De-Interlace or leave as Interlaced? (iMovie 6.0.4)

iMac 10.8.5 (Mountain Lion); Video Editing: Imovie HD6 exported to iDVD; Camcorders: Canon MVX25i and Canon HV30. DVDs to be played on modern flat screen televisions.
Although I have been working with iMovie HD6 (6.0.4) and iDVD (7.1.2) for several years, I now want to convert some of my older movies from 4 x 3 aspect ratio to widescreen 16 x 9 ratio. To do this I'm using MPEG Streamclip which seems to be easy to use and it works for me. However, I'm confused by the options that are available in the Streamclip DV Exporter - e.g. Should I leave it as an interlaced movie or de-interlace it? This is the exporter panel that I'm confronted with:-
I would appreciate any advice or help that someone out there could give to me.

Hi
If You go for a 16x9 DVD - Then:
DVD is as STANDARD - Interlaced SD-Video Quality - AT it's best !
De-interlace will take away every second line in the picture and copy the rest = Less resolution - Yes You'll notice it.
I wouldn't change an interlaced movie at all - but keep it as is to get best possibly playback.
Yours Bengt W

Similar Messages

To interlace or not to interlace...

I've got a project where I'm mixing HDV 720P and DVCAM 60i footage. I'm using ProRes as my timeline codec. My final destination is DVD. So to maintain the sharpest image for TV on DVD playback I'm wondering whether I should have interlacing on in Sequence Settings. I know that Compressor will interlace anyway as part of the DVD Best Quality transcode, so I'm wondering whether interlacing in my timeline is good or bad for my footage, particularly the progressive stuff. Or is the difference negligible? Any thoughts? Just to complicate matters I also have some HDV 1080i shots as well. They have the shift fields filter applied to modify from upper to lower.

joey848 wrote:
I know that Compressor will interlace anyway as part of the DVD Best Quality transcode
That's not actually correct. If your timeline is 23.976, Compressor will just leave it at 23.976 all the way through the MPEG-2 encoding process. You'll end up with 23.976 footage on your DVD, and the player itself — the actual piece of home-entertainment equipment — will be responsible for inserting pulldown if necessary.
The question you're asking isn't whether your timeline should be interlaced or not. The question you're asking is whether you should conform your 60i footage to 60p, or conform your 60p footage to 60i.
There's no easy answer in this case, because you're not just conforming timebases. You're also scaling. You're taking 720p60 and 1080i60 footage down to 480. That means you're going to be destroying any field structure in your HD footage anyway, by scaling it down.
Since none of your source footage is p24, it makes no sense to work at 23.976. Since DVD only supports 480p24 and 480i60, that leaves you with just one practical option.
So the bigger question becomes at what point you should conform everything to the same size and timebase. My gut tells me you're going to get the best results by running all your 720p60 and 1080i60 footage through Compressor, with frame controls on, and having it scale everything down to 480i. (You didn't say whether your finished product will be anamorphic or not; whether you go anamorphic or pan-and-scan to 4:3 or letterbox is up to you.)
You might try doing a test. Set your timeline to 480i60 (either anamorphic or not, depending on what you prefer) and drop in some 480i60, 720p60 and 1080i60 footage. Throw some transitions across cuts, whatever you think you're going to be using in your show. Render it all out to ProRes with your render settings set to best. Put it on DVD, see what you think of it. It might be entirely satisfactory.

Is de-interlaced always worse than interlaced watching on TV ? Or do I do something wrong ?

I am working with FCP X, using interlaced material (1080i) shot with a Panasonic TM900 Cam.
So the original footage is AVCHD 17Mbps.
Typically I apply the following workflow to export the film:
- Export from FCP X timeline without any conversion as master-file (i.e. ProRes 422)
- Process through Compressor 4 to h.264 Quicktime movie with average bitrate of 20Mbps keeping the orginal resolution and framerate (25 fps, 1080 res)
a) with all frame controls switched off -> results in a 1080i movie
b) with frame controls switched on for de-interlacing, using "better" or "best" filter and Output fields "progressive" -> 1080p movie
In case a), when watching the film on the media player of a Samsung LCD TV the output quality is extremely good and has no visible difference to the original AVCHD file (that I watch by plugging the camera via HDMI to the TV)
But: in case b) all scenes with fast movements are much worse in quality (played with the same media palyer as well as when playing with Apple TV3). Moving objects are no more sharp and there are "block artefacts" around fast moving objects. Same appears for scenes with fast zoom. Quality is really visibly worse compared to the original AVCHD.
The effect does not change when I use "best" filter settings.
I am now wondering:
Is a de-interlaced 1080p film "per defintion" worse in quality compared to the 1080i film, when being watched on a TV ?
For me this sounds strange, as I understood that at the end also my Samsung TV does some kind of "on-the-fly" deinterlacing, as the LCD screen is of course progressive.
Or do I do something wrong ?
Happy for any advice and help !

