Should I go progressive or interlaced?

[Matthew Weitz]

When I make a DVD, should I export all my movies with progressive or interlaced clips?

I want my DVD to look as good as possible on good equipment, yet at the same time be able to look good on a standard DVD player and TV. Like I have a HDTV with a progressive scan DVD player, yet my parents have a regular TV and DVD player.

If I make it progressive, will it not work or look good on regular TVs and DVD players?

[Rob Lohman]

Almost all movies coming out of Hollywood (on DVD) are progressive, do they
look bad on regular TV's? (no, I'm not talking about the look or the quality of
the movie, but compared to how it looks on a progressive scanning system).

Put on DVD what you shot/edit. So if your pipeline was interlaced put it as
interlaced on the DVD, otherwise go with progressive.

In the end it really should be a question of how do you want it to look.
Progressive seems to have a more "filmic" or fictional feel to it. Interlaced
often feels more "real".

Personally I always work in progressive, but I am mostly doing fictional work!

[Matthew Weitz]

Originally Posted by Rob Lohman

Put on DVD what you shot/edit. So if your pipeline was interlaced put it as
interlaced on the DVD, otherwise go with progressive.

My issue is the the film was shot in a progressive mode, while the behind the scenes footage was shot interlaced. Could that cause a problem?

[Rob Lohman]

No or it might. Depends. You have no problems if you do not mix the clips
in one movie. You can have interlaced extra's on the disc with a progressive
main movie. Just make sure you output to progressive or interlaced MPEG-2
and the DVD authoring program is set to progressive/interlaced on the right
clips as well (this make sure the proper flags get set to instruct the players
how to play it back).

If you mix and match interlaced and progressive in one movie (in the NLE, to
show for example the scene in the movie you are talking about in the behind
the scenes / extra's) you need to choose which form to output to. I'd say in
that case output to interlaced. This can have the consequence that your
progressive footage is "re-interlaced" by the program (depends on the NLE).

But that shouldn't really matter since it is behind the scenes / extra's footage.

[Matthew Weitz]

Originally Posted by Rob Lohman

If you mix and match interlaced and progressive in one movie (in the NLE, to
show for example the scene in the movie you are talking about in the behind
the scenes / extra's) you need to choose which form to output to. I'd say in
that case output to interlaced. This can have the consequence that your
progressive footage is "re-interlaced" by the program (depends on the NLE).

But that shouldn't really matter since it is behind the scenes / extra's footage.

Yeah, that's what I want to do. I use Premiere 6.02. How do I "output" progressive or interlaced? I just thought that it output in whatever form your original clips were filmed in. The only output options I see is the video codec to choose.

Should I take the film clips and interlace them?

Does Premiere Pro 1.5 support output configurations like progressive and interlaced?

[Rob Lohman]

I don't have Premiere, so I cannot help you with your settings. However, when
you do an export there should be a different tab or a button to get into
advanced settings to tell it if the footage is interlaced or progressive.

If this really is not possible you may need to set the project settings to
either progressive or interlaced (which if my memory servers me correctly
is only possible to do when creating a project, not when you already have
a project...)