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HELP FIELDS?
I have searched the COW but have found no real solid answer. I want to know when shoud I render my After Effects animations with “Lower Fields”? Every time I do it that way it looks horrible on the computer, things seem jaggy.
My settings dont matter, all I am really asking is WHEN should I render with fields and when to render progressive?
Thanks!!!!!
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8 Replies
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In my experience when you are rendering to an NTSC editor that works in that format.
Charles Pazos
Art Director
Exit Media
http://www.findexit.com -
-You never have to render fields. It is an aesthetic choice.
-You should never render fields for computer-only playback. You must render progressive. You’ve seen why. 🙂
-Fields look bad on a computer, but look normal on a TV.
-You can only see the usefulness of fields on an interlaced monitor, such as a TV.
-Sometimes fields make motion on a TV look smoother, but also more video-like.
-If you do render fields, the field order (erroneously called “field dominance” by Apple and others) must match the hardware and/or codec. DV is lower first, as are most systems. You need to be sure what the desired field order of any I/O hardware in your workflow is.
-It is perfectly acceptable to render progressive for broadcast, or for an interlaced (TV) environment.Google “interlaced” and “after effects” for more info. There should be an Adobe doc on it.
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After a lot of head scratching I think I have my head around why and when to use or not use fields..
If you ARE using fields however I believe UFF (upper field first) is the norm for Digibeta (in PAL at least) and DV is LFF. I could be wrong, but that’s how it works at my facility.
I have recently taken to rendering progressive, but adding motion blur where needed. Some slow movements (a crawl or scroll) can call for interlaced for a smoother move, but like Steve said, it’s an aesethic choice.
One thing I have just thought though….If our editor is editing interlaced footage, gives me some footage to treat and then give back to slot it – that would need to be rendered interlaced wouldn’t it? Otherwise it wouldn’t match? Not had chance to test it yet…?
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-I render anything for broadcast with fields. (I only work in SD, will have to evaluate when we go HD)
-Anything for DVD I usually let Encore do the rendering and my final DVD is usually progressive
-Anything for computer display is progressive.If I have something that is for broadcast and then going to the web, I render fields, the remove them in the encoding process.
Mark
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[jimmybee500] “One thing I have just thought though….If our editor is editing interlaced footage, gives me some footage to treat and then give back to slot it – that would need to be rendered interlaced wouldn’t it?”
Yes. It’s bad aesthetics to mix the two in a program. Also, the editing app may have to render a progressive clip in an interlaced timeline.
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“I only work in SD, will have to evaluate when we go HD”
Ha! I was beginning to think we were the only facility in the world that hadn’t gone HD yet! That’s *kind of* reassuring to hear. 😉
Steve – Thanks…I thought that might be the case. Only just ventured into progressive land myself, so not had chance to test everything. Prog GFX created in AE then laid over interlaced footage in Editbox doesn’t seem to pose a prob though. In fact, if the editor wants to freeze your animation, or resize it over video you get a better result with progressive gfx I’ve found. Paused interlaced looks jagged and nasty.
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Hmm … maybe I was a bit harsh aesthetically on mixing prog and interlaced. I’ve seen a low-budget TV show where they mixed the two within a sequence and it looked odd to me, since it called attention to itself. Now it’s okay if you’re cutting between your hero (prog) and news footage of him (interlaced), since you’re supposed to be showing two different situations, and cutting to progressive news footage would look fake, since we expect it to look interlaced.
So it depends on the usage, I suppose. 🙂
But you’re right about freezing and scaling. Anyway, I generally render progressive for all situations. Personal preference.
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