Hi,

Does anyone know if it's possible to render 60i Widescreen footage, in Vegas 5, into 24p Widescreen without it coming out blurry?

I tried rendering it with 2-3 pulldown and 2-3-3-2 pulldown and it comes out blurry. The reason I need to do it is that I have to render my whole project as one piece and I have a 60i segment sandwiched between the rest of the film that's shot as 24p Widescreen.

Anyone know what I can do?

Thank you,

Ruben

Blurry? Or with motion blur? Motion blur is *gonna* happen no matter what when you go from 60i to 24p. It pretty well has to, or you're going to see disjointed movement. If you can post a still so we can better get an idea of what you're seeing?
If you're shooting 60i and not managing the camera as though it was 24p, I'd expect to see a lot of motion blur. You've got to manage the camera as 24p if you want decent 24p output, even though you don't have a 24p cam.

Douglas,

It is definitely "blurry", not "motion blur", as the whole scene is that way, not just when there's motion.

Also, it is a 24p camera. It's the Panasonic DVX-100A. The whole film, except one scene was shot as 24p Anamorphic Widescreen. One scene, in the middle of the film, was shot by a different DP, who was not as familiar with the camera, and had the setting as 60i Widescreen. There is my problem. How do I render the 60i scene as 24p in a single project so there's no "blur" in the one scene?

Thank you,

Ruben

If I'm understanding you correctly, the 60i shows no blur when viewed in 60i, but it shows blur when viewed in 24p? Unless you're looking at a 60i clip in a 23.97 project, and haven't prerendered or rendered it to Best yet, so you can see what it actually looks like. It's possible you're seeing the resample during preview, but once you render, this goes away.
Does this help narrow it down?
If there is blur in the 60i, it will only appear worse in 24p. If it is a sharp image in 60i, it should appear sharp but contain motion blur in 24p.

The original 60i footage is clear. It is only blurry after I render it as 24p. It's blurry in the preview, as it's rendering, and it's blurry in the final rendered scene as 24p.

What do you think?

I think something is seriously messed up, somewhere.
What happens when you convert that 60i clip to 24p in a separate project and then insert that clip into your 24p project?

When I do that, the scene looks blurry on the timeline, and then when I render the whole project as 24p Widescreen, that scene is still blurry.

Perhaps if you post a still of the 60i, then post the same frame as a 24p render, it might help us track down the issue.

Douglas,

Unfortunately, it says at the bottom left, in the "Posting Rules", that I can't post attachments, even though in my profile I selected, "Show Images (including attached images and images in [IMG] code)." Is there a way to attach photos that I'm not aware of?

Ruben

Douglas,

I couldn't send you an attachment here so I emailed the two photos to:

info / at/ sundancemediagroup /dot/ com

I hope you got it.

Ruben

Well, for some reason, now I can send attachments, so here they are.

Ruben

That looks like a pretty typical conversion, Reuben.

Unfortunately, then I can't use the conversion if I'm going to lose that much resolution (it's very noticeable if one clicks on those icons and sees it blown up...and especially noticeable when I render the whole project together and view it on a DVD.)

So, I guess what I have to do is what I was trying to solve earlier...to leave the 60i footage as a separate segment form the 24p footage (with a little Vegas "Magic Bullet" look added in...which makes it look quite nice, actually.) But then I still have the problem that, when I go to DVDA2, and if I put them in as three separate segments, then if I use the "End Action", I'll get pauses between the segments...and if I use the "Music Compilation" (which works pretty good, as far as no pauses) I get the single black frame between the second and third segments.

Thinking about it now, I'm thinking that the black frame comes between the 2nd segment (which is the smaller 60i scene) and the third segment (which is the very large 24p rest of the film segment), but there's no black frame between the 1st very large 24p segment and the smaller 60i segment. Could that be because DVDA2 is pausing to read the upcoming info from the large 24p segment, and that gives it the black frame...and yet there's no black frames between the 1st and 2nd segment because the 60i scene is much smaller (only 6 minutes) and then it's read much quicker?

What do you think?

(Sorry for the long message. I just wanted to get all the information out there. Thank you.)

To be honest, I really don't see that much of a difference. Where are you seeing the really objectionable areas?

It's a tiny bit less sharp, but you might be able just to put a little bit of a sharpening mask on it.

