Sony TG-1 1080i Good workflow & de-interlacing~

[Steve Nunez]

Hey guys, while I have recently purchased a Canon HF100 and really like it's performance- I was intrigued by the TG-1 and purchased it. I was drawn to the TG-1 because of it's diminutive size and prospect for digiscoping with it's small lens (the HF100 isn't well suited for digiscoping.)

While I do like the video the TG-1 produces I don't like the interlacing with moving objects. And while Final Cut Studio does import it's AVCHD footage via transcode to AIC or ProRes, the interlacing stays intact- which is undesirable for the most part.

My FCP workflow for using TG-1 footage is as follows:
Insert MS Pro Duo card into a MS reader and drop the entire card icon into Roxio's Toast 9 Titanium's "Convert" screen as tabbed on the top right side (looks like an Apple TV icon) and change the preset at the bottom to Quicktime, Apple ProRes which will rapidly encode the TG-1's footage into ProRes files. You can then edit natively using FCP or if you want to remove the interlacing do this:
Use JES DeInterlacer (Google it) and use these settings to get rid of the interlacing:
In the "Input" tab make sure Progressive (in) is DESELECTED! then change the "Block Match Threshold" setting to 303, also select "Remove Jaggies". Then go to the "Project" tab and select "Deinterlace" and select "Use Bottom Field" and make sure all three selections to the right are selected......then go to the "Output" tab and select the codec you want the files to end up as; I've found ProRes to keep quality as near identical to the original footage and you can alternatively output to 1080p or 720p HDV modes for easier editing on less powerful machines.

You'll end up with beautiful "interlace-FREE" footage from the TG-1- and a workflow that should work really well on a Mac running FCP!

(I've worked really hard at tweaking just about every setting with JES Deinterlacer and I've found the ones I've posted to do the best job of deinterlacing the files- if you guys discover anything else- post your findings!)

[Tom Cadwalader]

Great info, this is very helpful.
Does Toast do a better job of conversion than letting FCP do it?

Tom

[Steve Nunez]

That's a good question- the biggest reason for letting Toast do it would be the alternative choices in codecs and adjustable parameters of which FCP would automate.
You'd also have the choice of de-interlacing the footage if so desired via Apple ProRes to Mpegstreamclip (which is an alternative workflow possibility.) as Toast will output to any codec Quicktime recognizes.
Hope this helps a bit.