I want to use my FX1 along with my Canon XL2, with the XL2 shooting in 30p and 24p.Everyone has suggested to shoot the FX1 in 60i and later de interlace. We edit with PPro, and apparently its' de interlacer isn't great. It was suggested to go with either magic Bullett or after effects.
I'd like to hear what others are doing in this situation.
Bruce S. Yarock

I deinterlace with ppro. Magic Bullet is better, bit 30x slower.

I've only used it with standard definition, but DVfilm Maker is another option. They have a free demo you can try: http://www.dvfilm.com/maker/

I've used VirtualDub to deinterlace 60i to 60p for slow motion stuff. You can find info near the bottom at the following link:

http://www.100fps.com/

Bill

Procoder has a good deinterlacer.

And .... if you are familiar with or willing to learn avisysnth scripts then some of the free filters like LeakkernelDeint and MVBob are actually better than the commercial tools, IMHO.

Resizer 2.0 from Digital Anarchy has a very good de-interlacer included.

I've used VirtualDub to deinterlace 60i to 60p for slow motion stuff. You can find info near the bottom at the following link:

http://www.100fps.com/

Bill

I second the VirtualDub option. It's free, you can export to a lossless codec if you have one installed, and there's a (free) "Smart Deinterlace" filter that works very well and has several blending & interpolation options.

Did I mention it's free?

HTH,
Matt

Mikko,
Why do you say that magic bullett is better? What does it do that's better?
I have Ppro, and tried de interlacing, but didn't vreally notice any difference.

Boyd,
That company looks interesting. Ash greyson told me that the owner is the guy that holds the 24p patent. Wha's your experience with the program?

Thanks to everyone else also for info.
Bruce S. yarock

Mikko,
Why do you say that magic bullett is better? What does it do that's better?
I have Ppro, and tried de interlacing, but didn't vreally notice any difference.

Boyd,
That company looks interesting. Ash greyson told me that the owner is the guy that holds the 24p patent. Wha's your experience with the program?

Thanks to everyone else also for info.
Bruce S. yarock

Im not sure about the patent, unless he is part of the 24p company that everyone pays royalties too. But different programs hold quality, when you deinterlace you loose resolution. So different programs are designed to keep more resolution than others.

When I hit pause on an FX1 camcorder and see a smooth picture that looks like a normal still photo, has the camcorder temporarily deinterlaced the picture--and thus am I seeing a lower resolution picture? Or... what...? I've read the article and I'm still after all this time embarrassed and confused about why deinterlacing reduces res...

Also the 2001 article linked above said that Bobbing and Weaving was the best way to deinterlace if you could afford it. Are there affordable Bobbing and Weaving programs now?

When I hit pause on an FX1 camcorder and see a smooth picture that looks like a normal still photo, has the camcorder temporarily deinterlaced the picture--and thus am I seeing a lower resolution picture? Or... what...? I've read the article and I'm still after all this time embarrassed and confused about why deinterlacing reduces res...

Also the 2001 article linked above said that Bobbing and Weaving was the best way to deinterlace if you could afford it. Are there affordable Bobbing and Weaving programs now?


Betsy,
Perhaps an illustration. I've attached a frame capture from before and after deinterlacing. I use VirtualDub with the SmartDeinterlace filter. I'm not sure how the various cameras handle pauses on the LCD screen, but TVs are generally interlaced--I'd expect to see a more-or-less smooth picture when pausing FX1 while playing on TV, since most (affordable?) TVs are interlaced. Perhaps somebody more technical could offer a better explanation.

Anyhow, you will lose some picture information because you are joining two different fields that were taken at two distinct points in time. Each field contains only half a picture. Instead of taking 30 full-blown pictures per second, you're taking 60 pictures (fields) with half the picture missing--alternating halves are taken so two halves comprise 1 frame. Right, so you probably already know that. So, add the two fields together and you get a frame--but you gotta guess at how the two fields fit together correctly, since they *are* two different points in time. That's where you're losing resolution--you have to guess at how the two different points in time should be put together to represent 1 point in time (where the final 1 point in time is twice as long as either of the the original points alone).

The left image in the attached capture represents two fields of one frame being exported to a single image, with no interpolation, blending, bobbing, or weaving. The right image has been through VirtualDub (and Color Finesse, too...). You can see some blur if you look closely (or even not too closely--it's pretty high motion). Putting the two fields together means VirtualDub had to make up some information to try to get the two fields to look decent as one progressive frame.


Hope this doesn't provide additional confusion....

Matt

"So, add the two fields together and you get a frame--but you gotta guess at how the two fields fit together correctly, since they *are* two different points in time. That's where you're losing resolution--you have to guess at how the two different points in time should be put together to represent 1 point in time (where the final 1 point in time is twice as long as either of the the original points alone)."

Thanks Matt:) So somewhere in the confusion of figuring out which frame goes with which frame, some information is lost?

You can shoot in 60i with 30f and get a very similar look to 30p. For Final Cut Pro users, try out www.nattress.com -- his deinterlacers are nice.

heath

Unfortunately 30 fps doesn't do me much good since J-Ro and I are going for the film look and the last camera we had was that JVC HD-1 which did 30p--which was still enough fps to make it look video-y.

