Any Experts on Field Dominance?

There are a lot of threads on these forums concerning HDV footage turning out really bad footage when outputted to DVD (worse than using an SD source). The problem seems worse for those working in PAL. Here's my theory as to why PAL users seem to be suffering with this problem more:
HD is upper field dominance, PAL SD is lower. So a PAL based conversion from HD to SD involves resizing AND field shifting.
If you export a HDV sequence from FCP to Compressor (using any method), then compress using default settings, Compressor outputs an upper dominance file still. This must mean DVD SP (or Toast, etc) are converting from upper to lower before it burns the DVD.
We all know DVD SP does a crap job at compressing anything remotely hard, so why are those of us in PAL land trusting is to do field conversions? Is this conversion actually hard, or am I worrying about nothing?
Starting out with HD definitely makes worse PAL DVDs than starting out with SD footage, so which conversion/step is causing the problem?
If I set compressor to output a lower dominance field, the DVD ends up with unwatchable flicker in the movement, so I tried conforming the clips to a new lower dominance HDV sequence, meaning FCP is doing the field conversion. Movement is 100%, but the quality is still down a little (jagged edges). I might have to turn Frame Controls on in Compressor and let is spend 12hrs compressing a sequence already converted to lower field by FCP.
So, I think I may have deduced that FCP is crap at downconverting. Compressor and DVD SP are crap at converting to lower field dominance. Compressor is crap at downconverting unless it's set to PAINLFULLY SLOW (ie frame controls on with Resize Filter set to better quality).
Anyone got any comments or thoughts? Am I remotely on track or way off?
Cheers
Dav

Sorry, I haven't had time to read your post carefully as I am dashing out, but I came across the problem over 2 years ago.
Here are some notes I jotted down at the time, mainly with reference to using iDVD as the problem more or less disappeared when encoding with Compressor.
+1. Edit your HDV/AIC in the timeline. Then create a new DV-PAL (NTSC) Anamorphic sequence. Copy your edited HDV/AIC to the new sequence. Do not alter anything. Render the sequence ..... this will take a long time - up to twice the length of the project. Then File>Export>QuickTime Movie (Not Self-contained).+
+However, if you use the QT Movie in iDVD you will get a squashed 4:3 movie, so first of all you must make QT stretch it out to its proper 16:9 dimensions like this:-+
+a. Open the exported movie file in the QT Pro player.+
+b. Go to Window>Show Movie Properties.+
+c. Select the "Video Track" and in the "Visual Settings" panel uncheck "Preserve Aspect Ratio".+
+d. In the "Scaled Size" box set the width to 1024 pixels for PAL or 853 for NTSC.+
+e. The "Video Track" will have turned grey, so click it to make it blue again.+
+f. The opened movie file will jump to 16:9.+
+g. Close it with the red button and click Save.+
+2. This method is fast. Set your HV20 to "Locked DV" which means that FCE/FCP will capture it as anamorphic DV and edit it as standard definition anamorphic DV. (Use Easy Setup ... DV-PAL (NTSC) Anamorphic).+
+You can then Export>QuickTime Movie to be used in iDVD and use the stretching technique mentioned above.+
+An alternative to clicking the grey video track is to simply enter "576" in the height box and this should make the opened video file jump to 16:9, whereupon clicking the red button of the video should give you the window allowing you to "Save".+

Similar Messages

Does anyone know about field dominance?

I just returned to Apple after a 25 year hiatus. I am trying to create my first home movie with iMovie. I have worked past the problem of importing from my mini-DVD's used by my Sony camera. However, after converting (using Streamclip) the video to a format the iMovie recognizes, my movies are 'jerky' when there is alot of motion in the frame. The movies are only jerky when played back on my television. I had this same problem while using Adobe Premiere on the PC and the solution was to reverse the Field Dominance (whatever that is). This was an issue related to the fact that my video was not loaded directly from the camera but from a DVD. Does anyone know if iMovie has the same issue? And if so, what is the solution? I have been unable to find any mention of Field Dominance in iMovie help.
Thanks...

