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De-interlacing video pulled from DVD before placing in FCP timeline.
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Well, I apologize for starting an argument, but I think this thread got off topic.
I am not a DVD authoring buff, by any means, but I know from research and just watching these indy films that everyone seems to be kind of right. One of them is encoded as 23.98 progressive; received the source information of the MPEG-2 rip from MPEG Streamclip. Another is 29.97 interlaced; again from Streamclip. BOTH original DVDs play fine on my DVD player in my home and the software DVD player on my computer. I only notice interlaced artifacts on the computer monitor when looking at the interlaced MPEG-2 source stream.
That being said, the original question: does de-interlacing, then re-interlacing a piece of footage cause quality loss?
Also,I have read that it’s possible in FCP 6 to have multiple frame rates in the timeline; but when you export do they all conform to the sequence preset? This question was asked here in May and not answered. If it gets answered this time I think it would benefit future searchers.
Jeff
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[Jeff Weisinger] “That being said, the original question: does de-interlacing, then re-interlacing a piece of footage cause quality loss?
Also,I have read that it’s possible in FCP 6 to have multiple frame rates in the timeline; but when you export do they all conform to the sequence preset? This question was asked here in May and not answered. If it gets answered this time I think it would benefit future searchers.”
Mixing frame rates is still buggy last I heard. I would set mpeg stream clip
to convert the least different (if only a few are 23.98 and most are 29.97, stick with 29.97) to 29.97 in the frame rate converter option.In my experience NEVER EVER de-interlace footage. All that does is effectively discard half the resolution.
I’m in awe of how many times I read those who make it a point to de-interlace to make it
progressive or look better, neither of which is true. (improving picture quality)Now re-interleaving interlaced video to make it progressive is a good thing, but beyond
the scope of your question.The nuts and bolts answer for you is this:
USE mpeg stream clip to extract the dvd content, keeping in mind that either upper fields
or lower fields will need to be used so that you don’t end up with field order jitter
when playing in final cut. if I don’t know what it is I extract a few seconds of a high
motion scene and import it into final cut to test it on a crt. if its good, I do the
rest of it. Thats it in a nutshell.If I’m just re-authoring a dvd from other dvds (say for an awards show or festival) I just
demux the streams as is and author them that way in dvd studio pro. -
[Jeff Weisinger] “That being said, the original question: does de-interlacing, then re-interlacing a piece of footage cause quality loss?”
The process of de-interlacing and re-interlacing in and of itself doesn’t cause loss. But in most cases doing this requires the video to be re-encoded. Re-encoding will cause loss if it is a lossy codec.
Sean
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[Chris Borjis] “In my experience NEVER EVER de-interlace footage. All that does is effectively discard half the resolution”
Chris, that is not good information you’re giving out there. All interlaced footage can be deinterlaced properly if you know what kind of footage you’re working with and you choose the proper deinterlace method for that footage. I suggest getting JES Deinterlace. Aside from be the best tool for this stuff, the help file is simple and explains all the methods and how they work.
Anyone who works with NTSC or 1080i, and wants to publish high-res video to the web needs to understand these fundamentals.
Sean
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[Jeff Weisinger] “One of them is encoded as 23.98 progressive; received the source information of the MPEG-2 rip from MPEG Streamclip. Another is 29.97 interlaced; again from Streamclip. BOTH original DVDs play fine on my DVD player in my home and the software DVD player on my computer. I only notice interlaced artifacts on the computer monitor when looking at the interlaced MPEG-2 source stream.”
Anyone who encodes and authors a film to 29.97 DVD is a total hack. Aside from the visual problems it causes on certain displays (next paragraph), it is a total waste of bandwidth. The redundant 6fps eats into the effectiveness of the MPEG-2 encoding.
I recently watched Season 5 of The Wire. The show is filmed, but the DVD was 29.97 and the artifacts showed. At first I thought the person responsible was a complete tool. Then I realized that the show itself (oddly) uses 60i video occasionally (like surveillance cameras) so 23.98 wasn’t an option for them. So sometimes there’s a reason for it. But if there isn’t, then the person authoring is simply clueless.