Mikko,
Why do you say that magic bullett is better? What does it do that's better?
I have Ppro, and tried de interlacing, but didn't vreally notice any difference.


It actually tries to estimate motion. Ppro doesn't, but that's why it's a lot faster than magic bullet. You can see it when there are horizontal lines, magic bullet deinterlacer makes them look better than premieres.

Personally, I still wouldn't use magic bullet as the time difference/quality isn't in its favor.

With the Z1, shoot in 50i with CF25, then just conform to 24p in whichever NLE you use.

FX1, try some filters from www.dvfilm.com/maker or www.nattress.com or Magic Bullet.

hwm

Unfortunately 30 fps doesn't do me much good since J-Ro and I are going for the film look and the last camera we had was that JVC HD-1 which did 30p--which was still enough fps to make it look video-y.

Betsy,
re your first response to me, yeah, that's about right. Can't deinterlace without losing some information.

re getting the "film look", there's a different forum dedicated to that which includes topics about footage FX1 can take. If you had a Z1 it would probably be a bit easier (there's a trick, I hear, of shooting at 50i, which makes the math easier), but I think your best bet is going to be to shoot at 60i and use something like DVFilm Maker or Magic Bullet. VirtualDub can do a great deinterlace, but I haven't tried using it to go to 24p. I did try a demo of DVFilm Maker, and the result looked OK on my computer but real stuttery on my TV. Dunno, maybe I did something wrong. Anyhow, everybody will tell you that lighting, dialog, camera work, and creative editing/color correction are just as if not more important than frame rate, for achieving a film look. Check out the Film Look topic, though, at http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/forumdisplay.php?f=34. It's a topic that spans more than just FX1's 60i.

HTH,
Matt

Dear Matt, thanks we're doing all that other stuff to get the film look too but sometimes artists (like chefs who just have to have a certain spice) know what they want and what we want for our "stew" is a certain fps (Roger Ebert speaks eloquently on why 24fps hits a physiological/neural sweet spot for many viewers)--and we're pretty excellent at the lighting, mis en scene, etc.--it's just the math of interlacing that baffles me. Wouldn't have brought up that "film look" can of worms in this forum except to questions of why 30p wouldn't work in my case. And yes, mathmatically it is supposedly much easier to convert when you shoot 50i, which is why we got the FX1e, not the US version. As for CF25, that's always looked too blurry to me--feel safer shooting 50i, doing the best available deinterlacer in post and that way if five years down the line a better deinterlacing solution arises we could go back and remaster our "masterpiece"--which we couldn't do if we did the de-interlace in-camera.

I'm a firm believer that 24p is only part of the film look equation. You also have lighting, certain camera moves seen more in films than TV, depth of field and more that all lend to the film look.

heath

Absolutely. They're all important.

I strongly believe that what people perceive to be "the film look" will soon be the old look as theaters go digital. For me to make my video choppy, I have to ignore the logic of my brain.

No, I believe that the right look for the particular movie could be anything. Black and White, color, videoy, filmic, it all depends. It gets unfortunate to focus on just one look for the future. As for whether a faster frame rate is as good at easing the audience into their suspension of disbelief and into their acceptance of dramatic edits I hope so but only time will tell. Douglas Trumbell tried it years ago, all excited, and loathed the results.

Because movies, for the most part, are 24p, that will probably not change.

heath

No, I believe that the right look for the particular movie could be anything. Black and White, color, videoy, filmic, it all depends. It gets unfortunate to focus on just one look for the future. As for whether a faster frame rate is as good at easing the audience into their suspension of disbelief and into their acceptance of dramatic edits I hope so but only time will tell. Douglas Trumbell tried it years ago, all excited, and loathed the results.

So my question to primarily Betsy but anyone who wants go chime in is welcomed;
(this is not intended to be baiting and I realize that it's getting a little of topic but did not want to start another thread)

The question: given all the above posts, especially taking into account yours Betsy, and I'm also assuming that your primary work is in the genre of film and documentary, why did you opt in for sony hdv as opposed to native 24p i.e. dvx100, xl2, hvx200. Given that this thread has talked about work flow in order to de-interlace and get to 224/25p why not go there initially?

btw - As an recent Z1U buyer and user, I guess lately (especialy after reading all of the posts in this and the other forums about the magic of 24p) I've been asking myself the same thing. As someone new to dv production and video and shooting, I needed a camera to start shooting interviews and short documentary footage - long form is one place that I would like to head soon.

Here's something I think is relevant to what you're wondering:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=71143

Feel free to post there so we can keep this particular thread on topic.

heath

Thank you Heath,

I had read that thread a few times actually and I do find it really interesting.
Most interesting is what you can do with light especially as it relates to
hd/hdv.

Thanks for the info and will look into posting a question or comment there.

dhg

Hope to hear from you on that subject there and hope to hear de-interlacing-related questions here.

hwm

I am also at the point where I need to deinterlace. I am just lookingfor the easiest software package for this.

Most NLEs have great ones built in, but I like www.nattress.com for Mac and I've enjoyed using www.dvfilm.com/maker for both Mac and PC.

heath