Kill shudder on horzontal movement. Interlace or Motion Blur?

[Walter Soyka]

[Kevin Reiner] “I exported deinterlaced UFF and it looked great in FCP on our Flanders monitor.”

I’m not sure why this would help… do you really mean deinterlaced UFF? Or did you mean that you rendered with fields, UFF? I could certainly see how that would help.

You may want different renders for different deliverables: you can render 1080i29.97, 486i29.97, and 480i29.97 with fields, but you should render 720p59.94 progressively.

[Kevin Reiner] “Why would it look great on my broadcast monitor, but then look blurry on air?”

I see at least one reversed-field error during ads on my local cable carrier daily. It’s absolutely maddening.

If you know what station the fuzzy ad aired on, you might try to talk to an engineer, but sadly, it doesn’t seem like image quality is of much concern for many local stations…

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Kevin Reiner]

Thanks Dave and Walter,

You guys are great benefits to this forum.

Let me clarify:

1. All the video is 29.97 ProRes 422 (1920×1080) shot on Sony HDW f900
2. I didn’t touch interpret footage.
3. Comp is also 29.97 ProRes 422 (1920×1080)
4. Videos are scaled and cropped randomly.
5. I rendered with fields (upper field first).
6. Also rendered a sidecropped 480i29.97 with fields (lower field first)for SD delivery.
7. For delivery I have to provide:
a. DVC Pro HD 1920 X 1080i
b. mpeg2 both 1080i29.97 & 486i29.97
c. .h264 both 1080i29.97 & 486i29.97

The client has told me that the commercial looks bad on TV, but when I ask what channel? was it HD or SD? etc. they just say it looks bad. They don’t realize how many variables are involved here.

And yes Dave, it judders. I always say shudders for some reason. I’ve killed judder before on similar moves, so its nothing new to me, but this one I can’t get past.

Thanks for your help,
Kevin

PS Here’s a snippet of the video –

judder problems

Mac Pro 2 x 3 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon
32GB Memory
Dual-channel 4Gb Fibre Channel PCI Express card
Dell Display (23″ flat panel)
ATI Radeon HD 5770
AJA Kona LSi SD/HD capture card
Rourke 16 TB
Flanders 2460

SOFTWARE
Mac OS X 10.6.5
FCP 7
After Effects CS5
Boris Continuum
Sapphire Plug Ins
All Trapcode Plugs
Zaxwerks Invig

[Kevin Reiner]

One note. I just checked my settings and it seems like when AE auto interprets footage, it is random on whether the clips are upper or lower. It has most of them set to lower and about 1/4 set to upper. I’m going to change all of them to upper and see if that helps at all. Is it worth clicking “preserve edges”?

The thing is, it was usually the text that was most noticable, so I don’t know if this is the fix I’m looking for.

Mac Pro 2 x 3 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon
32GB Memory
Dual-channel 4Gb Fibre Channel PCI Express card
Dell Display (23″ flat panel)
ATI Radeon HD 5770
AJA Kona LSi SD/HD capture card
Rourke 16 TB
Flanders 2460

SOFTWARE
Mac OS X 10.6.5
FCP 7
After Effects CS5
Boris Continuum
Sapphire Plug Ins
All Trapcode Plugs
Zaxwerks Invig

[Kevin Reiner]

Hey Dave,

The footage was shot at 29.97. I just started another render with all videos interpreted upper field. Rendering out upper field with slight motion blur. We’ll see how it goes. I’ve also scaled the text up slightly to avoid it getting too muddy.

I use Episode for exporting final files. I have no idea what happens to those files once they get to the stations. Really what I’m looking for are some peers telling me that I’m on the correct track and that the stations need to look at their workflow. Do I need to tell them that the spots were rendered with fields?

Thanks again for your time,
-Kevin

Mac Pro 2 x 3 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon
32GB Memory
Dual-channel 4Gb Fibre Channel PCI Express card
Dell Display (23″ flat panel)
ATI Radeon HD 5770
AJA Kona LSi SD/HD capture card
Rourke 16 TB
Flanders 2460

SOFTWARE
Mac OS X 10.6.5
FCP 7
After Effects CS5
Boris Continuum
Sapphire Plug Ins
All Trapcode Plugs
Zaxwerks Invig

[Kevin Reiner]

After sending them a new file that I knew was exactly what they needed:

station: It’s still looking weird.
me: explain weird
station: weird horizontal blurry lines
me: thats due to the field rendering
station: I tried getting rid of that by deinterlacing.
me: no, don’t do that. It is supposed to be that way.
station: well it doesn’t look right.
me: have you looked at it on another monitor?
station: just on mine
me: is yours a broadcast monitor
station: I’m on my laptop
me: You have to view it on a broadcast monitor.

20 mins later:

station: yeah, its looking better now.

————

ARGH. I love HD, but there are times that I really miss the simplicity of the BetaSP standard.

Mac Pro 2 x 3 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon
32GB Memory
Dual-channel 4Gb Fibre Channel PCI Express card
Dell Display (23″ flat panel)
ATI Radeon HD 5770
AJA Kona LSi SD/HD capture card
Rourke 16 TB
Flanders 2460

SOFTWARE
Mac OS X 10.6.5
FCP 7
After Effects CS5
Boris Continuum
Sapphire Plug Ins
All Trapcode Plugs
Zaxwerks Invig