Hello everybody.

I need some advice on how to do the following: in FCP 6, I have to soften the color artifacts from some footage shot with a Z1 in the Cineframe mode. I have seen that by appliying the deinterlace filter set to lower field, the ugly color artifacts are softened exactly the way I want to. The problem is that the image is slightly blurred.

So here's my question: is it possible to apply the deinterlace filter only to the chroma channels of the image, and leave the luminance untouched? I have tried superposing the same clip in the sequence, one with the antiflicker and the other clean, but the different composition modes don't include a mode to take the luminance from one clip over the chroma of the other (or viceversa).

By the way, Photoshop has some modes of layer composition that can do this, but exporting over 2 hours of HDV footage to still frames is out of question.

No one knows how to do this in FCP? with a plug-in filter or something?

By the way, what I really want is to blur the HDV color artifacts, is there any filter to do this?

Without seeing a still from actual footage it's hard to give suggestions however, it sounds like you're simply running into one of HDV's drawbacks, which is the lower color space of 4:2:0. It's that "0" portion of the codec that you can't make up for, the color information simply isn't there.

De-interlacing or any other filter can't compensate for a lack of chroma/luminance however in most situations you'll never see these artifacts in final output - that is unless your end-users/clients are going to be piecing apart your footage on critical broadcast monitors.

Post a still that exhibits the problem areas and more definitive suggestions - if any - can be made.

Is this what you are looking for?
http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials.html?id=58

Also the de-interlace filters in Final Cut are the absolute worst filters in my opinion. Just because they do a horrible job doesn't mean a good de-interlacing tool isn't sufficient. I interpret the footage in AE, but I think there are better tools out there.
And seriously, what is so bad about your HDV footage?? Please show a pic, I started a thread here where I provided pics, and expressed my disgust with HDV color artifacts. I forgot what was explained to me, but in the end I realized it was the viewer I was watching it on, and was not actually a problem when watching it on TV, etc. I felt like an idiot, cause I was complaining about nothing.