Making DVCPRO50 30p look better

[Matthew Romanis]

Hi Jason,
I finally got a look at the file, forgot this laptop didn’t have MXF4QT installed.
I can definitely see the interlace artefacting you are talking about. Rendering it in FCP with a deinterlace filter applied gets rid of it of course, which raises the question, why does your 30p capture show interlace issues?
What camera are you using, I ask this because we have a HPX 3000 and there is a chance that some issues we have had lately in DVC PRO 50 mode may be the fault of the SD encoding board. Panasonic is chasing this for us.
Matthew.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Jason Jenkins] “Did you play it in FCP?”

Yep. You obviously shot progressive, so you have to set your clip AND your timeline to a field dominaince of none. If you have them mismatched somewhere, you will get a crappy alias.

It looks good here.

Jeremy

[Jason Jenkins]

I can set the sequence to “none” for field dominance, but the clip comes into FCP as lower field dominant. How do I change that? In Premiere and AE there is a clip interpretation dialogue, but I can’t find the equivalent in FCP. Still looking…

[Jeremy Garchow]

You can do it in the browser under field dominance (right click to change it).

Or if the clip is the in the timeline, you can right click on it and choose item properties > format and find the field dominance and right click to change it to none.

Jeremy

[Jason Jenkins]

Thanks! So simple… no wonder I couldn’t find it. Unfortunately, the clip looks exactly the same after I set both the sequence and the clip to “none” for field dominance. I’ll mention again that I see this same aliasing when I play the clip directly from the HVX P2 card to my BT-LH1700W monitor.

Should the timebase be 29.97 or 30? They come into FCP as 29.97.

[Jeremy Garchow]

29.97. What I see looks like progressive video to me. IF the field dom is mismatched between your footage and timeline, the aliasing looks very ugly.

You shot this on an HVX?

[Jason Jenkins]

Yes, HVX.

[Matthew Romanis]

When you drop the clip into the time line in FCP is any rendering required?
With both field dominance tabs set to none (not “not set”) the clip plays back perfectly.
Re the playback from the camera, in the 202 are you able to try setting a different playback setting for your display?
Matthew.

[Jason Jenkins]

Interesting… No rendering needed in FCP. I haven’t tried to adjust the display. I’m going to try to hook the cam up to a CRT monitor and see if it looks any different. An LCD is a progressive display, correct?

[Matthew Romanis]

I have the same 17″ LCD as you, and progressive playback is never an issue in this way whether it’s via 25p, 30p, or varicam 60p.
Just to confirm your FCP sequence settings….
Frame size – 720 x 480
Vid Rate – 29.97fps
Compressor DVCPRO50 NTSC
Pixel Aspect – NTSC CCIR 601
Field Dominance – None.

What sequence compressor are you using?