[Mick Diener]

Thanks Jeremy. See below.

“But 1080p60 is a hard format to edit and deliver. Why not shoot 1080p30?”

I agree…see my original posting. The problem is the Panasonic Tm900 (like the TM700) doesn’t shoot 30p. Only 60i and 60p. But I am hoping there is a way to convert the 60p clips to 30p without the introduction of moire noise.

“As far as the moire, I’d double check to make sure both your media and timeline are tagged as progressive.”

I double-checked both media and sequence settings — and yes, the media clip is definitely progressive and the timeline sequence is set to 30p.

I saw a reference on another forum here that mentions these 60p Panasonics use “intra-frame compression” to fit the 60p data into the pipe. I wonder if that could explain moire problems occurring when every other frame is dropped to convert 60p to 30p?

[Mick Diener]

Thanks Randy. The thing is I’m wanting to shoot in 60p because progressive has superior resolution (full progressive frame height) compared to interlaced (60i).

The question is — why would converting a 60p clip to 30p (or playing a 60p clip in a 30p sequence) cause a notable increase in “moire” noise? Increased motion stuffer would be expected (and I even like it!) but the vibrating noise around fine lines — why should that increase when FCP or Compressor presumably is just dropping every other progressive frame?

(See my original entry for more details of my workflow experiments.)

[Mick Diener]

I’m working with Panasonic Tm900 footage in FCP… which is essentially the same as the Tm700 with it’s associated workflow issues and aberrant AVCHD 60p wrapper. I’m using Clipwrap to transcode the 60p files into ProRes (and they look fantastic in FCP!). But for the sake of simplicity in workflow, file size and final output , I want to convert these files to 30p. I started by dropping these 60p files into a 30p sequence on FCP to see what would happen. The result is the expected increase in motion stutter (which I’m totally fine with) but ALSO a troubling and puzzling increase in horizontal and vertical moire. I also tried a different conversion workflow in which I used clipwrap to rewrap the tm900 files as h.264 files and then used Compressor to transcode into ProRes not at 60p but 30p. I then dropped this 30p clip into a 30p timeline and experienced the same moire noise.

What could be causing this? It doesn’t seem like progressive footage (even with every other frame dropped) should be producing moire issues. Is there a way to correct the problem?

By the way I am viewing these clips and sequences full-screen on a mid-2010 Macbook Pro, and the moire problems I’m describing are ABSENT when viewing the 60p clip in a 60p (59.94) timeline.

Thanks for any assistance you guys can give me.