[S. Marcotte]

[Peter Litwinowicz] “First: We’ve had no report on FieldsKit crashing AE”

I got caught making an unsubstantiated link here. I meant to correlate the word “clumsy” with my efforts, not with the plugin. The owner of the OS just sat me down in front of his computer and said: Knock yourself out. Then he promtply ran out the door. And AE routinely crashes on his sytem. So does Solitaire, for that matter. It’s a Windows issue in this case, one he’s too laze to fix. I certainly didn’t mean to imply otherwise.

About my being confused… You have no idea!

About your assessment, I really don’t know what’s on the tapes. I thought I did. I tend to trust my DP and his assistant when they said they were shooting 24P. My capture guy, for a multitude of reasons, I tend to trust less. What is very clear to me is this: I have 23.98 footage that is interlaced. Each tape was captured to a single file. The pulldown varies from shot to shot.

This latter part was tested. AE cannot “guess” the pull down when I load a big file. When I chop it down to a take, it “guesses” something.

I’d be a fool not to take you up on your kind offer. I’ll find you a good set of frames. It’s AVI, Matrox DVCPRO50 codec.

Many thanks – SGM

[S. Marcotte]

[Vincent Becquiot] “and you basically lost half of your resolution”

Does this apply to every single frame, or only the visibly interlaced ones? I’m trying to avoid recapturing. Money, money, money.

[S. Marcotte]

I have tons of DVCPRO50 footage that I managed, after great pains, to open in Windows. If you installed the ACE Mega codec pack correctly (meaning, you scolled down that insane list and hand-picked “Matrox DVCPRO50”) all you need to do now is is convert your .QT or .MOV files into AVI files.

That dreaded white screen kept coming back until I had my Mac guy turn the files into AVI. I dunno, maybe you can get away with just changing the extention in your file manager. Good luck.

[S. Marcotte]

It’s Six Flags now, believe it or not. Still, you built us one helluva wooden roller coaster.

FieldsKit looks good on a first, clumsy try. But the render keeps crashing. I’ll keep at it.

Meanwhile, I watched Mr. Kramer’s tut on the poor-man’s deinterlace. Very simple and very good, except that, without having tried it, it seems to take for granted that you don’t mind lossing half of the frame’s information. As I understood it, you’re removing one set of fields and essentially blurring the remaining set. I scored a ridiculously talented DOP and the Panasonic DVCPRO50 camera gives incredibly juice images, considering their resolution. I just can’t bring myself to sacrifice all this data.

[S. Marcotte]

Sorry about that. You ARE Mr. Laronde! Didn’t mean to give you an identity crisis there.

[S. Marcotte]

[Dave LaRonde] “If it does, you’ll be spending a lot of time at your friend’s place, no?”

I babysit his kids from time to time. But Mr. LaRonde just drove it into my thick skull: Captured at 24 interlaced, there might simply be too little info for Twixtor to go on. God only knows what kind of stuff it’ll manufacture to fill in the blanks.

[S. Marcotte]

Right. At 30 interlaced, all of the tape’s information is there. Captured at 24, a good deal of it was removed. That a lot of creative licence to give Twixtor. Too much for my taste. Maybe now’s a good time to stop diluting myself about “fixing it in post”.

[S. Marcotte]

[moldyboot] “you could additionally deinterlace in photoshop”

That’s what I’m talking about! I used to love these old fashioned, frame-by-frame allnighters. I think I just needed someone to point out the proper filter. I actually had no idea PS could deinterlace single frames. I’ll certianly look into it. This, I gather, is the option that carries the smallest “surprise!” factor.

Thanks for the link too. I’ll try it all. By this next time next month, I’ll be the one telling newbies to go back to their day jobs.

[S. Marcotte]

[moldyboot] “then how ar you going to interpret your misinterpretted footage?”

I was hoping you’d answer that 🙂

Allow me to recap. Option 1: Recapture at 29.97 and do the pulldown myself. Option 2: Twixtor, used on a shot-by-shot basis, since the pulldown has been randomized accross every file (as Mr. LaRonde point out.)

I hate to beat this Twixtor thing into the ground, but I’m wondering if you guys aren’t recommending it simply because it will require a great deal of time and patience. After all, I don’t have a client breathing down my neck here. I used to do optical printing, frame-by-frame, hand-drawn rotoscoping. Patience, I assure you, is not an issue.

Now that have a certian grasp on what’s going on, it comes down to this. If Twixtor can yield good results (no weird compression or screwy interpolation) than I’ll use it, regardless of the effort it takes. But if the software does NOT do a good job, than it’s back to capturing after saving up.

Keying WILL be an issue. The footage is fairly dynamic, swish-pans and the like.

You’ve all been helpful. If I have any other questions I won’t waste your time and go straight to the Bascis forum. They’re just a bit slow in replying, if they reply at all (where’s that Gandhi-esque patience when I need it?)

Many thanks – SGM

[S. Marcotte]

I follow. Good god I follow. So far.

Say my destination is 29.97, my only problem remains choking mattes in AE. That part I get. Or do I?

I actually do sympathize with the frustration editors go through. They’ve been privately cursing directors for over a century now. The good news is, as a director, I’m actually going through this hell myslef. That means the next I shoot digital, you can bet no editor will curse MY name. This is a dream opportunity for you. You get to mold a director into any shape you wish!

I just called the capture lab. They’ll see what they can do about cutting me a deal. This has been very, very, very edifying.

Regards – S.