Separating fields to individual frames - Help with a sneaky trick? :)

[Carl Middleton]

Ooohkay. First off, I'm working with Cineform and PPro 2.0 and after effects, as well as VirtualDub. Dunno what of those might come in handy for this. Here's what I'm trying to do:

Take an HDV 1440x1080 file, shot at 60i, and deinterlace while saving each field separately. This would produce a 1440x540 image, at 60p. I would then be resizing to 720p. I would lose a decent bit of horizontal resolution, but in effect I should be getting a progressive 60 fps image, right?

I've tried to find a way to do this - but since it's technically 29.97fps shot interlaced, most software doesn't give an option or method to break it down to the 60 interlaced frames.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Carl

[Pat Reddy]

Pardon me if I have misinterpreted your request and am suggesting something that you already know. I routinely convert 60i to 59.94p in Vegas. I render to a 59.94p Cineform intermediate file (avi). I use a smart deinterlace plugin by Mike Cash in the effects chain. I'm using Vegas Movie Studio Platinum (not the full Vegas), and the smart deinterlace plugin seems to yield much better results than the Vegas deinterlace filter. I render to a Cineform file with Film Scan 1 quality (using Neo HDV). This smart deinterlacing preserves detail (not all of it of course), and so does the rendering to the high-quality Cineform file. Oh, and I end up with 60p (59.94p really) with full 1440 by 1080 resolution. The plugin has accomplished some smart uprezzing to get back to full frame.

I often run the resulting file in Virtualdub to deshake it. Virtualdub recognizes the file since the full Cineform codec is installed on the machine. The deshaker plugin works well with progressive. As you know you can change the frame rate and resize in Virtualdub. If you want, I would think you could do all of this in Virtualdub itself. Mike Cash's plugin is also available as a Virtualdub filter. I usually render a final product to 60i or 29.97p. Hope this helps.

Pat

[Carl Middleton]

Exactly! I was talking about literally separating the fields into separate frames, but a high quality plugin to not lose resolution would be even better.

I want to deliver the project in 24p - but I can worry about slowing it down later. I want 60p to have the flexibility of very smooth slow motion. Do you know the webpage where I might could find these plugins, for virtualdub hopefully (I don't have vegas)? :)

Thanks! It'd definitely be a step in the right direction. I'm not worried about staying at full 1080, I think 720p would be fine for this project. I just want to push the limits of the quality I can get with it. :)

C

[Pat Reddy]

I think this is it (the version for virtualdub) -

http://neuron2.net/smart/smart.html

I usually select frame-only differencing, deselect "compare color channels", and select cubic interpolation.

Pat

[Robert M Wright]

I think this is what you are looking for Carl:

http://www.guthspot.se/video/#deinterlacesmooth

[Carl Middleton]

Both of these look promising!

I'll be trying different settings and seeing what works best for my footage. Thanks guys - exactly what I was looking for!

C

Oh--- One more thing..... any ideas about creating motion blur to compensate for the high shutter speed I shot in to allow smoother slow motion? Possibly via after effects or something along those lines?

[Ethan Cooper]

Is all that VirtualDub stuff free??

Anyone make something like this for the Mac? All the cool free stuff is always on PC. Dang it.

[Carl Middleton]

Yup, VirtualDub is free. The closest to it in terms of functionality is MPEGStreamClip, that I've seen anyways. I'm in the middle of moving from my home computer (AspectHD, PPro2) to my office computer (8 core, intensity pro, 2x19" LCD, 8gb ram, 1TB external drives, etc beast - set it up yesterday!!!) and finally breaking down and learning Mac. The irony of this machine is it's currently SD only. =D I still do my personal projects in Cineform at home. :D

The filters is one benefit of the program - but it's also for file compression conversion, framerate conversion, etc etc. Unfortunately, it only works for files in AVI wrappers. :(

Good stuff tho.

C

[Ethan Cooper]

yes, but does it work on a Mac? hmmm... if it does, is there a way to get .mov's into a .avi wrapper?

On second thought, this is getting complicated. Anyone make a fairly cheap "easy button" way to do this on a Mac?

[Carl Middleton]

No Ethan, I'm sorry to say it's PC only. Possibly on the windows side of an intel mac, but other than that, no. That's what I meant by the closest thing is MPEGStreamClip, but I see now I was pretty vague :)

If you reallyreally needed to use something in VirtualDub, you could use Cineform - it can rewrap Cineform MOV to AVI and back almost instantly - no render, just a change to the wrapper.

It's really looking like I'll be installing a windows side to this Mac eventually - just for virtualdub, Cineform, and the like.

Or, another machine to get a cheap bluray burner like the LG as well.

C

[Ben Winter]

Adobe After FX does this automatically when you change the length to 200% in speed control.

[Peter Moretti]

TMPGEnc Xpress 4.0 will convert 60i into 60P. You can even output the frames as consecutive jpeg files instead of inside a video stream, if you so desire.

It's a great program, even removes pulldowns that don't have flags.

[Carl Middleton]

TMPGEnc is one thing I never got around to purchasing - and now I'm moving over to Mac for anything that pays. That is handy to know though! I'm just sticking with VirtualDub because I'm cheap. ;)

Ben,
I'm working with PPro2.0 and After Effects CS2. My footage is natively 60i, I have transcoded it all to 24p (deinterlace, slow down from 30 to 24) and even there it looks kinda stuttery. The purpose of the 60p through smart deinterlacing was to give a lot of lattitude for slow motion.

Unfortunately, shooting at a high shutter speed to accomplish this is biting back right now. I have the desired framerate and source footage (I can make any of it 30p or 60p depending on my goal) but it looks stuttery from the shutter. I will be editing inside PPro - any clues to managing blur on the individual clips, or should I wait and export the final into AFX to apply some sort of motion blur?

Thanks as always guys!