-
Converting PF25 to 25p in Premiere Pro CS5.5
Hi all,
Having become an owner of Canon HF G10 PAL camcorder, I now have to deal with a seemingly simple problem of converting PF25 (where 25p footage is wrapped into 50i stream) into true 25p. At the first glance, it might have been OK to leave it as is and just use regular 50i workflow in Premiere, but that’s not an option when there are some titles and fades etc. created inside Premiere as natively 50i — temporally interlaced, unlike the footage. Although I haven’t yet given it a try, I assume this combination will eventually look less than optimal being viewed on an LCD TV.
To get the best out of it, the footage therefore has to be converted into true 25p and this is where uncertainty comes in. The simplest solution might be to just drop the footage into a 25p sequence and let the software deinterlace it in the background (or likewise, interpret a clip as progressive). Premiere’s help doesn’t elaborate on this, but I’m afraid that such treatment will result in one field been thrown away and the other one — interpolated to a full frame with noticeable loss in vertical resolution as a result. Actually, the right deinterlacing method in this case is probably to just ‘weave,’ whereby both fields are merely put together without any interpolation.
With that said, I wonder if there is a way to do that in Premiere? And if not, could there be a workaround through AE or some other external software? I’d really appreciate a working solution for the issue.
-
12 Replies
-
I am not familiar with PAL workflows, but have you tried right-clicking on the footage and then hitting “Modify> Interpret Footage” and then messing with framerate and field options there? You could also try messing with the “clip>video options>field options…” menu command.
Ryan
-
Thanks for the reply, Ryan.
As far as we talk of this particular question, I don’t think PAL/NTSC workflows have any difference.
I mentioned the options you’re referring to. However, it’s unclear how PP will handle source 50i footage if I force its interpretation as progressive. Like I said, it will most probably dump every other field, while interpolating the remaining ones to full frames. To try every combination of options in the ‘Field Order’ menu, render the results and compare them in full resolution (there is no other way to see the difference that I know of) will be quite time consuming. So I thought that someone might have already come up with a tested solution, since Canon has been on the market with its ‘PF’ shooting mode for quite a while already.
-
Just edit the footage in a 50i timeline and export to no fields if you want progressive.
———————————————–
Adobe Certified Expert Premiere Pro
Adobe Community Professional -
Thanks Ann, I was thinking of this solution, too.
The only thing that stops me is that I have no idea how Premiere will deinterlace the footage. Not all of the otherwise routine processing algorythms will be optimal in my case since source material is already progressive. Unfortunately, Premiere’s help doesn’t throw any light either. -
The deinterlaced function within CS5.5 is much improved.
I think it blends the fields now as to throwing away one field and interpolate.
But that wont matter as both fields are the same.———————————————–
Adobe Certified Expert Premiere Pro
Adobe Community Professional -
Hi Gleb,
Here’s an article that might shed so light. As you will see, all PSF recordings are not equal…
Vince Becquiot
Kaptis Studios
San Francisco – Bay Area -
[Ann Bens] “I think it blends the fields now as to throwing away one field and interpolate.
But that wont matter as both fields are the same.”They are from the same instant in time, but you’d still be tossing frame resolution by simply interpolating fields instead of utilizing both fields.
TimK,
Director, Consultant
Kolb Productions,Adobe Certified Instructor
-
[Ann Bens] “But that wont matter as both fields are the same.”
It probably won’t, except for loss of vertical resolution, which is what I’m trying to avoid.
Besides, I noticed that when working in 50i sequence and trying to time remap a clip (change speed/duration) Premiere does that based on fields rather than frames and the results, when rendered to full HD progressive video, are not much impressive.
-
Tim, Vince, thanks for replying, you got my point exactly.
Thanks for the link, Vince. I did extensive search on the subject (to no avail) but somehow this article escaped my attention.
BTW, Vegas folks came up with a kind of colution. When ingesting their source PF video into a Vegas project, they set the project setting to 50i, fields order — to progressive and method of deinterlacing — to none. Kinda sounds wierd and contradicting, but somehow this works for them.
Still hope that there must be a way to tell Premiere to just weave the fields without throwing anything away and interpolating. -
[Vince Becquiot] “Here’s an article that might shed so light.”
Thanks for the article, Vince.
It was kinda painful to discover that my cam shoots ‘malignant’ PF footage and Canon neglected to make it ‘benign.’ I wish I knew that before the purchase.
However, the workaround offered by the author and based on shooting with 360 degrees shutter (i.e. 25 fps @ 1/25 in my case) can hardly be seen as an acceptable solution for 90% scenarios, for motion blur softens the image even more than unnessecary deinterlacing does.
Gotta give Vegas a try, I guess.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up