You sure that the original footage was shot interlaced? The information I found on the camera is that it shoots progressive.
Hard to generalize about what looks better – interlaced or progressive – except that interlaced can look pretty dodgy with computer play-back. Otherwise, much depends on the material that was shot.
Bear in mind that de-interlacing per se throws away half the information. Frame Controls tries to compensate for that loss. Going from Pro Res to h,264 is a major compression step by itself; adding more filters in our attempts to improve results also can increase the possibilities for errors. Maybe that's what happened here.
Russ

Convert 60i (30fps interlaced) to 50i (25fps interlaced)

Hi,
I was wondering what will Premiere CS6 (or Media Encoder) do if I ask it to convert NTSC (or 60i HD footage) to PAL (or 501 HD footage).
Will it just through a frame out every five.. thus giving me a jumping result.. or will it use some sort of algorithm to build a new 50i feed starting with the 60i feed?
What will this algorithm be? Like .. (just guessing) first filed first frame + first field second frame --> interpolated becomes first field... etc...
Can somebody give me a specific answer on how (if Premiere has it) this algorithm works?
Obviously I don't want/need slow motions, I don't want jumps in frames, etc...
I just need the best fastest way fo converting interlaced NTSC to interlaced PAL, keeping the same lenght, the same audio pitch, etc...
Thanks,
M.

We now can create 3d footage strting from 2d
And it looks every bit as bad as using Adobe tools to convert from NTSC<->PAL.
we dan create 50fps footage starting from 25fps
The math is very simple on that one, just show each frame twice. Not so going from 30 to 25.

Does imovie only creates interlaced projects?

I would really appreciate your help on this.
I have been making slideshows on imovie 09, to burn on DVD and watch on LCD or plasma TV.
These tvs use progressive coding and I thought that slideshows, made by just still images, shouldn't have an interlacing issue with apparent artifacts.
But it is not the case.
First thing I tried was to share to iDVD straight away but wasn't happy with the result. The quality was acceptable but artifacts were apparent, mainly blockines in transitions and vertical lines on movement.
I am now trying other exports, including photo-jpeg, HDV720p and H.264
But I am just wondering, is the software the problem? Can I not avoid artifacts occurred probably by interlacing when creating dvds from imovie slideshows?
Note that I'm using iDVD, as Dvd Pro couldn't burn any dvds with these movie files. It keeps coming up with errors when building.
Thank you

Hi
As I get it - It's not iDVD that is the problem - BUT DVD-standard
DVD is SD-video interlaced as old CRT-TVs and that is the only thing they can be
if You want to play it on a standard DVD-Player. No way around this when DVD is the media.
To get better quality either
• Burn as Blu-Ray on BD-disks and via a BD-burner or to DVD (but limited in time to about 20-30 minutes)
• Save to an USB-memory and plug it into a PlayStation 3 and You'll get a very good result.
Yours Bengt W

Interlacing and Imovie

Does anyone know if imovie interlaces the video.
As one might be able to tell I am not a pro at this.
I want to know so that when I'm converting my imovies to AppleTV I can select the de-interlacing option in visual Hub.

iMovie accepts both interlaced and progressive video and will keep them as such.
...but sometimes iMovie deinterlaces the video behind the user's back, though:
http://www.sjoki.uta.fi/~shmhav/iMovieHD_6_bugs.html#expertsettings
http://www.sjoki.uta.fi/~shmhav/iMovieHD_6_bugs.html#pillarletterboxing
http://www.sjoki.uta.fi/~shmhav/iMovieHD_6bugs.html#reversed
...or have some other interlace-related problems:
http://www.sjoki.uta.fi/~shmhav/iMovieHD_6bugs.html#transitions
See also:
http://www.sjoki.uta.fi/~shmhav/SVCDon_aMacintosh.html#interlacing
I'm not so familiar with Apple TV because currently it seems to be an U.S.-only device. So I don't know whether it (like any other TV-related device like a VHS or DVD player) can handle interlaced video, or if you must deinterlace. Anyone?

