VEGAS: Deinterlace VS "Progressive"

[Hugh DiMauro]

Hi guys. I have a question. I am hot and heavily involved in wedding videography (to support my equipment habit) and have shot weddings with my Sony DCR TRV 20 camcorder (megapixel but only 1 ccd and no "frame" or progressive mode) and my XL1s. The Sony is so comfortable to use easy to maneuver and I get GREAT shots. The Canon is lens heavy and my back ached one hour into the shoot but I shoot in frame mode and get excellent freeze frames on Vegas 4.0 for special effects shots.

Can somebody walk me through the correct method of deinterlacing my Sony footage on Vegas 4.0 so I can use that camera and still be able to freeze frame shots for special efects?

The Canon is breakng my back (and also, one drunk guest grabbed and shook the XL1s lens during one of my shots. I am afraid of the wear and tear it might cost. I could have killed him).

Oh and by the way, will deinterlacing footage in Vegas reduce picture quality?

[Rob Lohman]

De-interlacing will almost always reduce your quality/resolution.
If it is a still why not do it in Photoshop if you have that? I heard
that PS does excellent de-interlacing.

[Glenn Chan]

2 fields make up one frame. An interlaced camera captures a field every 1/60th of a second and a progressive camera (the Canon in frame mode is kind of like a progressive camera) will capture 2 fields every 1/30th of a second (1/29.97 to be precise).

Photoshop discards one field and makes up the other field either by duplication or interpolation (averaging). Pretty basic from what I see. revisionfx.com sells a de-interlacing filter that does a better job than photoshop I believe (not sure). They don't sell filters for Vegas, but they do for After Effects. You won't really need it though.

[David Mintzer]

Is this for still captures or do you want to deinterlace the whole video? For stills, just capture the frame in Vegas, save it as a PNG, take it into Photoshohp doctor it and then deinterlace it and bring it back into Vegas.

If your goal is to deinterlace footage shot in 1/60 then you would probably do well using a program like dvfilmaker---very reasonably priced and does a good job.

[Randall Campbell]

To deinterlace your footage in Vegas, simply change the project video properties' field-order to None (Progressive). For the Deinterlace Method, you have two choices Blend Fields and Interpolate Fields. Interpolate Fields gives a sharper result, but may result in unwanted artifacts. Blend Fields is softer but may look better.

Try both with your preview window set to at least Good quality and see which looks the best to you.

To Render to progressive mode, make sure that the field order in the template you select is set to None (progressive).

Randall

[Hugh DiMauro]

Thank you all for the advice but what might suit me best is Randall's idea. So then it's as simple as that? Setting the field order properties to NONE (progressive) just automatically de-interlaces? No other bells and whistles? I worried about doing that because I thought setting to NONE was only if I was capturing and editing 30p. I will give it a try. Just seems oversimplified since companies make complicated programs to de-interlace and Vegas doesn't even mention it's ability to de-interlace. I will give it a try.

[Glenn Chan]

You could shoot in frame mode on the Canon if you wanted to. Advantages would be that you don't have to de-interlace in post (stills from video will not flicker or have motion artifacts) and you will get increase vertical resolution. The downside is that the motion looks worse. It would look more like film though, but not exactly like film. Some people like film look motion, others don't. It's a subjective thing.

[Peter Moore]

Hugh,

In Vegas, also set deinterlace mode to "blend fields" in addition to setting your field order to none (progressive). I deinterlaced some 60i footage from a Sony PD150 to 30p for rotoscoping and the results were just fine.

The way interpolate fields works is that it simply combines the two fields, and when there's motion, the parts that are moving look blocky. Blend fields makes motion look slightly blurry, but that better mimics the appearance of true 30p since fast motion is more blurry as your framerate decreases, so all things considered blend fields is usually the way to go.

But yes, that's all there is to it. Much easier than any other program!

[Randall Campbell]

Hugh,

As Peter said, it is just that simple. That is one of the great things about Vegas, it can do a lot fairly simply once you know how to do it.

As Peter said, Blend Fields will make the video a bit softer since basically it takes the lines from two fields and mixes them 50/50. As I mentioned you can also try Interpolate Fields which may or may not look better.