Ruben, it's SD, it's not going to stand being blown up very well anyway.
As David mentioned, it looks perfectly normal to me.
You might try unsharp masking, and denoising...

I tried Sharpening it (at various levels) and it looks pretty good and seems to match the rest of the film...on a regular TV. But then I check the Sharpened scene on a widescreen TV and it looked terrible. It had a "choppy/broken edges" quality to everything...really stood out differently from the rest of the film.

Reshooting is not an option, since the actors and location are not available, and I can't cut the scene out because it is to integral to the storyline.

I'm really at a loss as to what to do. I've been working to solve this problem for months now and have tried everything I can think of.

Does anything else come to mind? Is there a way to avoid or cut out that black frame in DVDA2? Because I could live with the "Magic Bullet" look...that looks ok on the big screen, but the "Sharpenened" scene doesn't.

Thank you,

Ruben

I tried Sharpening it (at various levels) and it looks pretty good and seems to match the rest of the film...on a regular TV. But then I check the Sharpened scene on a widescreen TV and it looked terrible. It had a "choppy/broken edges" quality to everything...really stood out differently from the rest of the film.

Reshooting is not an option, since the actors and location are not available, and I can't cut the scene out because it is to integral to the storyline.

I'm really at a loss as to what to do. I've been working to solve this problem for months now and have tried everything I can think of.

Does anything else come to mind? Is there a way to avoid or cut out that black frame in DVDA2? Because I could live with the "Magic Bullet" look...that looks ok on the big screen, but the "Sharpenened" scene doesn't.

Thank you,

Ruben

Your comment makes no sense. The picture is fine on a "regular tv" but not on a widescreen? What this tells me is you're upsampling from SD to HD, and that just isn't gonna look good, almost no matter what, without some serious processing preparation.
Also, I don't know what you mean by "black frame."
You could...Use HDAnywhere in AE and upsample there, sharpen, process, whatever, and then downconvert it back to SD for your project. That might work. Do your processing while viewing on your HD screen, that might help you find the right setting as well. Since we can't see the other images, all we have to judge by is the frame you posted, which looks pretty normal to us. Maybe post other images?

Douglas,

I appreciate you and David trying to help me. I'm sorry if I didn't make sense in the last post. By "regular TV" I mean my regular Sony TV at home which is 32" wide. By "widescreen TV" I meant that I went elsewhere viewed the DVD on a 50" screen and that's where I saw the "choppy/broken" look.

I don't know what "upsampling from SD to HD" means.

Regarding the "black frame", I mean that, when I bring the 3 separate segments (two 24p's with a 60i inbetween) to DVDA2, they flow nicely without pauses but there is a brief "black frame" (or a "no video" frame) between the 2nd and 3rd segment, which isn't there between the 1st and 2nd segments. I don't know of any other way to explain it.

Can you tell me a little more about the "unsharp masking, and denoising..." you mentioned? I tried "sharpening" but I'm not familiar with unsharp masking and denoising.

Thank you,

Ruben

several observations

yes the 24p is noticably more blurry than the original. in vegas i would expect deinterlacing to introduce either a type of ghosting when using frame blending or a vertical blurring when using interpolate - as methods of deinterlacing. although i am not quite sure what happens in this type of pulldown. probably interpolation. in which case this add blur everywhere, regardless of motion. so what you see is not surprising really.

try outputting to 30p and see if the same thing happens. i bet it does.

i suspect using software with a more sophisticated deinterlacing method is the solution to your problem.

Thank you for your input, Mauritius. I'm currently using Vegas and am not able to get a new editing program and learn it.

Douglas, any tips on the "unsharp masking and denoising"?

Thank you,

Ruben

Thank you for your input, Mauritius. I'm currently using Vegas and am not able to get a new editing program and learn it.

Douglas, any tips on the "unsharp masking and denoising"?

Thank you,

Ruben

your welcome

unsharp masking will not restore the image to it's original caus the information is lost (every other line is missing and has been 'invented') but it will make the image appear more sharp. when you set the radius (i think that's what it's called in vegas) you want it to be roughly the size of the blur - which you know is 2 pixels (due to interpolating every other line).

denoising is going to introduce further blur. i wouldn't have thought noise is your problem. infact any kind of blur reduces noise so the 24p should be LESS noisy than the 60i version. however, what happens when you use unsharp mask is you amplify noise too, so if it looks like a problem after sharpening, try denoising. otherwise stay well clear of it.