Interlacing for photo-jpeg movie

I originally posted this in the compressor forum. Forgive me for posting again here - I had no response at all on the compressor forum...
I'm encoding a DV movie into photo-jpeg. I chose this codec as I believe it provides more accurate frames, rather than the keyframe technology in stuff like h.264, or sorenson etc. I am writing music to picture and accurate sync is essential. (feel free to correct me if my format choice is wrong!). The movie needs to frame sync perfectly (if this is possible from a DV source?) with Logic Pro's timeline.
On export there is an option to "de-interlace source". As I'm viewing the footage on my computer monitor I checked this option in the belief a de-interlaced movie would produce better results. With the option checked the burned-in-timecode looks blurred. When paused the frame number looks like a combination of the current frame and the previous frame - so for eg if I pause the movie at the 18th frame the bitc display looks like a number 18 over the top of 17. Indeed the "weirdness" reminds me of the sort of effect one gets when viewing interlaced footage on a progressive scan screen.
If I render the movie ~without~ the option of "de-interlace source" checked, all looks sharp and as it should be.
I am currently encoding my movies without the option checked.
does anyone know what is going on here?
(I'm wondering if that option just needs to be checked when the source is already de-interlaced?)
TIA

Edit: Go ahead and read this, but it occurs to me that this is neither a Compressor nor an FCP question. This is what Logic people deal with every day. Ask on the Logic forum what works best for those purposes.
When I say DV I don't mean digital video. My video is
delivered on DV tapes from a TV production company.
(for some reason they wont provide any other format).
I use FCP to capture and then export the movie to use
in Logic to create sync music.
Are you only doing this to create a visual for music production? i.e. this video won't be used in the end product? If so it really doesn't matter what format you use, and it sounds as though there's no real place for FCP in this beyond capturing the video.
Are you sure DV is all keyframes?
I'm sure, and I'm pretty sure that Colin is sure.
What I do know is that DV is not the best of
formats where sound sync is absolutely crucial
DV has no inherent sync problems. There are sync problems that can some up with poor practices in capturing, but it DV is in sync when it starts out in FCP it will stay that way.
I'm working in PAL 25fps for the record - but of
course your info equally applies. In my case I
obviously can't stipulate the shooting formats used
(shot on digibeta for broadcast).
My main question though is just what does
"de-interlace source" check-option in the export pane
in QT for motion-jpeg codec mean? Do I check it when
my source footage is de-interlaced, or when I want to
produce a de-interlaced file?
You would use it to produce de-interlaced output, which is irrelevant in your situation and should be ignored. De-interlacing is only called for when moving to final distribution format, and when that format will only be seen on web or computer screens.
My problem is described in my original post regarding
the BITC frame numbers looking "doubled up". Its like
the previous frame gets superimposed on top of the
current one.
It's VITC - but DV doesn't use VITC.
In any case, it's relevant to know where your window burn came from. Is it burned into the tape you receive, or are you using TC Generator or Reader in FCP?
What it indicates is a time code offset by one field (half a frame). It may also indicate that there are fields which are not only in the wrong order but in the wrong frame. If your tape has hard cuts in it, park at one of those and see if you get half the lines of the outgoing shot and half of the incoming one. That would indicate such a problem.
Most likely it's just a problem with whatever device did the window burn. If it's a problem for your work, ask them to fix it.
If this is a reference tape, most likely there was an analog transfer from DBeta, with one or both of these issues introduced there.
Is there relevant DV timecode on the tape itself? If so you should probably use that and ignore the window burn.
I am wondering its a field order thing. There is a
de-interlace process going on and instead of
combining field 1 and field 2 of frame5 say, it
combines field 2 of frame 4 with field 1 of frame 5.
Another possibility is that there was a standards conversion in the chain, which would spread some source fields over two frames. Did the program originate in NTSC?
I can post examples of the issue if the problem needs
to be "seen". With "de-interlaced source" checked I
get a more blurred result with messed up BITC.
Don't do the deinterlacing, you'll confuse yourself more. At best you'll cover up a problem which may really be a problem. You don't need deinterlacing.
The Animation or None codec
create movie files that are too big and unwieldily.
This is why I've been using photo-jpeg. I'm not sure
how the Motion-jpeg A or B codecs you mention work -
any info would be useful.
You also likely have no use for any of these codecs. Most of them will actually degrade from DV somewhat. Don't fix what ain't broke. For your purposes DV is the native format you have to work with. Everything will work best if you keep it that way.
I need my movie to be as undemanding on CPU ~and~
disk as possible, while supplying true frames. Logic
needs every clock cycle and disk bandwidth it can
get! Picture quality is less important - I can always
look at the DV stuff if I need too.
Others with Logic experience will have other suggestions. If you need to see every field for timing you will need an interlaced signal and an interlaced display, which pretty much leaves you using standard PAL. Might as well be standard PAL DV. If the machine can't hack that there are other formats to consider including even MPEG-1 or -2.