Back to your point. Your TV at home is either A) an interlaced TV (CRT) so interlace artifacts are not visible or B) is a flat panel but has an intelligent deinterlacing chip like most modern flat panel TVs do. These work fine so long as the 3:2 cadence is consistent.
Your computer monitor is neither of those things, that’s why you see artifacts when playing on your Mac.
Sean
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Well I knew already that the computer monitor is progressive, and I also did think it was weird that the person encoded the film 29.97 but neither of us can assume what they actually shot it in. It might have been that they felt the final product would be TVs only so they shot it in 30fps, which would make it easier to interlace and show on an NTSC television; on a side note, another of the 6 DVDs was encoded at 29.97 (or originally shot, who knows).
Based on my further reading ALL OVER the world wide web (my head still hurts) I gathered quite a bit of information about de-interlacing. Like Chris pointed out, it can look bad, but I found out usually if you use the wrong program/ method; and in some cases the DVD might be interlaced bad to begin with.
My final output will be both DVD and the web for my demo reel. Since 4 of 6 of my source DVDs are 23.98(976) and the other two are 29.97, I am just going to convert them to 23.98 (whether inverse telecine, or bob+weave de-interlacing, etc…) and set my sequence to 23.98 and let the DVD player take care of interlacing for the TV, and my web output should be solid.
I appreciate everyone’s opinions/ advice and thanks for taking the time to give them.
Till next post 🙂
Jeff
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[Jeff Weisinger] ” did think it was weird that the person encoded the film 29.97″
If your movie is 29.97 is doesn’t makes any sense to loose a generation when converting it in 23,98.
What you gonna get in exchange? A better MPG2 compression? No point.
Your DVD can hold together 29.97 and 23.98 and whatever NTSC flavors. Just keep the original time base.[Jeff Weisinger] “let the DVD player take care of interlacing for the TV, and my web output should be solid. “
For your web movies, deinterlace everything.
Rafael -
Well then that’s where my confusion lies. How does the sequence export out the 29.97 interlaced footage, if I have it set as a 23.98 timeline? I know that may sound very amateur, so apologies beforehand.
My assumption is that FCP would have to convert the 29.97 interlaced to whatever the sequence preset is, upon export. If this is not true then I would love to know. I think it would be great to have both frame rates on there, so when the DVD plays, some of it is already interlaced, and the rest will be interlaced by the DVD player. I just don’t think that it’s possible to have truly different frame rates in one sequence, but I haven’t read or heard the opposite, so I could be wrong.
Though, I will have to de-interlace it for the web, because artifacts will show up when people play the demo reel on their progressive monitors.
Jeff
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Hi Jeff,
DVDs can contains and play tracks with 23.98 and 29.98 fps this doesn’t mean that the tracks have the two different time bases mixed. Each track must have one of those time bases.[Jeff Weisinger] “Well then that’s where my confusion lies. How does the sequence export out the 29.97 interlaced footage, if I have it set as a 23.98 timeline? I know that may sound very amateur, so apologies beforehand.
My assumption is that FCP would have to convert the 29.97 interlaced to whatever the sequence preset is, upon export.”
That is correct. All the stuff that you drop in a sequence is converted to the sequence time base.
But to make the time base conversions, FC is not the best tool.
rafael -
I had a similar (albeit much more lo-fi) problem when trying to import some football (soccer) footage into FCP that I’d originally made with iMovie / iDVD. I tried Cinematize Pro, and also importing from the original DVD into iMovie and FCP via a DVD recorder/player with Firewire and all of them showed jagged lines and shadows for the faster motion parts, presumable due to interlacing and maybe the relativley low bit rate used by iDVD to make the original DVD.
But using MPEG Streamclip, File, export to DV, defaults and ticking “Deinterlace Video” got rid of the annoying jagged lines and shadows.
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