NoPain.Doc,
Welcome to the Discussions!
I don't have a great deal of experience with it, but I think a piece of freeware called JES Deinterlacer may solve you problem.
Matt

Is there any way I can see field dominance?

I have been working on a project shot in HDV1080i50. Now I need to make a 14by9 PAL master in DigiBeta format. So I create an umcompressed PAL sequence and drop the final AIC 1080i50 version of the program into it.
Sending the uncompressed file off to be printed to DigiBeta the bureau says the fields are reversed. My problem is that I can't find any way to see the final project to see if I have got the field dominance right. Does anyone know of a tool that would let me look at the fields in the final Uncompressed print I generate. (when I play it on the computer screen it appears to play fine since computer monitors don't do interlaced)
thanks,
Paul Shard
Dual 1GHz Mac OS X (10.4.3) 1.75GB ATI9800, FCStudio

Hi Paul,
I've been battling these same issues, making DVD's from HDV footage, I didn't go via AIC, or out to a bureau, though.
I found that, the uncompressed codec, when dropped into compressor, is defaulted to a different field dominance than a DV codec, even though they were both lower field dominant in the FCP sequence.
I needed to manually change the dominance of the uncompressed movie, to lower, before I created an MPEG 2.
Can you tell the bureau to do the same ? That your footage is correct (lower first) but that they are not treating the uncompressed file as such.
What are they using, once you have given the file to them - compressor ?
The shift field filter is right. But the whole thing is quite confusing, and I found the default field dominance in compressor was different, if I printed an uncompressed file out, or exported directly from FCP to compressor (which is very slow, but does not require the uncompressed file).
However, regardless of the default compressor set, lower field dominance was correct, and the saved movie was correct for lower field.
Hope this helps.

23.98 fps advanced pulldown removel with lower field dominance??

When ever I have captured 24p advanced material shot on a DVX100B, I have always used Final Cut Pro 5's advanced pulldown removel easy set up (2:3:3:2). I haven't run into any issues until now. When I try to capture 24p advanced material, for some reason Final Cut sets my field dominance as lower (even). I made sure I was using the capture pre-set for advanced pulldown removel (23.98) and I was. Is there any way to fix this? I tried trashing my preferences but that didn't help. This is progressive scan material so in the past Final Cut Pro has always set it to field dominance as "none". Also, because my 24pa material is having a lower field dominance and as 29.97fps, I have to render in my 24pa sequence which I have never had to do. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
PS: I'm using OSX 10.4.8 (the OS choice drop down menu hasn't been updated)
Update: I tried capturing a short clip (about 30 seconds) and it worked fine, but when I try capturing my clip, which is about 10 mins, I get it capured at 29.97 with lower field dominance.

Anyone ?

Basic Field Dominance question

In Tom Wolsky's FCE HD3.5 Editing Workshop book (xlnt), he mentions setting Field Dominance to None when working in 24p, but I'm unclear what this does and whether it applies to my situation:
I'm shooting 24p HDV on Canon HV20, exporting to QT movie, burn in iDVD. DVD to be played on generic DVD players - not going to Sundance.
Also, if I should be setting Field Dominance to None, when should this be done - before rendering, before exporting to QT, or ???

Most consumer cameras don't shoot true 24p. They shoot pseudo 24p recorded at 29.97. The material is still interlaced with a pulldown cadence. Pull the canvas up to 100% and step through the video at a point where there is some motion. If the HV20 uses the normal 2:3:2:3 pulldown you'll see a cadence of two frames without interlacing, then three frames with interlacing, then two without and so on. That's how movies are mashed onto television; four frames of film are spread over five frames or 10 fields of video. Changing the sequence field dominance to none doesn't affect the captured material in any way; it only affects how anything that needs to be rendered in the sequence is rendered. It should render it without interlacing.

