Boring technical issue with Premiere Pro CS5: Imported footage shakes.

[Bernie Johansen]

Hello everyone, I'm having a little issue with my Premiere Pro CS5 that one of you more tech savvy video editing geniuses might be able to help me with.

I filmed an event recently (Indian post wedding party, similar to a wedding reception) on two cameras, my main camera is a Sony V1U which films in 1080i at 30 fps, and the other was my beat-up old crappy PD150 in DVCAM widescreen which records in 576p at 25fps. This was the first time I'd used my old camera in over a year, but it still worked fine and the footage looks decent.

I know the cameras film very different footage (different frame size, different frame rate, progressive/interlaced, etc.), so I was aware I may run into some problems with poor compression. Okay so I started cutting everything together today. I'm using the same sequence setting preset that I always use with my V1, which is "HDV 1080i30 (60i)". My problem is that when I import the footage from the PD150 and insert it into my timeline, the footage shakes vertically. Every three frames, everything moves up a pixel then back again in another three frames. The footage itself does not do this, only when I insert into the timeline.

Has anyone had this problem before, or can anyone think of any possible causes/solutions? I'll upload a sample of the problem if that helps. Thanks everyone!

[Sareesh Sudhakaran]

I'm not sure about this but when you deinterlace you have the option of choosing the upper field or lower field. Try changing this.

[Ann Bens]

Try this: Select the dv clips in the Project Panel and rightclick to Interprete Footage.
Set Field Order to Upper. When that does not do the trick set it to Progressive.

@Sareesh: when you deinterlace a clip you set it to progressive. Upper/lower field is interlaced footage. HDV is always upper, DV is most of the times lower.

[Roger Averdahl]

Bernie,

As Ann says HDV footage is Upper Filed First and DV is most of the times Lower Field First. If you captured the DV tapes with firewire into a FireWire card your DV material is Lower Field First.

For the DV footage on the timeline i would have done this:
1. Right click on the DV clip on the timeline
2. Choose "Field Options"
3. Click the "Reverse Field Dominance"
4. Click Ok

Now the footage should (hopefully) play back better. If it does, repeat step 1 - 4 for each DV clip.

[Bernie Johansen]

tl;dr everything fixed now

Hello everyone, thanks a lot for your help. :) So I first tried Ann's suggestion of changing the field order in the Interpret Footage, but that didn't fix the problem and it made motion look jittery and unnatural. Nor did Roger's suggestion of reversing the field dominance in the Field Options, however, when I opened the Field Options window, there was an option under Processing Options to 'Flicker Removal'. I selected that and voila, no vertical shaking and motion looks smooth and natural too.

Thanks for your help everyone!