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interlacing issue – display or something else?
Hi, I apologize if you’re tired of interlacing questions, but…
So I captured my footage (originally shot on film, telecined to digibeta) at 10 bit uncompressed to do my online (the offline edit was a 29.97 DVCam dub of that digibeta). Since I’m finishing on 29.97 digibeta, I didn’t remove the pulldown as I captured offline or online, and am editing both at my finishing medium’s frame rate. So yes, I have the duped fields in there, but it also keeps things simple and I’ve theoretically been seeing exactly what the finished version will look like the whole time.
Last time I did this workflow I used a G4 running a dual 867 processor with a gig of RAM, and I had some jitter and interlacing “comb” visible when I watched the 10-bit on the Mac, but when I output to digibeta and DVD, it looked fine. So it appeared to be that my computer simply didn’t have the juice to display it properly, but that the media itself was fine, as were both ways of outputting.
Now I have a spankin’ new Mac Pro with a quad 2.66G processor and 3Gigs of RAM, so I figured that “display issue” was behind me. But not only do I still see jitter and comb on my computer monitor, I also see it much worse on the test DVD I just made. So the problem isn’t just the display. The look is very similar to when you capture a clip and remove the pulldown, but fail to start capture on an A frame (but since this is all 29.97, I know that isn’t the problem).
I thought it might be that the drives were not fast enough, so I reformatted two of my internal drives into a Raid 0 and put the media there and reconnected it. The raid seems happy, and it’s less than half full, but the video doesn’t look any better.
Any idea what else could be causing this? I did just upgrade the project from the FCP 4.5 version I started to the FCP 6 on the new machine, plus my experience has been that moving from offline DV to online can allow in some bugs, but the ins/outs, clip names, frame rates, haven’t changed. Could field dominance have anything to do with this? I’ve never adjusted that in previous applications of this workflow, so it doesn’t seem relevant, but I confess I’m not sure what I’m messing with there. Do I need still more RAM? The computers we ran at school a couple of years ago were running 10 bit video on G5s without significant upgrades to my knowledge, and this is just a single stream with a few tracks of audio here. I’m afraid to spend any more $$ until I’m pretty confident it’ll solve the problem (shoestring budget here of course). Any thoughts?
Many thanks.
-Jeremy
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4 Replies
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Hi Jeremy,
The only way to be sure about the interlacing is an interlaced monitor. A 50 U$ TV set will be more useful than the most expensive progresive monitor to show you if there is any interlacing problem.
Rafael -
[jeremydehn] “Now I have a spankin’ new Mac Pro with a quad 2.66G processor and 3Gigs of RAM, so I figured that “display issue” was behind me. But not only do I still see jitter and comb on my computer monitor, I also see it much worse on the test DVD I just made. So the problem isn’t just the display. The look is very similar to when you capture a clip and remove the pulldown, but fail to start capture on an A frame (but since this is all 29.97, I know that isn’t the problem).”
You can’t watch FCP’s output on a computer display, especially watching the Canvas Display. You can’t watch an interlaced DVD master on a computer display.
You MUST have a true video output running to an interlaced SD television to truly know what your interlaced output looks like. As suggested in the other response, even a cheap TV from Wal-Mart is better than looking at your computer display.
I own a Panasonic Pro Plasma display and even THAT is lousy for reviewing interlaced material.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Broadcast and independent productions.All Things Apple Podcast! https://cowcast.creativecow.net/all_things_apple/index.html
Read my blog! https://blogs.creativecow.net/WalterBiscardi
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Thanks for the replies.
I have a follow up: I know I need to stop being so cheap and invest in an NTSC monitor, but when I output an NTSC DVD and watch that on a regular TV/DVD player, as opposed to on my computer, I still see a really bad problem. Doesn’t that mean that there’s a problem other than with the way I’m displaying it?
Secondly, I was under the impression that I can’t watch an NTSC monitor playing uncompressed 10 bit video unless I also spring for a Kona or Blackmagic card as well. Am I wrong about that? Can I just get a DVI to RCA adapter and run that cheap Wal-Mart TV out of my second video port?
Thanks again.
-Jeremy
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Jeremy,
If your DVD got interlacing problems they can come from Compressor or because your .mov was not properly interlaced. As me and “the other answer” says the best is to make sure that your FC output is OK.
About monitoring from the video-card, please have a look to this thread (is only two posts after yours):
Final Cut+color+correction+hdmi+monitor
Probably a BM, Kona or similar ar the best solution. But just for monitoring you don’t need something expensive.
rafael
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