Field Dominance problem and questions

I am trying to capture 24p Advanced DVCAM material. I've been using the easy setup. I've tried test captures of about 15 seconds (using capture now) which come into FCP with a field Dom. of NONE and load into my 23.98 sequence timeline with a olive green render indicator (I know I can edit with that as that is just a playback resolution downgrade). If I rewind to approx. the same start point on the tape and capture a 9 minute clip, it comes in with a field dominance of EVEN and loads into the exact same timeline with an orange render indicator. First off, that seems odd to me. Secondly, I've read in other forums that there is a possibility that I can change the field dom. of my longer clips and/or my sequence, but I'm not at all clear on it. Will changing the field dom. allow me to edit w/o render indicators? Do you think that it is the field dom. issue that is causing the render indicators' to appear, or could it be other issues. It seems to me that the fact that I can get the short clips to load with and olive green line, means that it probably is the field dom. issue that is causing my difficulties. Is there an error in my logic? I'm also unclear if I am able to tell FCP not to render in interlaced mode. Is that something I can do? Does it even apply to my situation?

Jerry,
Thanks for the reply. I've been "assured" (who knows what that means) that the material was shot advanced, but it might make sense for me to do a test to see if Cinema Tool pulldown removal solves my problem. Can I use the pulldown removal option in the FCP tools menu after I've captured or do I need to use Cinema Tool.
I must say I'm still baffled about my different length clips capturing with different properties even though I never changed any settings between captures. Any hunches on your part about that anomaly?

30p with a Canon XA10 - need help with Final Cut 7 "FIELD DOMINANCE" setting and an explanation of "drop frames". Thank you!!

I shot footage using a Canon XA10 and there are issues with the HD quality not looking as crisp as it should. I am trying to make sure the settings in Final Cut are right. Need help confirming what should be in "Field Dominance" --- have seen discussions about making sure it's set to "none" but I'm confused as to what to do.
Also someone suggested I use "drop frames" to change from 30p to 24p within Final Cut. He couldn't explain how to do it so any input appreciated as well as any thoughts on whether this is a good option to try.

If you're shooting 30p, field dominance should be set to none. Since you need to use log and transfer to bring this material in to fcp, I would assume it would be set correctly automatically. Are you sure you've set the camera properly?
Drop frames will not change 30 p to 24p. Dropframe timecode simply refers to the number assigned to each frame which drops an occasional number (not any frames) so the timecode duration is the actual duration, since 30p videoi is actually 29.97 frames per second which each frame assigned a timecode number.
This is very basic video stuff and requires some basic knowledge of video. Wikipedia is a pretty good resource for much of this stuff plus there are lots of great resources on the web. Look up interlaced and progressive video, 24p and 30p.
And as far as judging quality, you can only get an accurate view of the quality in fcp when you have a video card attached to a video monitor. The viewer and canvas are only an approximation of what the quality is. Minimally, set the canvas or viewer to 100% to get a better approximation of the quality.

About field dominance...

I just found out about setting field dominace to none and it helped a hopless shaking still that nothing else would fix. what would happen if i started a new sequence with field dom set to NONE and imported and edited NTSC DV material entirely in that sequence, or should i only use this to fix stills and do all of my editing in field dom set to LOWER? any ideas

The upside to field based render is smoother transitions, etc. Change, whether in position or speed or opacity or whatever is more smoothly rendered at 60 times a second than at 30.
But progressive (or field dominance: none) looks more like film. PLUS if you take an interlaced shot and resize it (like Picture-in-Picture) within a "progressive" sequence, you get all kinds of interlace artifacts.
So there are always tradeoffs...
Patrick

Field dominance problem?

