Trying to correct an annoying motion distortion issue on several clips

[Dennis St. John]

Would anyone have any idea how to fix interlaced motion distortion, as is evident on the (last few seconds) of this clip?

00384 on Vimeo

I've tried quite a few things, including changing codecs (have tried many), in addition to implementing a De-Interlace and Flicker Filter in FCP 7, all to no avail.

Thanks in advance for any help here!

[Paul Mailath]

it's actually all the way through - I 1st notice it at :010 - it appears to be a problem with interlacing but it's beyond me. perhaps if you give us more details - what it was shot on , frame rate etc , what NLE - someone wil be able to work it out

[Battle Vaughan]

That doesn't look like interlacing, it looks more like the kind of distortion you get in some cameras recording to mpeg, where the frame prediction gets thrown off by the motion. There is also situation called "rolling shutter" in cmos cameras that is also related to this.

I once saw a video from a cmos-mpeg camera several years ago, where the subject was in a home under construction, walking past vertical wall studs, and they wobbled almost comically as the system tried to figure out where the predictor-frames were supposed to land. It looked a lot like what you have.

[Battle Vaughan]

PS: there is a discussion of this at this site: ROLLINGSHUTTER | CMOS Motion Artefact Correction | The Foundry
They make an Adobe After Effects plugin which is designed to fix this kind of thing; haven't used it myself. There is a free trial if you have access to AAE. But the information on the page may be of use to you if, indeed, this is what the problem is. Best wishes!

[Dennis St. John]

Thank you very much for the comments, feedback and assistance everyone! I actually inherited this project and am currently assisting the producer with this issue to get the project done. I have absolutely no idea exactly what it was shot on, although I've been informed they were lead to believe it was some model of Sony. However, I can't really be sure. I personally own the Sony HVR-Z7U and have never seen anything like this before. I will certainly give the After Effects plugin a try. I do have Adobe After Effects CS6 by way of the Creative Cloud subscription. Thanks again so much for the assistance here! Much appreciated and I'll keep this thread posted on resolution.

[Shaun Roemich]

Is it possible it was shot with a spinning glass 35mm adaptor?

It LOOKS like a combination of a couple of things and spinning glass mixed with a bad shutter speed is what jumps to my mind...

[Battle Vaughan]

IIRC the video I saw was shot on a Sony HVR-A1U, prosumer camera popular about 6-7 years ago, if that's of any interest. CMOS single chip camera which as I recall it records to MPEG-1.

[Dennis St. John]

After further analysis, I really don't think this problem is rolling shutter. Rolling shutter produces more of a slanted video. This is more of an interlaced problem when objects start moving.

[Dennis St. John]

Adobe Premiere CS6 (which I also have) has a "Rolling Shutter Repair" filter. I'm going to give that a try.

[Battle Vaughan]

You may see rolling shutter as wobbles if the camera is hand-held. Correct, due to the cmos single-scan system, a stationary camera generally gives a "slanted" effect. But if the camera moves back and forth a little, well....

[Daniel Epstein]

Looks like field order is reversed. i have seen something like this on FCP when the footage was interpreted incorrectly. Try looking at the footage in Mpeg Stream clip or VLC to see if it is in the source you received. If the source is clean you can figure out if the import settings may be the cause. Good Luck

[Warren Kawamoto]

Dennis, is this raw footage from the camera? From the looks of it, this footage was converted incorrectly from the original format to whatever you have now. Hence, the interlace problem. The solution would be to acquire the original, raw data. If what you have now is an incorrectly processed file, I don't think it can be fixed in post.