HDV mixed in with DV Widescreen – Interlace problems

[Jeff Weinberger]

You mentioned that you tried rendering the HDV to a new track. Did you try to create a new project with HDV settings, drop the HDV on a track, render it as widescreen DV, and then go back to your initial project and use ‘replace footage’ to swap the HDV file for your DV version? You could also try changing the project settings for your mixed format project to HDV and see if rendering for DVD comes out better that way.

[Jason Harbaugh]

Hi Jeff,

I did try making an HDV project, bringing my HDV footage in there and rendering out as DV and bringing that render into my main project, same bad interlacing results.

I have not tried changing the main project to HDV and rendering everything out to DVD from there. I’ll try that in the morning.

I know on Final Cut Pro you need to run a plugin or filter that shifts all the lines +1 for HDV footage mixed with DV. Maybe there is something for Vegas that does the same thing?

[Jeff Weinberger]

You could try to deinterlace the HDV footage and render it as uncompressed 720 x 480. There is a free deinterlace filter for Vegas by Mike Crash at https://www.mikecrash.com/ .
You could also try to deinterlace and render from another app if you have access to any. I usually toss footage into Combustion and deinterlace using it’s interpolate setting. If you can get the HDV footage looking good at 720 x 480, you should be able to cut it into your other footage.

[Jim Greene]

I regularly mix DV with HDV. I think you need to set the project to the HDV resolution, then output render to the final DV widescreen format. My experience is that HDV footage only renders well if the project is set to HDV (not as DV).

[Jason Harbaugh]

Thanks for all the advice. So far nothing really has worked. It may just be that HDV couldn’t handle the lines on the field or the way the camera was setup that day.

I tried that mikecrash deinterlacer but it fails to run on both Vegas 7 and Vegas 8.

Personally I’ll be glad to get rid of the HDV camera as we move to the P2 platform. Although I’m not a fan of their workflow or the mess of files they create, but the footage is topnotch.

[Jeff Weinberger]

Have you tried viewing the HDV footage directly? You can use a player such as ‘Media Player Classic’ to view the HDV .M2T files fullscreen with different framing options. If the footage plays back properly, there ought to be a way to include it in your project.

[Jason Harbaugh]

Just played back the m2t files directly in media player classic. You are right, it all looks great in there. No problems with the field lines. Now how do I get it to look that good in DV? 🙁

[Jeff Weinberger]

I’ve mixed HDV with DV in Vegas, and have gotten good results starting with HDV project settings. You stated that you tried that already and it didn’t work. You can try again, checking to make sure that your Vegas project settings are for HDV and not HD. You want HDV 1080 60i (1440 x 1080 29.97fps), upper field first, Pixel aspect ratio. The project settings tab has a box for deinterlace method, try ‘interpolate fields’ and video rendering quality ‘Best’. Then put the HDV footage on the timeline and highlight a short section to do some test renderings. See if a section with the white lines comes out okay when you render to Windows Media Video V9. Try rendering to the WMV template for 6Mbps HD 720 30P. That should do a rendering to 1280 x 720 29.97 Progressive. If that looks good, you could try intercutting that 720P WMV with your DV footage.