Please can anyone advise – combine interlaced and progressive

[Bernhard G.]

Hello,

In Your situation I would consolidate everything to 1080p/25.
In practice this means You are editing in a 1080p/25 timeline.

At the end, send Your SD-sequence to AME for (progressive) DVD encoding.

Unfortunately PremierePro does use by far the worst method for de-interlacing!;
meaning it drops the half of the image information away and interpolates only one of two fields.
If You want a better quality, there is the re-vision plugin FieldsKit for de-interlacing.

In a perfect world I would edit in 1080i/25 and let FieldsKit convert the progressive video to
interlaced; and encode the DVD to interlaced; upper field first. Why?
Progressive DVDs are always a risk since they aren’t standardized, so there is no guarantee the TV-set gets the information ‘progressive’ from the DVD-Player…

You see, it’s a very complex topic…

Best regards.

[Louis Shula]

Hi Bernhard,

Thanks for replying to me.

I’m really new to this so I wonder if you could break it down a bit more?

The files come out of the camera as .mts files. Should I use AME first to directly convert all of them to 1080p before putting them in the 1080p/25 timeline? as an mp4 or .mov file?

Would the deinterlacing then happen there in the file conversion?

When you say use AME to encode to progressive DVD what export settings should I use to do that?

Also the files are MASSIVE – 50mb for a 15 second clip. What do I do about this?

[Bernhard G.]

Hello,

AME’s de-interlacing is as worse as inside PP.
So it makes no difference.

For DVD-encoding simple choose the MPEG2 DVD anamorphic preset.

Regarding to the ‘massive ‘ data amount’:
we professionals simply have other scales what ‘massive’ is…

Uncompressed 10bit HD with 2,25GB for 15sec. is ‘massive’.
High-End intermediates (ProResHQ or DNxHD) with 345MB for 15sec.
are a very acceptable compromise.

My advice: put the datarate of Your AVCHD cams to the maximum – AVCHD is worse enough.
Buy a 2TB HDD only for editing!

Best regards.

[Louis Shula]

Thanks Bernhard!

[Chris Tompkins]

Start with a 25p sequence, drop some 50i footage in there with the 25p footage, export a couple minutes to create a test DVD or bluray.

Then make a new sequence 50i, put some 50i footage in there and then add some 25p footage in there, export a couple minutes for a test.

Chances are one of them is going to look just fine for you.

I too, on occasion, have to mix i and p and it works out fine.
Only Deinterlace when compressing final master for web delivery or computer presentation.

Chris Tompkins
Video Atlanta LLC

[Eric Jurgenson]

Chris is on the right track here. You should NOT edit in a progressive sequence. Progressive footage looks fine in an interlaced sequence, whereas interlaced footage looks bad in a progressive sequence due to deinterlacing artifacts (lower vertical resolution, increased judder).

If you have a choice, edit mixed progressive and interlaced footage in an interlaced sequence.