Grading interlaced footage

[Michael Gissing]

Is this with camera original footage or archive pre cut material? Seeing the first field of the next shot can happen when the field order is wrong. Depending on frame rates & codecs the field order is generally Upper but there are exceptions and you need to set the field order correctly for the footage you have in the timeline. If you are working in HD then the sequence field order should be set to Upper so you change the footage field order not the sequence.

Are you looking at the image via a Decklink card to a monitor capable of displaying interlaced? Computer monitors are not the place to see and fix field order problems.

[Juan Juig]

Thank you for your reply. So here is the workflow:

The footage has been recorded on BlackMagic HyperDeck Studio recorder in 185 DNxHD 50i OP ATOM MXF, upper field first.

It has then been imported into Avid Media Composer via media browser (basically I just had to copy the files into avid folder and drag them into bin with media browser, because it had already been Avid’s codec).

After the editing I exported the AAF to Davinci, where the problem occurs within the program.
After the grade I exported OP ATOM (same as source options) back to Avid where I also exported same as source, adding some titles. I also tried exporting ungraded version. As it turned out as I checked it on the interlaced monitor and hardware, the ungraded version was playing fine, while the graded version had those “fades” between cuts.

When exporting I always used setting that were same as source.

[Michael Gissing]

On the delivery page was the field rendering box ticked? Also check individual camera files attributes to make sure they were set as interlaced upper. I suspect the field rendering check box as it wasn’t apparent on the ungraded.