the music videos I drop in are ripped and turned into QT movies at 720×480 in MPEG Streamclip, and since it’s a music video countdown, I figured that would be the defacto definition.