Interlacing across edits

[David Roth weiss]

As you have discovered, AJA and Blackmagic are in business with good reason. If you have the money to shoot film, you certainly should not be skimping on the hardware you need to display and edit it properly.

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

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Chris Farrington]

I agree.
This feature is getting all sorts of grants and breaks to happen, so skimping is the name of the game, sad to say.
However, I did look up one name you mentioned “Black Magic” and found they have a card that outputs an HDMI signal. If I installed that and went HDMI into the TV, would the interlace issue be solved?

[David Roth weiss]

Chris, I haven’t tried out their Intensity card myself, but it’s certainly worth a try. Go over to the Blackmagic Forum and see what users are saying over there. Also, I would recommend going on Ebay to see if you can find a good deal on a BM Extreme card, which will give you many more options.

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

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Jeremy Garchow]

Let’s back up a second. You shot on film, telecined to dv. When you brought in the dv footage, did you remove the pulldown? What frame rate is your timeline?

Jeremy

[Chris Farrington]

We’re taking over for another editor, so I can’t be sure what they did when they brought it in.
The frame rate of the sequence is 29.97.

The timecode has a “:” and not “;” in it. I forget which is which.

[Tom Wolsky]

: is non-drop frame. That’s what telecine usually converts to.

All the best,

Tom

Class on Demand DVDs “Complete Training for FCP6,” “Basic Training for FCS2” and “Final Cut Express Made Easy”
Author: “Final Cut Pro 5 Editing Essentials” and “Final Cut Express 4 Editing Workshop”

[Jeremy Garchow]

Okay Chris. You are essentially editing in an interlaced environment. If you want to be in a pure progressive environment, you need to remove the pulldown from your source footage and work @ 23.98.

You can also change your seq. settings as they are now to render with a field dom of ‘none’. That will make your render progressive BUT the motion characteristics might look weird as you will still have pulldown frames in your source material (you will be creating 30p rendered material from 24p with pulldown material). You have to keep your frame rate @ 29.97 in this case.

Jeremy

[Chris Farrington]

Here’s the solution we’ve come to thus far.

The issue is that DV is inherently interlaced and client monitors are a problem when you’re coming out of a computer via firewire.
However, if we were to come out of a DVI port, like the ones the computer monitors are attached to, then the signal would not have that compression necessary for getting it through firewire.

So, if we go DVI out with an HDMI attachment to a TV, then our signal might get rid of that jagged look. At the very least, it will be much sharper.

So, we bought a video card with two DVI outputs. We have to upgrade to Leopard to make it work, though.

The solution came up because we thought “well, these computer monitors don’t show any interlacing, maybe a DVI slot where the signal comes straight from the video card might work.”

Of course, the only true solution would be to also buy a Progressive Scan monitor like the ones we currently have. But that’s a lot of money.

[Jeremy Garchow]

Uhh dude? Did you change your sequence settings to none? If the footage is from film, it’s not inherently interlaced. It is 24psf with 3:2 pulldown so, roughly 66% of your footage is progressive, and roughly 33% is interlaced. You need to remove the pulldown to get rid of the interlacing. It’s that simple.

[Chris Farrington] “However, if we were to come out of a DVI port, like the ones the computer monitors are attached to, then the signal would not have that compression necessary for getting it through firewire. “

The dv compression is already there, FCP is simply playing it back.

[Chris Farrington] “So, if we go DVI out with an HDMI attachment to a TV, then our signal might get rid of that jagged look. At the very least, it will be much sharper.”

So you are going to upconvert DV to HD and you think it’s going to look sharper?

[Chris Farrington] “The solution came up because we thought “well, these computer monitors don’t show any interlacing, maybe a DVI slot where the signal comes straight from the video card might work.” “

That’s because FCP is showing you a low res proxy of the original image. Set your canvas to 100% and you will see the interlacing.

[Chris Farrington] “Of course, the only true solution would be to also buy a Progressive Scan monitor like the ones we currently have.”

No, it’s not.

[Chris Farrington]

Is this changing the project settings, or merely the playback settings? My concern is that we will have to master back to a Digital Intermediate so I don’t want to mess with any important frame information. There are no key codes. All the time-code relates back to another tape that has the key codes burned in. Do you know what affect your solution might have on the timecode/future EDLs?