I used to shoot on a PD150 and would often deinterlace via Vegas. I now shoot with a DVX-100 in 24p, so this is no longer an issue for me.

Good luck,

Randall

[Hugh DiMauro]

Now, on another post, a fellow filmmaker described the "field order" setting as something you MATCH to the captured video. For example, the way I understood it, if you capture 60i footage, then you MUST set the field order to lower or upper whether or not you want to deinterlace when rendering. And, as always when wanting to deinterlace, deinterlace method is always set to BLEND or interpolate.

So, may I get a clarification on this? With interlaced video, do I always need to insure the field order is set to lower or upper?

[Hugh DiMauro]

Hey Edward:

Can you clarify my last question? I can't seem to get a definitive answer.

[Edward Troxel]

I shoot DV on a Canon XL1 in standard mode. I capture in a standard method. Everything I have is lower field first (labeled as such after capture automatically and I start all now projects that way).

I've never had a need to do anything but lower field first which is what your TV expects anyway.

[Bill Ravens]

lower field first is the NTSC standard.
upper field first is the PAL standard.
confusing the two will produce horrible results.
i always shoot my XL1s in frame mode. the de-interlaced results never show motion artifacts and the rez is a push with de-interlacing normal motion. it looks very much like film.
Donald Graft(the plugin filter author for VirtualDub) offers a pretty nice(and simple) still image de-interlacer for free. look in www.neuron2.net

[Hugh DiMauro]

Thanks for your replies, but... I must be having a senior moment. Maybe I phrased my question incorrectly. Here goes:

1) I capture interlaced footage.
2) I want to edit my movie then deinterlace it.
3) In project properties, do I set the field order to "lower" because my original captured footage is interlaced -OR- do I change the field order to "progressive" because my GOAL is to later deinterlace during render?

In other words, if I read Mr. Troxel's message correctly, Vegas automatically reads the footage and sets the field order to lower which leads me to believe that changing the field order at this stage has nothing to do with deinterlacing my footage for later?

Did I get that right? PLease don't shoot me.

The reason I ask this question so many times is because some colleagues instruct me to change the field order to NONE in project properties while another colleague tells me to leave it at LOWER FIELD FIRST because at this stage the program only wants to know what I've captured. Here is his excerpt:

<<60i to 30 progressive ..
there are different ways to get progressive ..
1) you can set up your project (VEG) properties as Progressive ( field order NONE) .. and then choose BLEND as deinterlace method... when you render double check the field order ( none)

2) your project properties is interlace ... then when you render you change field order to NONE .. but it will not tell you which deinterlace method you choose .. so before you render - check project properties to make sure it is BLEND.

3) you can also Print to tape from Time line - again you can go into custom and choose progressive etc . Vegas will have to render every frame from interlace to progressive ...>>


Here's another excerpt:

<<All footage is 30 frames (or 25 if you are in PAL land) per second
for an editor. Any. However, they can INTERPRET the footage
as being 60i, 50i, 30p or 25p (or 24p if you have such a camera).

It is ALL about INTERPRETING the footage. All CURRENT streams
are ALWAYS saved as 30 or 25 FRAMES a second in a DV stream
(even for 24p footage).

That being said, you must tell the application what to do with
your footage. Some people already gave some excellent advice
when you want to convert your footage from interlaced to
progressive.

MAKE SURE that all your settings are CORRECT and the SAME.
This means: the project settings, the footage settings AND
the OUTPUT settings!! (which a lot of people seem to forget
about).

I always shoot in frame mode and thus have the Vegas project
set to 25p (I'm in PAL land). My clips are automatically imported
as 25p so I don't need to change anything here. HOWEVER,
my export defaults to 50i which I need to change to 25p.

If you want to edit interlaced make sure everything is set
to 60i or 50i (PAL).

I hope this explained it a bit more.>>

So you see why I am a bit confused.

[Bill Ravens]

I beleive you can select either <none(progressive scan)> or <lower field first> if you want to de-interlace. However, you MUST select the de-interlace method as either <blend> or <interpolate>.