Editing Progressive vs Interlace

[Desmond Sukotjo]

Hi.
Anyone knows which workflow is better?
I shot 1440x1080 50i and want to have the finish movie on Blu-ray 24P.

Is better to deinterlace my 50i footage to 24P before EDIT (then edit in 24P timelime)
or
To Edit my interlace 50i footage (in 50i timeline) and render out as 50i finish movie, then deinterlace the 50i finish movie to 24P.

Please help.
Thanks

[David Newman]

I generally favor deinterlace and converting to 24p first, then edit that. The only exception is for any 50i to 50p as 2X slow motion, those elements capture as 50i and run thru After Effect to generate 24p slow motion.

[Hugh Mobley]

I ended, after alot of trial and error, shooting 1080 60i, capturing with cineform as high, converting to avi deinterlaced, then editing 29.97 progressive, which has given me the best results when output to mpeg4 or dvd, I have rendered in Vegas as blue ray and I can play on computer but can't burn Blueray dvd yet, I have changed it 24 p on my time line, but not too often. The audio is always alittle off, why don't you try a couple of 10 15 sec clips rendered out to see what works the best.

[Robert Young]

Hugh
I'm curious as to why you shoot in 60i then deinterlace for 30p editing, rather than shooting 30p to begin with?
Thanks

[Hugh Mobley]

you need to go out and shoot both and render them out and see, I am not happy with shooting 24 or 30p, (unless it is a very controlled situation)never got good results until one day I just shot some 1080 60i footage and tried it, I have tried virtualdub to deinterlace, also, but didn't like it. So now I just shoot straight 1080 60i and run it thru cineform into vegas 8 as 29.97 progressive and out to mpeg4 at 3mbps or higher. I have clips under sony V1 and overland/underwater, you could check them out. When I shot 24p I was never happy with it. Vertical and horizontal lines were a problem as well as panning or if subject was moving. On my site some of the early clips were 24p, the later ones were 1080i into progressive. www.hughmobley.com.

[Robert Young]

I'm glad to hear what you have to say about this topic. I too have been disappointed shooting 24p & 30p for various reasons. I always felt a little embarassed about it, like I'm the odd man out. It's good to have some company.
1080 60i seems pretty bulletproof to me, particularly EX1 1080i HQ (astonishing, actually), but I have been editing in 1080i and deinterlacing at a later stage if needed for the delivery format. I never thought about letting Cineform deinterlace it on capture. I too have found that Cineform seems to do the best job of deinterlacing within the CF codec. I was getting the very best DVD image quality by using the Cineform compressor to downsize HDV 1080i CFHD to CF 720p, then transcoding to m2v.
I'll check out your site. Thanks!

[Desmond Sukotjo]

Thank you for replying.

So I run a test. Using Prospect HD.

Video converted from 50i to 24P = blurring and speed was slowed down, everything appear become slow mo.

Video converted from 50i to 25P = blurring motion, but normal speed.

This is my first time looking at a converted video to 24P, does it suppose to appear as slowmo?

David what do you mean by your statement?
"The only exception is for any 50i to 50p as 2X slow motion, those elements capture as 50i and run thru After Effect to generate 24p slow motion."

"I generally favor deinterlace and converting to 24p first, then edit that."
Would you mind explaining a little bit more, why do you like it that way?

Hugh Mobley.
So how did you convert your finish movie from 29.97 Progressive to 24P? Does it appear to be slowmo?

[Hugh Mobley]

you missed the point, here is what I do, bear in mind I use vegas and shoot a sony hvr v1, I shoot 1080i, capturing with cineform is avi 29.97 de-interlaced, set to high, only. It sounds like you were letting cineform change to 24p, no, this is done in the nle, in my case my captured avi is 1080i deinterlaced, when it hits my timeline, the timeline is set for, in my case, 29.97 progressive. If I shot 24p in my camera then I would capture in cineform as 24p with pulldown removed, but thats not it. I am using the nle to change 1080i deinterlaced to progressive. when I render to mpeg 4 I normally go cbr 3mbps progressive. dvd's are mpeg2 defaulted mbps (6-9) progressive. you could see 24p 30p and then the current way I do things here, www.hughmobley.com
24p is snell hike 30p is queen anne and then any arboretum, sailing or newport as mpeg4, there is a difference, a big difference, snell and queen anne suck as far as I am concerned, the arboretum, sailing, newport clips are getting closer to being acceptable

[Desmond Sukotjo]

Hugh.
Yes I used HDLink ProspectHD to convert my Z1 footage 1440x1080 50i to 1920x1080 24P. That is I turn on the option in the HDLink as follow:

- Quality: High
- Frame Format: Interlace (Source).
- Rate Change: 25P to 24P (-4%).
- Maintain Audio Pitch.
- De-Interlace 1080i and DV sources.
- Resize Video: 1920x1080.

"...I shoot 1080i, capturing with cineform is avi 29.97 de-interlaced, set to high, only..."
So then you're editing in 29.97 Progressive timeline.

My finish movie is to be on Blu-ray disc 1920x1080 24P. So is it better to do it your way? De-interlace the movie during capture then edit along using progressive timeline (project) in NLE. End up with a progressive finish movie then convert the 25P finish movie to 24P to be encoded for mpeg2 blu-ray.

Is it bad to let cineform HDLink to convert the 50i to 24P and edit along using 24P timeline (project) in NLE?

This is my first time converting movie to 24P and it looks odd to me the way the footage became blurring and a bit of slowmo. Or that the way it should be?

[David Newman]

Originally Posted by Desmond Sukotjo

Is it bad to let cineform HDLink to convert the 50i to 24P and edit along using 24P timeline (project) in NLE?

This is my first time converting movie to 24P and it looks odd to me the way the footage became blurring and a bit of slowmo. Or that the way it should be?

No it is bad, and it is certainly convenient, but deinterlacing is not ideal, as interlace itself is the wrong way to capture a progressive image. Every products deinterlacer will do something slightly different. The CineForm deinterlacer is optimized towards resolution, but with more motion blur (which can help fight strobing that occurs in 24p.) The 4% slow down is normal, and the best way to convert 50i to 24p.

[Hugh Mobley]

David, I am not not shooting progressive, gave that up a while ago when filming outdoors etc, only use it once in a while, so cineform is just de interlacing a 1080i clip, Vegas could do it but cineform does it better. Virtual dub takes too long and files are huge.All I am doing is bring a 1080i clip thru cineform into vegas and letting vegas change it to progressive. I like the results

[Stephen Armour]

Originally Posted by Robert Young

Hugh
I'm curious as to why you shoot in 60i then deinterlace for 30p editing, rather than shooting 30p to begin with?
Thanks

Robert, our experience and workflow is the same with PP3 and final results are overall better: Shoot 60i, CF up-vert and deinterlace to 1920x1080p for editing, then save masters in the square-pixel, progressive format for a variety of outputs.

Seems to give the best overall output possible from anamorphic HDV cams, at least with Sony.

We might be singing a different tune though, when we switch to SDI or something like the EX3...

[Desmond Sukotjo]

So what is 23.976p vs. 24p?

Is blu-ray disc a 24p or 23.976p?

[Stephen Armour]

Blu-ray is 24p native. See the article below for lots of info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24p

[David Newman]

As the wikipedia article points out, 24p is 23.976p in NTSC countries. A simplification, but stick with 23.976.