Hello:
When editing DVcam footage into a dv sequence with Livetype graphics, which field dominance (none, upper, lower) should be chosen in seq settings?
I take it LT graphics should be created with the same FD? Currently, my seq is LOWER fd, as are LT graphics, but this one LT billboard push transition (moves from up to down, revealing incoming shot beneath) strobes and even seems to have the "double strobe" burnt into it. I have a screen snap I could send if someone needed to see the problem.
Thanks much
KB

lower (even) is the correct field dominance for any DV based sequence (excepting HDV)
i'm assuming you're seeing this strobing on your external TV/Broadcast monitor
obviously the first thing to do is simpy run a couple of tests yourself. try changing your field dominance to None
going further, you might try using moving the whole LT compostion up/down a pixel in your FCP sequence ... its been known to help with Text Generator Crawls and Rolls.
worth a try i should think.
hope it helps
Andy

Field dominance in photoshop menus?

I am struggling with making my photoshop - designed menus look good both on a computer screen and on a television set. They look perfect on the computer but blurred and distorted on tvs. - like the wrong field dominance is set.
I imported my pict file into FCP to investigate, and found it looks the same there as on the tv. If I change the field dominance on my FCP sequence to none, problems disappear. Aha.
But in DVDSP, the only thing I can find for this is in the encoding menu, field order options are auto, top and bottom. Auto works with all the other menus... but not my new ones.
am I missing something in photoshop? or DVDSP?
any advice so appreciated.
-Kathy
G5 powermac Mac OS X (10.4.6)
G5 powermac Mac OS X (10.4.2)

Yes, it's disconcerting that Streamclip doesn't have a None selection and that when brought into FCP, clip properties continue to indicate Upper. (A fun fact – the same clip from MPEG Streamclip brought into FCP X would be reported as Field Dominance: Progressive. ) But back to FCP 7… for future reference, you can change a clip's field flag to None in the browser.
BTW, if you bring your 5D clips in using Log and Transfer, the field info will be reported by FCP correctly.
The 1080i segment setting is a Frame size choice…for whatever reason they never around to putting in a 1080P selection.
You can copy and paste the original sequence into a new sequence. If it asks (and it probably won't) whether you want to change it to match your clip, you'd obviously say no. The new sequence will then need to be rendered. Hopefully, you'll be good to go.
Good luck.
Russ

Field dominance. upper, lower or none?

Hi I am cutting some material in a dv pal project and am wondering about field dominance? Can someone shed some light on which is preferable for a sequence which combines material shot with different cameras, some of which having been converted in the timeline from hd to sd?
Thanks

when capturing and editing in DV PAL then choose the DV PAL Easy Setup
when capturing additional material from other sources then switch to the appropriate Esay Setup for that format.
when you mix the formats on the DV-PAL timeline, if captured correctly, then FCP will add Shift Field filters as necessary to compensate for the varying formats
when editing make sure that you are monitoring your edit via firewire (view > video playback > apple firewire dv pal + view > external video > all frames) to an interlaced monitor and not just in your canvas. in that way you will immediately be aware of any interlacing issues if they occur.

DVCPRO HD 720p60 Footage. Field dominance set to "None" Should timeline ?

Hey all, I got some footage from a new client. I got it on a drive, so I wasnt the editor to pull it from the source tapes. Anyway, the clips read "None" for field dominance. I'm wondering if I should set the timeline sequence to "None" or "Lower" for proper playback. For output it will go to a BetaSp Deck or possibly back to the DVCPRO Deck. Lastly, the clients want to have DVD's made.
Any suggestions about the proper way to set up appreciated.

What you need to do is set the Easy Setup to DVCPRO HD 720p60...then make a new sequence...and use what settings it has. Or, if you have FCP 6, when you cut a clip into the timeline it will ask if you want the sequence settings to match that of the clip....click YES.
Since this is progressive footage, field dominance will be set to NONE by default.
Shane

Field Dominance settings for rough edit

I'm working on a project that will be finalized in HD elsewhere from a variety of sources, HDcam, Targa files, SD, etc. I'm doing the rough edit and will export an EDL (possibly through Automatic Duck to be finalized in Avid, not sure about that yet). I'm not doing any effects, just getting the right clips in the right order. I'm working from DVcam dubs only (firewire import)of the source material. I know the post house already has some of the HD material on hand and it is upper field dominant. DVcam of course is lower field dominant. Do I need to change the settings to upper field or not set, or is this something the post house will deal with when it imports the final video?

