Rendering for HD – Field order messed up

[Steve Roberts]

Hmm … if you’re in a 29.97 comp and render to (ugh) fields, that shouldn’t happen. Are you in a 59.94 comp?

[Frank Ruggiero]

Hi Steve.

Thanks for answering my post. I am working in a 59.94 comp. I did not create it, just modifying it. I noticed there was a prerendered quicktime in the project and it is not interpreted as upper field. Shouldn’t all hd 1080i be interpreted as upper field first?

[Steve Roberts]

Hmm … if you’re rendering an odd number of frames in a 59.94 comp, you’ll probably have a field issue when you render to 29.97 interlaced.

AE doesn’t always automatically interpret footage properly. Opt-double-click on the footage in the project window, then step through it with the right arrow key in the window that comes up. If the footage jerks back and forth, its field order was interpreted incorrectly, and you should re-interpret it.

If it plays normally, then it was interpreted normally, and somebody went rogue by rendering it lower field first. If you want to reverse the field order of that footage, bump it up (or down) one pixel in the frame. Ignore the resulting black line.

Let us know …

[Frank Ruggiero]

Hi Steve,

Thanks for taking the time to help me. You know, rather then try to figure out what someone did, I just went back to the prerenders in my project, and re-rendered them upper field first. Then I interpreted them correctly, brought them into the master project, added my new text and re-rendered upper field and the problem has gone away.

So like you stated, somebody either rendered on the wrong field or interpreted something incorrectly.

Am I wrong in thinking that everything in 1080i should be rendered upper field? I think some people are going progressive. I know you can get away with that in SD, but in HD, I seem to get issues..

Thanks again.

-Frank