CS5 renders 24p HDV as alternating lines

[Christopher Lefchik]

I'm having issues rendering HDV 1080p24 sequences containing Sony HVR-V1U 1080i 24pSCNA footage. If I render a timeline preview or render out a sequence through Adobe Media Encoder the rendered footage looks pixelated; contrasting detail flickers/shimmers. It looks exactly like Premiere Pro is rendering each frame by alternating between lines, i.e., each frame is half resolution. I have tried turning on Maximum Render Quality and Maximum Bit Depth in both the sequences and Adobe Media Encoder, as well as changing the 24p Conversion Method in Playback Settings, to no avail.

The original footage Premiere captured from tape looks perfectly fine when played back in a third-party media player. Aside from some tearing on movement it also looks fine played back in Premiere using the Mercury engine accelerated by an NVIDIA GTX 470. The issue only occurs when a preview is rendered or the sequence is rendered out through AME (even when previews have not been generated or used for AME's rendering).

I've checked the interpret footage dialog, but there doesn't appear to be any useful options. Changing the footage's framerate to 23.976 merely slows down the footage, so PPro must be performing reverse pulldown on the fly in the sequence. Changing field order to none (progressive) fixes the pixelated flickering, but results in combing artifacts on moving objects.

I'm at a loss at this point. Unless this can be fixed, Premiere Pro CS5 is useless to me be like this.

Anyone have any ideas? Has anyone else successfully edited and exported Sony V1U 1080i 24pSCNA footage in Premiere Pro CS5?

[Battle Vaughan]

Is it possible that you are using a project setting or ame setting that defaults to interlaced mode? Sounds strangely like you are converting your progressive to interlaced footage somehow...

[Christopher Lefchik]

If only it were that simple. No, I'm definitely using Premiere's HDV 1080p24 sequence preset and rendering out 1920x1080 23.976p in AME. It's as if Premiere Pro doesn't know how to apply reverse pulldown when rendering the footage, which makes no sense because I'm not seeing this effect when playing back the footage in full resolution in real time in the sequence.

[Battle Vaughan]

There are two choices for pulldown conversion --- at least in CS4, I assume it's the same in CS5....maybe trying a new sequence with the other choice from the one you are using might help...just a shot in the dark....my PPro defaults to the interlaced solution....

[Christopher Lefchik]

Thanks for the suggestion. It's the same in CS5. I just tried switching from the default Interlaced Frame (same as yours) to Repeat Frame in a new sequence as you suggested and unfortunately, same result on render.