Don't change any settings... it won't affect the EDL anyway.
Jerry

Field dominance issue?

Hello all,
Working on a project in FCP. The intended delivery format is mini-DV tape. I'm working on a sequence with the following settings: (basically NTSC DV anamorphic)
Frame Size: 720x480 NTSC DV (3:2)
Pixel Aspect: NTSC... 720x480 Anamorphic 16x9 is checked
Field Dominance: Lower (even)
Editing base: 29.97
Compressor DV/DVCPRO - NTSC (might switch to ProRes422 down the road)
Audio is 48kHz @ 16 bit Channel Grouped
I'm bringing in a clip that was provided by the client on a data dvds. I trimmed a section of the Quicktime movie for download available here: (~100mb, 30 sec)
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11697459/Trimmed.mov
Quicktime's Inspector says the clip is:
DV, 720x480 (640x480), Millions
29.97
When I put this clip on the timeline I get some nasty artifacts that appear to be interlacing issues. I was wondering if anyone has any recommendations regarding how to handle this file to improve the quality?

Yup, that's normal DV.
This issue occurs because of interlaced video. In your pipeline, there are 2 places that it could be coming from:
1) The DVD that you captured this footage from already had this problem (look closely, it may not be something that you can initially see unless you frame-by-frame), which means that it was "amplified" by your re-capture and subsequent conversions.
2) The DVD clips don't already have this issue, and it only occurred after your filtering. This is the better of the 2 for you...
So, here's what you can do about it:
1) "Decomb" the video. There are filters available from Red Giant, The Foundry, etc... that can take video like this and "decomb" the video. Very similar to the decomb feature found in Handbrake and other video conversion tools. You can't use handbrake because Handbrake won't give you a usable file in FCP afterwards, you need a Pro tool to get good quality results that still gives you separate Audio and Video files afterwards.
2) Go back and de-interlace all of your source material. As I mentioned earlier, the reason that this pops up in the first place is because of the interlaced frames of video. The better option for what you are doing is to go back and de-interlace all of your source media. That will give you the best possible results for what you are going to output later on, because it's going to eliminate as much of the combing as possible before you output.
Please keep in mind, I'm not saying that you are going to be able to eliminate this issue completely. DV is a hated format by many Pros for exactly the issues that you are facing. But, it's not your fault. Your client has made the choice, just make sure you inform them that there are drawbacks for doing so.
Good luck!

Ignore or not to ignore field dominance in inspector?

Created DVSD and 8bit movies in FC lower field dominant,(this of course can be checked by clip or movie properties,) however when brought into Compressor, inspector often gets it wrong. Changing native field dominance back to lower in inspector causes jumps in cuts down stream (as MPEG video on DVD.) Is inspector blowin smoke or just causing fires? What's the real story? Why would FC movie properties show lower field and Comp inspector show upper?
Thanks for any insight!

Can have many possible errors.
- wrong field grabbing (happend on early panasonic SD Progressive Cameras)
- wrong field setting in FCP
- wrong field setting when exporting
- wrong field setting when compressing
The only way you can be sure is to check your final product on a crt TV.
Most Softwareplayer will compensate the errors.
If you have a "field shift" meaning that on files is carried over half a frame to the next frame, then it is most likely that something with the import went wrong. This mostly happens if you transfer material from some kind of player via Firewire to DV and then capture it in FCP.
First thing try setting the Clip properties of the imported clips in FCP and use the default settings in the timeline.
Message was edited by: vex3d

Any Experts on Field Dominance?

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