[Brian Tallant]

Thanks John,

I did try both your suggestions. With the “Reduce Interlace Flicker” I couldn’t really tell any difference. But the Gaussian blur did make the flickering much less noticeable.

However, it also caused the clarity and sharpness of the picture to be sacrificed. Which is worse: Moire effect or fuzzy picture?

I’m now starting to wonder if perhaps I’m being too picky. Maybe there is an acceptable amount of Moire effect? I know I have seen it in professional video before…what is your opinion on that subject?

[Brian Tallant]

I think you’re right, but is this a limitation of Vegas, or would other editing software have the same problem?

[Brian Tallant]

Well, I am not 100% sure I picked the right option for creating an uncompressed quicktime clip, but if I did, then it didn’t work. When I hit the render button, suddenly Vegas stops working and shuts down.

Still don’t understand why rendering the clip as an NTSC DV AVI looks fine, but rendering it uncompressed creates a movie which has sections that look like they have been broken up into a bunch of horizontal lines.

[Brian Tallant]

I have a number of different projects that I would like to string together to make one movie (a series of commercials). I figured the easiest way to do it would be to render each project as a movie clip, then place all of those movie clips onto one timeline and render it.

Many of these individual projects use source material that is compressed in various ways, and I am worried that if I render the projects in compressed formats, then take all of those compressed files and string them together to make one long compressed file, I might lose quality in all of the compressions. I thought that rendering each clip as an uncompressed AVI would reduce any loss of quality before I get to the final combined project.

Did I make any sense?

[Brian Tallant]

I tried both of your suggestions and the interlacing is still visible.

The field order of the original video clip is “upper field first” so it seems that whatever I render it as should be the same…right?

[Brian Tallant]

Well, it’s just no good. I tried both of your suggestions and still the stairsteps are there. I’m just going to have to go with a light color. I’m certainly not stuck on red, although it is the official color of the university where that museum is located. I don’t think they would have a problem with a different color.

However, all of this makes me realize even more that we need to upgrade our equipment to deliver HD video. Like I said in a previous post, when I render the files in HD the red color works just fine.

[Brian Tallant]

Okay, here is what I have figured out:

When I try to render that red logo as NTSC interlaced, it looks toothy or stairstepped. When I render it as NTSC progressive, it looks much better (though not perfect).

When I render the logo in a light color (like white, or light yellow…anything light colored) it looks fine whether interlaced or progressive NTSC.

However, when I render the logo as an HD file, like 1280×720, it looks perfect in any color, interlaced or progressive.

So, what I have learned is that red really only works in progressive scan, and it works best as an HD file. Interlacing, especially in NTSC, does not handle the color red.

Since this video will be burned to a DVD and played on a closed-circuit hotel television station from a DVD player, I have no choice but to use interlaced NTSC…therefore I will have to pick another color for the logo.

Unless you have any other suggestions.

[Brian Tallant]

Thanks for taking the time to help me!

I took a look at the article you referenced. But there are a couple of things that may make this a different case than the one the author is describing.

First of all, the codec Vegas is using in this case is not DV, it’s YUV.

Second of all, I was reading through the article and was noticing some of the things the author said don’t work well with DV. One of them was fine-lined text, and another was white text on black background. However, I tried using a very fine-lined white text, and it looked great.

So maybe the YUV codec operates a little differently than DV in this regard?

[Brian Tallant]

Sorry, here is the screen shot.

By the way, having done more research, I think it might not be a problem with the background color. It seems to be a problem with the color of the text. Some dark colors, like red, produce the “teeth” you see in this shot, and others don’t.

[Brian Tallant]

Here is a screen shot…the project settings are 720x480x32, 29.970i, and I rendered it as NTSC Widescreen Interlaced. Notice the “teeth”, particularly on the “N”.

The logo has been sized to fit the screen, and its dimensions are 720×116.

2660_screenshotntscwidescreeninterlaced.png.zip