"cinema look"

[qfwfq 0]

Hi,

 

I have a question regarding plugins such as Red Giant's Magic Bullet Frame that will deinterlace footage to give you that "filmic" progressive look.

 

My understanding is that for projects intended, say, for DVD, deinterlacing is not a good idea because it looks crappy on TV sets. So is it a good idea to use such plugins on interlaced material meant for DVD? And what are typical target formats for these plugins (video to celluloid conversion?)

 

Thanks for your input

 

Greg

[C.Smith 0]

And what are typical target formats for these plugins (video to celluloid conversion?)

 

People who are too cheap to shoot on film

[Haley 0]

People who are too cheap to shoot on film

ohh burned!

[qfwfq 0]

OK, OK... Very funny... Seriously though. If you're doing something for DVD, should you stay clear of this?

[C.Smith 0]

I've never heard of a problem with deinterlaced footage on DVDs. It's no different than shooting film (which is naturally progressive) and putting that on DVDs. The only thing I can think of is if the deinterlacing screwed up a field order somehow. Or tried to do a pullup to create 24fps which can give you problems when you do the 3:2 pulldown to 29.97 if the fields aren't set correctly either in the conversion or in the Mpeg2 encoder.

 

For example, half of the spots on my reel we rolled the cameras at 24fps and the other half 30fps. When we switched DVD encoders I started getting reports of "choppy motion" on the reels. I asked which spots and they mentioned the spots that happened to be all shot 24fps. So that's how I realized that the field order was reversed in the DVD encoder. 30fps won't show that because there was one film frame per video frame so even though the fields were reversed, it didn't matter because both fields had the same image.

 

My advice in general is if you're going to shoot video for DVD/TV then shoot 29.97 Progressive in the first place. 24fps isn't going to give you a magical film look, it's NOT shooting interlaced which is giving you a more filmic motion. 24 should only be used for theaters or if you want to save money on film stock when shooting. But if you do shoot 24, or use MBS to do a de-interlace to 24 then you have to be aware of the correct field order all the way to the DVD.

 

Personally if I'm not doing post on whatever I shoot I'll roll 24 to save us money on the shoot. If I'm doing post myself I'll roll 30fps so I don't have to jack with 3:2 pulldown removal when doing online work. So I can't imagine why you'd want to de-interlace to 24 for TV.

Edited June 26, 2008 by C.Smith

[qfwfq 0]

Thanks for the insight. The reason I'm asking is because a client has films distributed on DVD which need to be enhanced. It's interlaced stuff. Color correction already helps a lot, but I was just wondering if going progressive would help even more. Must admit I've done no tests so far.

 

I found this over at Creative Cow:

 

"If you author a disc with a progressive stream, only a player's progressive outputs will do. Also you must have a monitor which is capable of displaying progressive. If you do not have a progressive player, the player itself add the 3:2 cadence for interlaced outputs. If your footage was originally shot and edited progressive, then your disc should be as well. No need to worry about which player will play what. All players will playback a progressive stream, it just depends if it has P outputs. Never deinterlance or convert for DVD."

 

Looks like I should forget about converting.

 

 

Thanks again

g.

[pamunoz 0]

Well... I don't think that you can improve the quality of interlaced video by de-interlacing it (making it progressive). If anything, I'd think that doing this would actually reduce the quality a little as the resulting progressive video will yield a more pixelated look since it's averaging interlaced fields. Maybe Magic Bullet Frame does better averaging and produces a better frame.

 

I doubt that your clients videos can really be truly "enhanced" by going progressive. Good color correction will help bring back saturation loss on DVD footage. That's all I would do if I were you.

 

The only other thing that I can think of for you to try (if you've got time on your hands)... but I doubt this will work, is you could try to uprez your interlaced footage to HD using one of those HDconverting plug-ins for AE... maybe you can color correct the scaled up footage, then precomp it back down into a SD comp and see if there is any noticable quality increase. I've never tried this though.

[C.Smith 0]

Thanks for the insight. The reason I'm asking is because a client has films distributed on DVD which need to be enhanced. It's interlaced stuff. Color correction already helps a lot, but I was just wondering if going progressive would help even more. Must admit I've done no tests so far.

 

I found this over at Creative Cow:

 

"If you author a disc with a progressive stream, only a player's progressive outputs will do. Also you must have a monitor which is capable of displaying progressive. If you do not have a progressive player, the player itself add the 3:2 cadence for interlaced outputs. If your footage was originally shot and edited progressive, then your disc should be as well. No need to worry about which player will play what. All players will playback a progressive stream, it just depends if it has P outputs. Never deinterlance or convert for DVD."

 

Looks like I should forget about converting.

Thanks again

g.

 

It sounds like they are assuming if it's progressive it was shot at 24fps because it talks about about a player adding a 3:2. But that's because it's assuming it's movies shot at 24fps and laid to DVD as 24fps progressive in which you would need a player and monitor that supports it. Just make sure you make your DVDs at 29.97 like every DVD player accepts. Then whether your frames are interlaced or progressive at the source material shouldn't matter as long as it's meant to be played back at 29.97.

 

You're still making an interlace format DVD. But stuff like film or video shot progressive in the first place will still look progressive playing back on an interlaced format because there's still only 24 or 30 new images a second. Not the 60 new images a second like normal interlaced video which is the motion you're trying to get rid of for the more 'filmic' look.

 

Also, the Cow will rot your brain.

[JoelD 0]

This document has been helpful to me in the past. Not neccasarily answering the filmic look question but supports Chris's explanation to the mechanics behind 24-->29.97 & pulldown.

 

http://www.dvdfile.com/news/special_report..._2_pulldown.htm