Interlacing headaches

I've been given some ProRes files to work from in order to do an edit and make a DVD. The edit looks great in Final Cut, yet when I import the encoded in Compressor files into DVD Studio Pro I'm getting really awful 1-3 frame combing on some scene changes.
Some info on the two files I have been supplied with:
1. A film-sourced NTSC to PAL conversion (23.976 converted to PAL 25fps)
2. A film-sourced PAL 25fps telecine
I've edited the files together on a ProRes timeline and have exported to Compressor with "Progressive" selected as the output file.
Can anybody suggest a solution for this? It's driving me crazy.

Long discussion on this last week. If it started off interlaced, leave it interlaced. Especially if you're mastering to DVD.

Export to mp4 720p de-interlaced from 1080i AVCHD

How do I export to mp4 720p de-interlaced from 1080i AVCHD footage from a Sony HDR-SR12? The raw source at 1080i looks fine from iMovie 09' but the exported through Quicktime 720p video is baldy jittered. However, the only previous export I have of the same movie is an iMovie 08' version and sadly not what youtube considers HD source material at 960x540 but it was clear of the jaggies.
The previous exports were made with iMovie '08s medium and large to m4v. The export I made of the same edit was to Quicktime via Movie to MPEG-4, 1280x720 5000kbps/sec, framerate current, Key auto, preserve aspect ratio using crop and H.264 options Main, multi-pass.
You can see the results here. http://gallery.mac.com/mpitogo#100281&bgcolor=black&view=grid download it for best results.
iMovie-edit.png is the edited raw source played back in iMovie
iMovie-export.png is the edited and exported 720p movie bad jaggies on motion.
This looks to be a motion related problem the jaggies are not there for slow moving action. Anyone have ideas to exporting 720p without this jitter?
Thank you in advance!

This has to do with how iMovie 09' handles interlaced footage. The short answer is that it doesn't handle it well. Either de-interlace prior to editing in iMovie or use the 960x540 30p import setting. I know this is the short answer, but it has been quite thoroughly discussed in this forum, so a simple search will provide the long version.
For de-interlacing tools google "JES Deinterlacer". That will get you started.

Field Order -Progressive, Upper or Lower? (Interlacing?)

Hi there,
I am fairly new to exporting videos in premiere pro and wanted to ask any experienced knowledgable users what the
field order in the export box does if changing between progressive, upper or lower? I have read up on interlacing and de-interlacing as i noticed that my clip when played on the computer shows these horizontal interlacing lines when exported on the default 'upper' field order option and as a test I exported with 'progressive' and the lines had disappeared but I'm wondering if exporting it in progressive reduces the quality of the video in any way?
This video is to be played on an HD TV most likely for a meeting.
Reading up that some TVs will automatically de-interlace a clip, does this mean that
a) I should just leave it interlaced under 'upper' option and know that the horizontal lines won't appear on the TV? (still need to test this)
or
b) Just export as progressive as I am entirely wrong about the TV and the horizontal lines will show up on HD TVs unless I export with progressive?
I am pretty confused!
Please, I would appreciate any advice on this?
Sorry if i'm wrong on the things i've said, I am very new to all of this!
Thank you!

Hi Jess565,
Thanks for using Adobe forums,
You can go ahead and export as Progressive and it will not effect the quality of your video.
Happy Editing,
Sandeep

Frame blended interlaced pulldown frames...

Having an issue with telecine transfered footage (29.97 fps, NTSC) going through color. When it renders out I get a strange frame blended ghost image to any areas of motion. I have tried de-interlacing and not de-interlacing my renders to no avail. No color effects are being used.
The interlaced pull-down frames are the only frames with the shadow image.
Thanks in advance.
Message was edited by: avideditor

Did you reframe any shots in FCP? If so that info gets translated into Color's Geometry Room and cause problems. The following is a workaround.
Prep sequence and send to Color (or export/import EDL) as before.
Leave P&S settings untouched and do your grade
Save an archive of your project within Color
Remove geometries, save, close, reopen, render grades.
Then reload your archive within Color and send your sequence back to FCP (or export and import XML).
When you reload the archive Color will give you a warning about not being able to reconnect the renders (or something like that) but just ignore it.
It's pulled from a thread over at the CreativeCOW
http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/223/7110
-Andrew

Interlacing methodology: analog capture, export AVI, DVD authoring?

