In a recent post Boyd made the comment “I really like the results I get with the PDX-10 in 16:9; I often deinterlace the 60i footage with DVFilmMaker. The results look pretty remarkable on a 16:9 LCD when fed 480p component video from a progressive scan DVD player.”

I also really like the results I get with my PDX-10 in 16:9 also (it’s the only way I shoot now) when viewed on my new 20 inch LCD, and my questions have to do with workflow rather than the camera, so I hope this is OK to ask in this forum. So Boyd, how do you edit after deinterlacing? Why do you need to deinterlace if you are delivering your footage via a progressive scan DVD player which as I understand deinterlaces anyway. I’m kind of new at this so please forgive my ignorance.

I’m looking at two end points for viewing/showing my video art; one being DVD’s to be viewed on a TV and the other being HD projection in a Home Theatre type context, therefore two different renderings possibly!! I’m using Vegas 4 for editing and one of their people commented that for projection rendering to WMV9 is a very good option. Any experience with this?

Bottom line: I want to squeeze every last drop of quality I can out of the PDX-10 16:9 footage. Don’t hesitate to tell me to go post these questions elsewhere.

<<<-- Originally posted by John McCully: I hope this is OK to ask in this forum.

Hey, that's what we're here for!

<<<-- Originally posted by John McCully: So Boyd, how do you edit after deinterlacing? Why do you need to deinterlace if you are delivering your footage via a progressive scan DVD player

I'm working in Final Cut Pro on the Mac, so things may be a little different for you. You raise some good points, and I have to say that my approach isn't very scientific, I just experiment around until I come up with something I like. First I capture the footage from the camera, then I do some basic processing on it, such as color correcting. I recently did a lot of slow motion work, so I used the raw 60i footage for that because it seems to give better results. In that case I slowed the original down by as much as 25% and used FCP's "frame blending" option. After completing all this I then export to a Quicktime file compressed with the DV codec. Next I feed the files to DVFilmMaker for deinterlacing. Finally, I take these files and drop them back into Final Cut Pro and edit into the finished sequence.

Others are probably better at explaining the technical details, but I think there are various forms of deinterlacing at play here. First, the LCD monitor has to do some sort of deinterlacing itself since it isn't an interlaced display. The DVD player also does it. Whether it's the same as the adaptive deinterlacer I'm using (DVFilmMaker) I can't say. But I do believe I can see a difference between footage processed this way and raw 60i. For one thing, if I look at individual interlaced frames from the timeline the 60i footage is noticeably different with the expected "jaggies". But the deinterlaced frames are much sharper due to the motion differencing the software performs. All I can suggest is that you try it both ways and do some A/B comparisons of your own.

<<<-- Originally posted by John McCully: Bottom line: I want to squeeze every last drop of quality I can out of the PDX-10 16:9 footage.

Me too! That's what led me to this technique. We projected PDX-10 footage that was processed this way on a 40' wide screen with a 10,000 lumen Barco DLP projector for a recent opera. Everyone was impressed with the quality. Now again, the DLP projector is doing its own deinterlacing so I can't really say how much my approach helped. But I guess it just made me feel that I had done as much as possible to squeeze that last drop out ;-)

Boyd, thanks for your thoughts on this. I’ve been doing a bit of research on de-interlacing and seems like a lot of muck and mystery around this subject. One person made the comment that keeping the video in the interlaced state as long as possible was the way to go and let the DVD player, or the projector, do the de-interlacing gave the best results however I quite agree with you; A/B comparisons is the way to go. I haven’t got a projector as yet nor do I have access to one but great to read that PDX10 16:9 footage looks good when projected as you described.

Thanks again.