field order mismatch a rendering issue?

[Walter Biscardi]

[Sarah Kali] “I have shot DV Cam PAL which is lower field first.”

It is? I thought it was upper field first.

[Sarah Kali] “Importing into FCP Livetype Animation QuickTime Codec Movies which is upper field first”

That depends on the format and you can change the field order manually.

[Sarah Kali] “I will be exporting the finished TVC to Animation QuickTime Code which is upper field first.”

Again, this depends on the format and the field order can be set manually. NTSC Animation Quicktime are lower field first for example or even no fields for progressive files.

[Sarah Kali] “Then Encoding to QuickTime H.264 which is also upper field first for digital transfer to TV stations.”

H.264 is fully adjustable, can be upper or lower field, depends on how you set it.

[Sarah Kali] “Is this all about the order in which FCP renders?”

FCP renders in the same field order that you have set for your Sequence.

[Sarah Kali] “Is FCP rendering the dissolve before the shift field filter is rendered and therefore the dissolve is occuring with mismatched field order between the DV footage and the Livetype footage??”

Sounds like you have your field order set incorrectly for your footage in the Sequence. If this is set correctly, you NEVER need to apply the shift field filter. If you’re capturing DV PAL, then use the Easy Setup for a DV PAL timeline. No Shift Fields filter is necessary.

[Sarah Kali] “Do you reckon the fix would be to do the shifting of the fields on the DV footage, export and re-import. Am I losing quality using this method?”

The fix is to properly set up your Sequence to match your footage.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.

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[Andy Mees]

[Sarah Kali] “I have shot DV Cam PAL which is lower field first. “

Thats correct.

[Sarah Kali] “Editing in FCP 6.03 in DV Pal sequence upper field first, with shirt field filter on the DV footage “

That’s the problem. Your sequence settings for DV PAL should be Lower Field first, there should be no shift fields filter applied on your DV footage in this sequence Do as Walter says. Use the Easy Setup presets and don’t mess with the settings unless you really have a good handle on what you are doing and the consequences of doing so.

[Sarah Kali] “Importing into FCP Livetype Animation QuickTime Codec Movies which is upper field first

I am using 12 frame cross dissolves between the DV footage and Livetype movies. I have also applied Colour correction to the DV footage.

Footage looks fine on Broadcast monitor but the dissolves are a liitle bit unstable and look like there is a field order problem. “

Thats right, because the rendered DV sections of video are being stitched together according to the sequence settings ie with fields in the wrong order due to the settings snafu above. Your sequence settings should be DV PAL / Lower field first, the DV footage should NOT have the Shift fields filter applied, however, the Animation codec footage if upper field SHOULD have the shift fields filter applied

[Rafael Amador]

Hi Sarah,
[Sarah Kali] “Is FCP rendering the dissolve before the shift field filt”
No. Transitions are the last in the rendering pipeline.
You have complicate your life editing in a DV Upper first time-line.
However I don’t see any mistake in your workflow.
if there would be an interlacing problem, all your movie, not just the transitions would look bad.
You can set the field order of any movie in any codec just using the Shift-fields. But be careful because FC or AE will ALWAYS expect a DV clip to be Lower, or an Animation to be Upper.
So is to you to make sure that the application interprete the field order properly.
I think you could have avoided the Animation step. You will go from YCbCr (DV) to RGB (Animation) then back to YCbCr (H264).
Now you have everything in a DV Upper time-line. We don’t you just change the sequence codec to 8b Uncompress? Then your 8b Unc master to H264.

Mac OX 10.5.2-FC 6.02-QT 7.4.1
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..and always a big mess on top of the table.

[Sarah Kali]

Walter, Andy and Rafael,

Thank you so much for your very thorough replies to my post. Very much appreciated and I am learning a lot.

I can see now the chain of events the led to me thinking that I had to make the project upper field first.

So for TV broadcast doesn’t matter if its lower or upper as long as you don’t mix – even though broadcast formats are upper?

Anyway, I will keep everything at lower field first.

That was interesting what Rafael said about the choice of intermediate file being influenced by the type of file you are encoding to.

What format do other people export their final DV movie file into from FCP before encoding into their distribution format.

I’ve mainly used QT None and sometimes QT animation.

Could the problem that I had on the dissolves not be a field order problem at all but a compression artefact?

I encoded from QT None Compression file into the highest H.246 settings I could find in compressor (I’m running FCP Studio 2.

It was the company who I sent the H.264 to for distribution to the networks who had an issue with the dissolves and they must
look at a lot of H.246 TVCs so I took their word for it that it was field order and not compression artefact.

(By the way, H.246 is the highest quality format they accept for digital transmission to them. No MPEG2)

Thank you again for all your help, I’m learning a lot from your collective experience and sound advice.

Sarah

[David Roth weiss]

Phew!!! Sarah, several fundemental misunderstandings show in your your post.

[Sarah Kali] “even though broadcast formats are upper?”

HD is all upper, but all SD NTSC broadcast formats are lower.

[Sarah Kali] “What format do other people export their final DV movie file into from FCP before encoding into their distribution format. I’ve mainly used QT None and sometimes QT animation.”

Exporting DV video as QT None or QT animation only increases your file size. its does absolutely nothing to make your exports or your h.264 video encodes better.

If, on the other hand, you change the compressor settings in Sequence — Settings and re-render to a codec such as 8-bit, ProRes, or even just DV50, with a deeper color space, that will keep your graphics and text from the ravages of DV compression, but it doesn’t do anything to the DV video itself. By exporting with the animation codec as you have been doing you do not get that benefit, as you’re still compressing with the DV codec.

Does this make sense?

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

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[Rafael Amador]

basically what you have to do is to make easy the editing for your self. If the most of your footage is DV, set your sequence in DV. You will have more RT performance. Once you have everything set in our sequence you can change the sequence codec for your final rendering.
Another important thing when working with DV is to avoid multiple rendering. Try to do everything with the minimum possible steps.
In your case you could have set everything in your DV sequence and once ready send to Compressor to make your H264 directly. All in one step. No exporting to DV needed and no converting to Animation.
And the last thing: Use animation whenever you need to export with Alpha channel. For other purposes you have better options.The NONE codec, just forget about. Is a museum piece.

Mac OX 10.5.2-FC 6.02-QT 7.4.1
G5 2x2Gh 4GbRAM-BlackMagic Extreme
PMBP 17″Core2Duo 4GbRAM-AJA ioHD
JVC DTV-17″
SONY EX-1 . SONY PD170
..and always a big mess on top of the table.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[David Roth Weiss] “but all SD NTSC broadcast formats are lower. “

But not PAL. PAL DV is lower, and uncompressed is Upper.

Sarah, you should capture and edit your footage as lower field first.

When you go to output to tape (to something other than DV), the capture card SHOULD make the field order switch for you.

Jeremy

[Sarah Kali]

Success!

Thank you for your clear and logical advice.

Turns out that the company doing the digital transfer to the networks made a mistake in saying that they thought the file had an issue with the field order mismatch on the dissolves and that it was fine!

Kind of annoying, but I’ve learnt a lot through your help so now I have more knowledge to draw upon in these kinds of situation and a better workflow in general.

So thanks everyone!

Sarah

[Elijah Lynn]

This was a good read!