Mixed HD footage (720p50 & HDV1080) to SD

[Steve Sykes]

My current project (dance production) I have 720p50 XDCAM EX footage and HDV footage (1440x1080)50i footage on a 720p50 sequence in PPro CS5. I have conformed the 50i footage to upper field first and made sure field blending is off. I have scaled some of the HDV footage to frame and left some of it at the 720 resolution (footage appears zoomed in). I have rendered some footage out using AME MRQ and tried using Dan Issac's workflow:
Debugmode Frameserver,
Avisynth HD2SD script: AviSource("signpost.avi") HD2SD(interlaced_out=true, SmoothTime=false, OutputColorSpace="RGB24")
Frameserve from VirtualDub to TMPGEnc Plus 2.5

I have changed Dan's workflow to frameserve from VirtualDub, all the tutorial videos and method I have seen involve rendering out of vdub using a lossless avi file - I assume vdub's frameserver works just as well. I have also rendered out to HCencoder. I am not happy with the quality from any of these methods. 2 years ago I was using sony vegas with similar mixed footage and the footage looks better. I think I set Vegas to interpolate fields and frameserved to vdubdid using its lanczos3 resize filter. This is really then producing 25p.

I'm now stuck with what to do and would like your suggestions. My head tells me that 50p footage should make excellent 50i footage but it looks horrible on my LCD TV too much motion blur. I don't have vegas installed anymore but does PPro CS5 it have an interpolate fields option?

Please help!

[Battle Vaughan]

Right click on the clip name in the project browser, select Interpret Footage, set fields and other stuff to suit...

[Steve Sykes]

I have correctly interpreted the footage HDV is upper field first, 25fps, and 1.333PAR whilst the XDCAM EX is 50fps, progressive, square pixels.

For Bluray I want to make 720p50 so the 50 fields become 50 frames - so my field options on the HDV sequence are processing off. How does premiere deinterlace my fields when placed on a 50p timeline?

For DVD I originally wanted 50i. I have shown my workflows in the previous post. It doesn't look good on my LCD TV epecially when paused. I am not sure if it has been reinterlaced properly or interlaced footage just looks poor on LCD but not CRT screens. I am wondering if I should change my field options to interlace consecutive frames on both the XDCAM and HDV footage. I don't know how this changes my original workflow - does it interlace then resize - that doesn't sound a good idea. The preview window doesn't change when I select this either.

My footage edited on Sony Vegas allowed me to interpolate frames this made the HDV footage look clearer but made 25p. How can I do this in premiere - interpolate frames isn't the same.

I also read that having each field as a frame then smoothing the fields before reinterlacing will stop the motion blur. Has one else mixed footage similar to mine or can point me to a useful thread for more help?

[Battle Vaughan]

Maybe I'm not clear on the problem. You can interpret your interlaced footage to progressive as indicated previously and PPro will then treat it as progressive on the timeline, as you are asking...this is, I surmise, interpolation or conversion but without altering the original footage. As to making 50 fields become 50 frames ...hmmm, two 50i frames (which are each half of an full frame) then make one 25 p frame, I should think...but try an export with a 50p setting and see what you get on the output... As to your observation about interlaced video on LCD screens, I have noticed that NTSC (60i) looks lousy on our LCD monitors --- analog monitors draw the actual lines, the LCD screens apparently do an approximation in conversion and it looks mushy to me; perhaps the nature of the beast....

[Steve Sykes]

Originally Posted by Battle Vaughan

Maybe I'm not clear on the problem. You can interpret your interlaced footage to progressive as indicated previously and PPro will then treat it as progressive on the timeline, as you are asking...this is, I surmise, interpolation or conversion but without altering the original footage.

My footage is in a 50 frames progressive sequence so when you interpret the footage as progressive it looks like only one of the fields is used per frame and the same one is repeated. You can see this by moving frame by frame whilst looking at the preview monitor. I don't understand why it would use a repeated field eg the first frame's UF or LF is repeated to make the first 2 fps of my 50p sequence why wouldn't it be UF then LF. However, when interpreting the footage to UFF I see 50 unique frames per second but with no interlacing lines. Premiere but be blending or interpolating fields here, I would love an Adobe expert to step in here! This maybe the reason why my footage looks wrong when I go from 50 progressively merged fields back to interlaced footage.

Interpreting footage in different sequences must do different types of field combining and algorithms. Is there an adobe bible that tells us what happens?

ie. on a 25p sequence interprete HDV 50i as progressive how are the fields merged to one frame, what happens if you select UFF?

Maybe mixing 50p with 50i isn't such a good idea!

[Ann Bens]

I assume the final product is going to be DVD.
Have you tried dropping everything in a progressive SD timeline?
With frame blending on for the 50p clips
Everything will be zoomed in but that you can fix with setting your preferences to Scale to fit Framesize.
Interprete footage is ment to set the footage correct when its interpreted wrong by Premiere.
When playing a DVD op a HD lcd tv you need a dvd player or BluRayplayer that can upcale DVD's otherwise it will look awfull.

[Steve Sykes]

Hi Ann,

I want my footage to be available on bluray and DVD. I also don't know whether Adobe scales in the same way if you import footage onto a smaller framed sequence compared to when you export a sequence that matches your footage to DVD size.

I wonder what happens when you nest a 720p50 sequence in a 720p25. Does it just reference all the edits and clips back to the original project files or does it process then through one sequence then into another.

I have a decent bluray player (Sony BDP-S760) that is meant to be an excellent DVD upscaler but I don't think the interlaced footage looks great.

[Ann Bens]

I have a hdv camera, film in 50i, make BD and it looks great. My dvd's look great and i only have a cheap BD-player with upscaling for dvd and a full hd tv.
I think you should not wonder and do some testing, with a couple of minutes of footage, and see what comes out best.
Get yourself some BD_RE's and DVD-RW's.

[Steve Sykes]

I have just completed 12 different renders to DVD using many different combinations! The 720p50 sequence encoded as H264 Bluray looks lovely!

I am now using my new graphics card (GTX 460) as I wanted to see if it made any difference to the quality of my renders but apart from the main advantage of the improved speed of render I haven't noticed any difference compared to my previous renders with MRQ enabled. I found little advantage of rendering outside of adobe, using the avisynth scripts or virtual dub seem to still produce the wrong colour conversion and no significant improvement to such a long process. I have decided to render out the footage as interlaced as it appears smoother, and unless paused, the resolution looks the same as the other footage. I've seen better footage produced on DVD so I know it is possible to make it clearer but have now given up spending hours trying. I assume most professional DVDs are produced with external cards or expensive tools. I think my footage is not helped by the combination of bad stage lighting and fast dance motion.

Unless someone can suggest an option that they think will improve my mixed footage I have decided the best option is to render out my 720p50 timeline as interlaced mpeg2 TTF with no field processing or frame blending selected. I have had to scale my HDV footage (shrink it) to fit the sequence. The HDV footage that isn't scaled looks very poor resolution properly because it has lost half of its horizontal resolution especially noticeable on a 720 frame.

Thank you for all your suggestions