[Uli Plank]

Or the Bezier Garbage Matte Pro from CHV-Electronics:

http://www.chv-plugins.com

Regards,

Uli

Director of the Institute of Media Research (IMF) at Braunschweig University of Arts

[Uli Plank]

Video can either be perfect on progressive displays (like computer monitors) or on interlaced displays (like TV tubes). It will never look perfect on both. For very picky clients we make two versions on the DVD and tell them to use the correct one.

Regards,

Uli

Director of the Institute of Media Research (IMF) at Braunschweig University of Arts

[Uli Plank]

Amen, brother !

Uli

Director of the Institute of Media Research (IMF) at Braunschweig University of Arts

[Uli Plank]

But 720p is a different beast: if you shoot in 50 or 60 p, you can convert it to quite clean 1080i with good hardware, since the temporal information is there …

Regards,

Uli

Director of the Institute of Media Research (IMF) at Braunschweig University of Arts

[Uli Plank]

Hi folks, chill down, it’s not so hard to do. But first some plain English:

Progressive has full spatial resolution, i. e. 720 x 576 in PAL, 720 x 480 or 486 in NTSC (all digital values), but it has half as much temporal resolution, because all lines come from the same moment in time (25 moments per second in PAL)

Interlaced has half the vertical resolution for any given moment, but twice the temporal resolution, since every field is coming from a different moment in time (50 moments in PAL). BTW, on any progressive display like computer screens, modern flats and chip projectors, it will need de-interlacing, reducing vertical resolution – tell that to the broadcaster. Plus, perceived vertical resolution of interlace on interlaced displays is only about 70% of the number of lines, called the Kell factor.

Progressive Segmented Frames (short: PSF) is used whenever progressive is shown on traditional displays (tubes), which expect interlace because of their technical construction. But the display doesn’t care if they come from the same moment in time, the players electronics are taking care of that. There is NO loss of spatial resolution!

Pseudo progressive is the so-called Film or Frame or Movie mode of some older camcorders, which don’t have true progressive imagers and just de-interlace in the camera electronics for that jerky look. Older Sonys were notorious for their weak de-interlacing, while older Canons did it quite a bit better.

So, it all boils down to missing temporal information in the case at hand. While it would have been better to shoot in 50 frames (i or p), it can be done in software. We do this all the time when we need to do slo-mo from ordinary video. The additional positions in time can be generated the simple way by blending frames (as FCP would do it) or in a much better (but slower) way with Flow Motion, a modern concept where the software will actually analyse motion in consecutive frames and generate inbetween positions.

Motion 3, Shake and After Effects CS3 can do this very well, while FCP can’t. I like to use After Effects, because it is very logical and clearly laid out for handling of different frames rates. Just put your 25p footage into a 50p sequence and activate the best quality for frame interpolation. Medium quality will only do blending, which makes the look softer. You may give it try, though, since it’s much faster – and show it to the broadcaster…

Once you have generated 50 fps progressive footage, re-interlace it to 25 interlaced and you are done. While extreme slo-mo done with flow motion can show strange artefacts (kind of warping), this approach will look very good, since only every other line is actually coming from temporal interpolation.

Best regards,

Uli

Director of the Institute of Media Research (IMF) at Braunschweig University of Arts

[Uli Plank]

Hard to say without seeing it – and it might be close to impossible depending on image content in ANY software – I’d make two tracks and apply a soft mask plus freeze.

Regards,

Uli

Director of the Institute of Media Research (IMF) at Braunschweig University of Arts

[Uli Plank]

DVD can be any field order, you just need to flag it correctly.

Regards,

Uli

Director of the Institute of Media Research (IMF) at Braunschweig University of Arts

[Uli Plank]

If you don’t have those 60 positions per second from the start, no re-interlacer will be able to help you. You’d rather add some motion-blur in Maya,re-render interlaced (Maya can do that) or, if that’s extremely time-consuming, use Twixtor to generate extra positions in AE and re-interlace after that. But this can be pretty slow too…

Regards,

Uli

Director of the Institute of Media Research (IMF) at Braunschweig University of Arts

[Uli Plank]

You have to use FieldsKit before resizing to make use of it’s superior de-interlacing.

Regards,

Uli

Director of the Institute of Media Research (IMF) at Braunschweig University of Arts

[Uli Plank]

No, this is no SLR, but it has a mechanical shutter. Some companies, like Nikon, are quoting lifetimes for their SLR’s mirror mechanics, and the numbers are pretty high.

Anyway, a collegue in Berlin has done lots of commercial time-lapse with his Canon 20D and it’s still doing well.

Regards,

Uli

Director of the Institute of Media Research (IMF) at Braunschweig University of Arts