[Tom Brooks]

Jon,
I got better results yet by simply exporting Quicktime movie to Animation codec out of FCP. It’s quick and clean. Then use Quicktime Pro to export the WMV file. No Compressor at all. So far, this seems to be the cleanest way to do it. I wish I knew why it works. The QT file with Animation has no fields (even though I left if set on Lower First in the export settings dialog). This results in NO ugly split. If I export a Quicktime with ‘current settings’, I get a file with fields and this results in the ugly split in the wmv. Upshot so far is that you need to get rid of fields first to get a clean wmv. Using Animation codec seems to be the clean way to do that.
-Tom

[Tom Brooks]

Not sure. Which player and platform are you using?

[Tom Brooks]

You’re welcome. I’m not sure it’s a solution for you, but might be worth a try, especially if your clips are short and you can stand the extra step. Proper deinterlacing has been helpful for me in several projects–one of them involving very thin fonts that were partially disappearing with the standard one-field deinterlace. I had been seeing the artifact you discovered, but never so clearly demonstrated as in your clip. Please let me know how it turns out. Thanks.

[Tom Brooks]

I get a better result by first using Compressor’s Advanced Format conversion to deinterlace the clip and then compress that Quicktime with Compressor, using Flip4Mac. You can then change the options for the WM9 video compression to specify a progressive input and output frame. It takes quite a bit of time to do this with “Best” motion compensated deinterlacing, but it makes a big difference. There’s still a small flaw visible at the halfway point, but it’s tiny by comparison. You might try posting this questioin over on the Compression Techniques forum and see what you get. They might have some knowledge about why this deinterlacing step makes a difference. In general, I think you’re see a flaw in the encoder, or at least the particular version and implementation of it that you and I are using.
-Tom

[Tom Brooks]

Is your sequence interlaced, 720×486 anamorphic? So Flip4Mac is doing the deinterlace? Something seems to be wrong with that process.

[Tom Brooks]

Jon,
I did a quick test and came up with the same problem. I don’t see anything basically wrong with your method. Export through Compressor should be OK. It looks like an encoding problem since anything that moves horizontally gets the halfway split. Can you pose this problem with Flip4Mac? Let us know if you find a solution.
-Tom

Final Cut Studio, FCP 5.1.2, After Effects 6.5 Pro, Quicktime 7.1.3, G5 Quad 2.5, Kona-LHe V3.3, 4.5GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 7800-GT, G-RAID 2x1TB FW800.

[Tom Brooks]

You should deinterlace for the h.264. Optional for the DVD. Compressor can do a good job, but the best deinterlacing takes some time. I’ll let others say more about the correct software for the job.

[Tom Brooks]

Just wanted that assurance for now. It does seem to work fine. I’ve posted about a mystery jitter we were having and this was one thing to check. The jitter (for lack of a better term–vertical jumping of the picture is what it looked like) was fixed when I upgraded to V3.3 on my Kona LHe drivers. So, all is well. Thanks.

[Tom Brooks]

FCP must have all video in the same codec as the sequence to avoid rendering. So, if you render your QT with the same codec setting as your FCP sequence, it’ll drop right in with no render on the timeline. If you’re doing the After Effects on the same machine, the codecs are already there. Supply more detail on your sequence settings if you need more info.

[Tom Brooks]

Jeremy,
We had the problem with vertical jitters on white content. It went away when we updated Kona LHe software to V3.3. No problem now on the clips–no recapture, they just work now. I guess it must have been corruption in prefs or maybe some sort of software version problem, but anyhow V3.3 fixed it.
-Tom