field order wrong on transitions on PAL DVD

[Paul Dickin]

[Mark Palmos] “..set the fields to UPPER (as it should be for PAL dvd)…”
Hi
After years of being confused with the Field Dominance option in Compressor’s output preset settings I had a revelation:
The programmers who wrote the application code KNOW what the correct output-to-DVD setting should be, so they can write the code to get it right.
What they DON’T know is what I am feeding in – so that setting can only apply to the SOURCE footage….

Now I don’t know whether that logic is right or wrong, but it seems to me to be the only workflow that IS logical 😉

[Mark Palmos] “…it was a project i had done on Premier on a PC and had rendered all the AVIs to MOV’s.”

How was the conversion done? Because I’ve found with earlier versions of QuickTime 7 that there is something screwed up with QT’s understanding of the DV PAL field order.
If you use an application (not an NLE) that can play QT movies directly down the FW channel to an interlaced video monitor then DV NTSC will play fine, but a DV PAL movie’s field order is reversed, and jitters.
So QT on its own doesn’t (didn’t?) know enough about adhering to field-order standards – its only within FCP that the anomaly is corrected.
So is it possible your transcoded AVIs may be being misidentified in some way during the timeline rendering process?

Us regular FCP users don’t see usually such problems because:
a) we have regular well-used workflows, and
b) when I do something spot unusual I’m ready with the whole range of my desktop Mac’s suite of troubleshooting tools to pounce on, and identify, any anomalies.

Hope you can sort it out…

[Mark Palmos]

[Martin Baker] “How are you getting from FCP to the MPEG-2 file? Sending directly to Compressor from the sequence, or exporting a QT and then encoding that in Compressor?”

Hi Martin,
Yep, directly from FCP to Compressor.
Nice to see a PAL person responding here, have you had issues with field order going from a DV project to DVD?
Cheers,
Mark.

[Mark Palmos]

Hi Paul
Thanks for the response,

[Paul Dickin] “The programmers who wrote the application code KNOW what the correct output-to-DVD setting should be, so they can write the code to get it right.”

boy, you have a lot more faith in programmers than I do. Experience tells me othewise – not that they dont KNOW, but that the applications often do not default to the correct setting. (certainly the case in Premier)

[Paul Dickin] “So is it possible your transcoded AVIs may be being misidentified in some way during the timeline rendering process?”

yeah, that may be it.
I had done the conversions using QT player, but one of them was done exporting a DV MOV file from Premier (on a PC) – so this may have accounted for the inconsistency.

Anyhoo, i have resorted to outputting a Progressive DVD, not ideal, but who knows, they may use it on a computer, in which case the progressive would be better!

Thanks for the input Paul,
Best
Mark.

[Martin Baker]

I would bet if you do an export to QT first then encode, it will work as expected.

Martin
Digital Heaven, London UK
Unique plug-ins and tools for Apple Pro Apps
———-
Avid2FCP
For Avid editors learning FCP

[Ben Scott]

maybe take a quick look at the clips and the filters applied

if you send from Color for instance from dv pal (lower field) and then back to final cut in uncompressed i found it applying the shift fields filter and making sequence upper field like it should be in uncompressed setup

found some clips went wonky and then removed the shift fields filter and seemed to work

probably not so much of an issue as you are deinterlacing although how are you doing this, in final cut, I wouldnt, if you need progressive do that in compressor

[Ben Holmes]

One day, the makers of NLEs and Capture cards will actually check their software/presets/hardware properly in PAL. Until that day, I shall endeavour to work only in progressive… (not going very well so far).

😉

Ben

Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd

EVS & FCP specialists for live broadcast.

OB Server 1 HD – Mobile FCP editing done right.
https://www.editecuk.com/OBServer2.html

[Mark Palmos]

Hi all,

Im now 100% sure the problem was caused by the process I had used – exporting the previous master timeline in Premier as a DV MOV then using that in FCP as a source file.

It was ok by itself, but when there was a transition between that file and the other source clips in the project, there was a problem.

those other source clips were created by rendering the premier pro avi files to mov files but using quick time on the mac.

so there you go, user error… fcp worked perfectly when i replaced the offending clips.

thank you for all your help, live and learn i guess

Mark