Repulsive Field “Combing” When Using Compressor

[Tom Meegan]

It sounds like your field order was reversed during compression.

In Compressor, in your batch window click on the setting you chose for the compression then go to the Inspector window.

There are six button across the top.

Pick the third one.

Turn the frame controls on, then explicitely choose the output field to match your footage.

DV-NTSC and DV-Pal are Lower Field Dominant. HDV is upper field dominant. Just to confuse things these field dominance is sometimes referred to as Odd and Even.

Lower = Even
Upper = Odd

I hope this helps. I’ve noticed that when I’ve left the setting at “same as source” sometimes Compressor gets it wrong.

Tom

[Matt Donaldson]

Actually, it happens before compression.

When I open Compressor and load the sequence, I can preview it, even before I make any compression choices. The combing doesn’t appear in the FCP Viewer window, but it does appear in the Compressor Preview window. I’ve fiddled with the Field Dominance settings (it’s DV NTSC, so it’s lower field dominant), and they’re set correctly. Even so, I get awful results.

My current plan has been to export the sequence in a high res compression scheme, then recompress it to MPEG-2 for DVD. Curiously enough, h264 and Animation codecs (through FCP) both have the same problem, but exporting via DV NTSC 48khz Anamorphic (the same compression scheme it came in!) works fine. Hopefully when I use this new movie, it will eliminate the field problem.

However, this doesn’t explain what was actually happening. I’ve fiddled with field dominance in the sequence and the compression scheme, neither have had any effect. Any other ideas?

Matt

[David Battistella]

Are you seeing this interlacing on your broadcast monitor?

You realize that the internal FCP monitor is a 1 field preview, right? It is no way if assessing video as it is to be displayed for playback.

Have you actually rendered out a test or are you just seeing this in the compressor preview wndow?(normal)

david

Peace and Love 🙂

[Matt Donaldson]

Alas, alack, I do not have a broadcast monitor at home.

I’ve rendered out several tests, using Animation, h264, and DV/DVCPRO, and so far I’ve only gotten one setting to work (DV NTSC 48khz Anamorphic).

Also, I’ve made renders of this piece before, on different equipment, and it looks fine. So I know it’s not the footage.

Matt

[Matt Donaldson]

Hey, I did some more research, hooked up a camcorder as my ghetto monitor, and found the root of my problem.

It’s Magic Bullet. When I remove the Looksuite preset from my footage, I also remove the problem. However, now I need to troubleshoot Magic Bullet, figure out why/what was causing the problem.

I’m using Magic Bullet Editors 2.0, upgraded from 1.0. On the Red Giant website, when “strange results” occur, they say to uninstall 2.0, reinstall 1.0, remove everything from 1.0, and reinstall 2.0. I’ve no idea if that will work, and I really don’t have the time to goof around with bad solutions. Anybody have a more specific idea of the problem?