My question concerns when to interlace and/or deinterlace a video?
The original medium is VHS tape.
The final products will be VHS tape (interlaced) and DVD (progressive).
1. I do an analog capture of a VHS Tape with a Matrox capture card. I assume the new AVI file is interlaced because the tape was interlaced. But maybe I am incorrect.
2A. For the final VHS product, when I export the video to an AVI file, do I need to turn interlacing on or do I need to use the progressive scan option? (If I use the interlacing option, am I doing a double interlace of the video? If I use the progressive scan option, am I preserving the already interlaced video?)
2B. For the final DVD product, when I export the video to an AVI file, do I need to A) use the interlacing option, use the progressive scan option, or C) deinterlace at this point?
3A. For the final VHS product, I merely play the newly exported AVI, and the interlaced video in analog form is outputted from the Matrox capture card and recorded by the VCR. Is that it?
3B. For the final DVD product, I use TMPGEnc (Tsunami MPEG Encoder) to create MPGs prior to authoring the DVD. Do I need to use interlacing or progressive scan options here? See step 2B for previous options performed.
Thank you for your expertise,
John

The source media is interlaced. Leave it that way for all exports.

What is interlacing in a PNG version?

When I try to save a PNG version, it comes with a question whther to choose interlacing. What is interlacing?

If you can remember back to dialup days, you may remember how some images on the web used to load as a bunch of lines that filled in more and more until the whole image was loaded. That's interlacing.
In those days it was good because it let you know that something was happening instead of just showing you a blank space till the image appeared. Then for a while it didn't matter, but nowadays there are beginning to be reasons you might choose it again.

Interlaced DVD on (Progressive) HDTV....

I recently (finally) upgraded to an HDTV, and maybe I'm just looking for things, or things are simply more noticable, but......
You know how if you export to DV-AVI, and then watch it in Windows Media Player, it looks all horrible because the file is interlaced and WMP doesn't de-interlace it for display on an LCD monitor?
Well, I could swear I'm seeing the same thing on my HDTV. It's nowhere near as bad, and really only appears to happen in areas where there's motion, but it really does look interlac-y in parts.
Am I hallucinating? Seeing things that aren't there? Are my college years finally catching up to me? Or am I seeing something that's similar to, but different, from interlaced video on a progressive screen?
Everything I can find on the net refers to the NTSC standard and regular TVs (i.e. interlaced), and I can't find anything on the fact that HDTVs are progressive, but accept progressive (480p, 720p, 1080p) and interlaced(1080i)? What a rabbit hole.
If details matter:
*Source video is DV-AVI (BFF interlaced)
*I export project pieces to DV-AVI (also BFF interlaced)
*Exported DV-AVI now becomes source for final project
*From PRE, I burn the DVD to a folder (VOB shows MPEG-2, BFF interlaced)
*I burn the folder to DVD using imgBurn
*I play the DVD on a normal, non-upscaling DVD player
*DVD player is connected via Component cable to my HDTV (480p input???)
At some point, I'm assuming the MPGEG-2 interlaced video is de-interlaced, by not sure by whom (DVD player, HDTV?)???

Paul,
Thanks. I have a Vizio, for whatever that's worth. So basically there's nothing I can do that will affect the de-interlacing quality one way or another.
Just for educational sake... does my DVD player put out 480p (which would mean the DVD player is de-interlacing?), or does it still put out interlaced... what... 480i? It's a low-end, non-upscaling model.
An experiment I haven't tried is playing the DVD through my Xbox. I thought I read somewhere the Xbox would upscale a normal DVD to 720p. But my HDMI Xbox connection is 1080i. So I get a headache thinking what would happen there! :)

De-interlace Raw Footage?

If you have footage from various cameras... most are progressive capture and one is interlaced, would you de-interlace the raw footage?
Also, would you try to smooth out shaky footage in the raw or wait till you know that portion of video will be used?
Thanks,
Robert

Robert Broussard wrote:
If you have footage from various cameras... most are progressive capture and > one is interlaced, would you de-interlace the raw footage?
Are you going to use all of these different cameras in the same program? Is it stylistically important they match? If so, you must choose a single format and convert everything to that. Progressive and interlaced are, by themselves, insufficient terms. You can convert 60p to 30i but if you attempt to go the other way there are visible motion and image artifacts you may find disturbing or interesting, depends on your style requirements.
Of equal importance will be matching the levels and color responses of the various cameras.
Robert Broussard wrote:
Also, would you try to smooth out shaky footage in the raw or wait till you
know that portion of video will be used?
Issue here, as Nick notes, is how smoothcam works with media files. Read up on it carefully and do some experiments. It is not a no-brainer and often introduces scaling and rotation artifacts you may find more objectionable than the original footage.
bogiesan

De-Interlace or leave as Interlaced? (iMovie 6.0.4)

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