Upper field to Lower field

[Rafael Amador]

MPEG-2 can be Upper or Lower.
If the original footage is Upper, the normal thing is to do the MPEG-2 Upper.
Are you watching the DVD in a TV or a computer?
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Jonathan Thunder]

Ultimately this will go to DVD for TV and tape for broadcast.

[Jonathan Thunder]

I just tried that. I exported in HD as is (upper). My compressor isn’t working right now. So I compressed in DVDSP with upper field dominance. Looks good! Thanks Rafael. Much appreciated.

[Rafael Amador]

There is a kind of myth among the NTSC users that MPEG-2 must be Lower First.
This is because all the NTSC tape based formats (DV, DVCPro50, DigiBeta,.) are Lower first.
But you can export a 10b Unc NTSC Upper First. It won’t be standard to Print to Tape, but if you make a DVD Upper First, will be fully standard.
But if you intend to Print to Video you must be careful about this.
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Neil Sadwelkar]

I think in PAL DV is lower dominant, while UC and other codecs (even ProRes) are upper dominant.
In NTSC all codecs are lower dominant, aren’t they?.

So DV is the only codec that is lower dominant across all standards.

This field inversion hell is a part of PAL workflow which we all have to watch out for.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Rafael Amador]

[Neil Sadwelkar] “This field inversion hell is a part of PAL workflow which we all have to watch out for. “

But in PAL-land we have the advantage that we have been dealing with this since a long time.
In NTSC-land now they are starting to mix Lower (SD) with Upper (HD) footage and many people are getting mixed up with the field order mix.
Rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Neil Sadwelkar]

I just made new sequences in FCP 7.0.1 and checked.
And the field order is…

All SD
DV-PAL – Lower
DV-NTSC – Lower
DV50-PAL – Lower
DV50-NTSC – Lower
ProResHQ PAL – Upper
ProResHQ NTSC – Lower

And in HD
ProResHQ 1080i50 – Upper
ProResHQ 1080i60 – Upper
DVCProHD 1080i50 – Upper
DVCProHD 1080i60 – Upper

So in NTSC SD all codecs are lower.
In PAL SD DV codecs are lower and everything else is upper.

In HD 50i and 60i DVCProHD and ProRes are all Upper.

So if you’re doing SD-HD mixed in PAL better to work with ProRes clips for HD and SD in a ProRes timeline.

And if you’re doing SD-HD mixed in NTSC you will see field order mixed. I wonder if FCP’s ‘Shift field’ filter that gets applied automatically handles this.

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Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India