My new 24p workflow on the Mac
 

For my first HD project last week, I followed the route of capturing in HDV, transcoding to Photo-JPEG (for some reason my eyes are fairly convinced AIC is inferior), carefully adjusting the cadence of each clip, then reversing telecine with Cinema Tools. I found it pretty tedious.

Last night, I thought I'd try out a freeware program called JES Deinterlacer (http://www.xs4all.nl/~jeschot/home.html#DEI) that had been sitting on my desktop for weeks. It's been discussed here before, but not in any of the recent threads, as far as I can tell.

Well, I'm amazed. Not only does it automatically detect the cadence, it works directly with HDV files, no pre-transcoding required. By default, it skips the Quicktime engine entirely and outputs a 4:2:2 Photo-JPEG movie that looks identical to the HDV file to my eyes. You can also choose to use Quicktime Export, with all the standard format options.

Going out to shoot some more stuff; can't wait to come back and edit it in a timely manner!

that does work pretty good. the auto-detection, and batch processing make this a nice little gem.

This brings up something I saw on another forum. How about some of the other plug-ins? I know Graeme Natress has a de-interlacer and I'm sure others do as well. Would they perform the same task?

Does the one you're referring to take care of everything? By that I mean can I just take the HV20 footage I've already captured, run it through the de-interlcaer and use it in my 1080p24 timeline without rendering?

Bill Doyle

Yes. And just to be clear, although JES does have a plain "Deinterlace" function, you would use "Inverse telecine." The program has a good help file if you get lost.

In FCP, as long as your timeline is set to use the same codec and frame rate, you won't have to render.

This tool looks promising, but I just tried to convert a clip and got nothing but black and white flashing frames. I tried with an AIC clip captured through iMovie and also a HDV 1080i60 captured via FCP. Both with the same result. I am dragging the clips into the input screen, selecting inverse telecine 23.976 and outputting to .mov h.264 file. If you had success with this could you provide more detail of the type of clip you converted and the setting you used?

Thanks for posting this app!

I tried with this workflow.

Input:

I chose my file.

Checked 'Top field first' & 'Video range'.

Project:

I chose 'Inverse telecine' and checked 'Standard', 'Detect cadence breaks'--'Make reference movies' & 'Output frame rate 23.976'.

Color: no changes

Output:

I chose my output file.

Checked: 'Progressive', 'Direct', Compressor 'Photo-JPEG' & 'Copy Sound'.

After playing nicely in FCP's Viewer, when in a 1080p24 timeline, I got a strip indicating it needed rendering. But when I clicked to render it wouldn't render. Odd.

TEST 2
When I tried changing only to 'Direct': 'Export' and 'Quicktime Movie' I got a clip that was completely white.

Notice any problems with my workflow?

Thanks again for providing the link to the app!

elmer

There is something wrong with the export to quicktime part of this app I think. I tried a couple different methods and just got black and white flashing frames.

However, it seems to work great with a direct export to photo-jpeg format. I haven't tried the other direct export types yet.

Can anyone explain why the file becomes so much bigger than the file FCP captures from the cam? In my example a 160mb file becomes 460mb.

Brandon, I don't know the cause of your specific problem, but I can tell you this will work best with an I-frame codec like Photo-JPEG or AIC. Those formats are also better for editing. There are plenty of other programs with which you can convert to H.264 for your finished product.

The bigger file is the nature of the codec; much like H.264, HDV gives you great bang for the buck in terms of file size, but isn't great for actually manipulating the video.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_c...me_compression

Not really, but maybe your FCP timeline isn't set up properly. Right (ctrl+)click on the sequence, click "Settings" and make sure your timebase is set to 23.98 and the codec is set to Photo-JPEG. You may have to create a fresh sequence to be able to modify these settings.

I'm not sure why the Quicktime export isn't working properly for you or Brandon. It works fine for me, just a little slower than the direct option.

check your size in the quicktime settings pane, i did an export to h264 to see if it did it to me, and it did, and then i went back an 2nd time and looked there there were some really funky numbers in the size setting. changed them to normal hd and hit export again and it worked like a charm.

also as far as making it work with other 24p stuff, what codec is your other stuff? hdv or aic? i exported using the quicktime exporter to hdv 24p with 48khz uncompressed sound, and i got no render bars in the stock hdv24p timeline setting, and same with aic in a AIC24p timeline.

Interesting workflow. I'd like to check out that freeware and update my V1u/Mac workflow.

When you make a photo - jpeg version, do you set it at 75% quality for 4:2:2 YCbCr?

heath

Wow! This appears like it could be the *killer app* needed right now for 24P (in 60i workflow). You don't know how badly I needed this!

Thanks so much Hal!!

Unfortunately, you can't adjust the quality, but it seems to default to something above 75% (based on filesize).

If you want to control quality, use the Quicktime export instead.

No problem. Thank the author of the software!

I had e-mailed Jan Schotsman last night, who wrote this application, thanking him and made sure he was aware that it had been discovered by this group.

I am also glad Hal had found this in the haystack of the web... I was beginning to wonder if the hassle of picking apart clips was worth it.

So (noob question, I know) what settings do you use FCP for initial capture, if using this work flow?