Very confused about interlace now

[Alan Lacey]

Okay, and don’t say ‘we’re all viewing on laptops now so it isn’t an issue’

I’ve been on the periphery of the business all my working life (editing 16mm through tape up to the present day PC & Mac) and have always tried to view native. All fine with production monitoring till the ‘end’ of the CRT era.

Now comes my confusion. Do modern led lcd production video monitors need?display interlace errors? A moderate ammount of my work, even though partially retired now, is SD and for DVD. As I work in the medical field I assume that these DVDs will mostly be played on computer but have to cater for settop player display maybe on CRT.

I’ve always judged interlace error (I work with multiple sources and am very graphics dependant) on the prod monitor (Liquid Silver, IoHD etc) but now FCPX is taking that away how are people handling interlace evaluation?

There may be a simple solution for this, if so please let me know.

I’d be very grateful for some advice on this.

Alan (Pal land)

FlashXDR,XDcamHD,XDcamEX,D9 etc
FCS,AE,Combustion,LiquidSilver,Vegas,Edius,
G5,MBP,Vista64,XP

[Robert Brown]

I can’t say about FCP X but a tube monitor is always the best to judge fields since that was what they were designed for. I had many complaints about FCP with interlaced and it really wasn’t designed well for it – slo mos are never field rendered but frame rendered with frame blend the only thing making them useable. We moved to 720 at work and now all those complaints are gone. I’d bet X is meant for progressive as it seemed Apple never really got how to deal with interlaced. Don’t know if that helps but Avid seemed to me to be one of the few programs that was able to get that right.

Robert Brown
Editor/VFX/Colorist – FCP, Smoke, Quantel Pablo, After Effects, 3DS MAX, Premiere Pro

https://vimeo.com/user3987510/videos

[Alan Lacey]

Thanks Robert, that’s interesting.

Avid is the one name in the NLE world I will never subscribe to. I don’t necessarily want the application to always get the interlace right, I just need a way to see what’s happening reliably so I can take the required corrective steps.

So is 720 always progressive? I use XDcam (ex and HD -usually 1080i) so have the same problem with that.

The industry needs to get it’s act together not only with interlace but aspect ratio – haw many times do we see this incorrectly set?

Cheers Alan

FlashXDR,XDcamHD,XDcamEX,D9 etc
FCS,AE,Combustion,LiquidSilver,Vegas,Edius,
G5,MBP,Vista64,XP

[Jeremy Garchow]

Lets take a big step back here.

Fcp7 handled interlaced material just fine.

As of right now, you can’t really judge interlacing in FCPX as there’s no broadcast out. You can and should set the viewer to display both fields. In FCPX, you can step through field by field, something that fcp7 doesn’t do.

So, yes broadcast LCD can evaluate interlacing issues, but you need a broadcast hookup, but that is coming in the next major FCPX update.

720p is always progressive.

[Mitch Ives]

[Jeremy Garchow] “So, yes broadcast LCD can evaluate interlacing issues, but you need a broadcast hookup, but that is coming in the next major FCPX update. “

Jeremy’s correct, professional broadcast LCD’s (like Panasonic and Sony) can display interlace issues quite well.

As for the next FCPX update supporting that, let’s hope so. And let’s hope it’s through “real” broadcast option boards, not just some sort of Thunderbolt dongle. I am disappointed to find out that Apple has had no communication with AJA about any of this. Early 2012 isn’t that far away…

Mitch Ives
Insight Productions Corp.
mitch@insightproductions.com
http://www.insightproductions.com

[Alan Lacey]

But Jeremy, if you can view individual fields in FCPX surely by selecting a suitable section of a clip and jogging through the fields you could check wether the field sequence is correct couldn’t you?

Alan

FlashXDR,XDcamHD,XDcamEX,D9 etc
FCS,AE,Combustion,LiquidSilver,Vegas,Edius,
G5,MBP,Vista64,XP

[Alan Lacey]

No, I’d certainly not like to have to bin my IoHD.

Alan

FlashXDR,XDcamHD,XDcamEX,D9 etc
FCS,AE,Combustion,LiquidSilver,Vegas,Edius,
G5,MBP,Vista64,XP

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Mitch Ives] ” I am disappointed to find out that Apple has had no communication with AJA about any of this. “

What do you mean?

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Alan Lacey] “But Jeremy, if you can view individual fields in FCPX surely by selecting a suitable section of a clip and jogging through the fields you could check wether the field sequence is correct couldn’t you?”

Surely, but you might not notice them in the first place without a proper monitor. At least, it would be a bit more difficult.

[Alan Lacey]

What do you mean by a proper monitor Jeremy? I have a broadcast LCD which I can’t hook up to FCPX and decent flatscreen computer monitors.

Alan

FlashXDR,XDcamHD,XDcamEX,D9 etc
FCS,AE,Combustion,LiquidSilver,Vegas,Edius,
G5,MBP,Vista64,XP