Shimmering on progressive
 

I've been doing test shooting for the past month with the XF in 30p at 1920 x 1080, and in 60p in 1280 x 720 mode, and have found both these settings useless so far, as they cause a shimmering / aliasing effect on any details like trees, brush plants, fabric, etc.

Is there some other setting on the camera that I'm forgetting? At the moment, I couldn't use anything in the P mode for tv or industrial.

Any advice, observations??? Have I just got a bad camera? Or is the XF only up for prime-time in interlaced?

Thanks

Bill,

Perhaps I could suggest that you post a link (e.g. to short test clip on say Vimeo) so people, especially those with XF300/305s, can see - and hopefully then can help. It's difficult to know what you're really seeing unless we can too. More details about your camera settings might help too.

Also, what kind of monitor/PC etc. (give us details) are you viewing this footage on?

I shoot only 30p unless someone requests something else.
I'm averaging 2-3 shoots per week and have not seen anything like you describe. Outdoor, indoor, lit, natural light, green screen, people, things, with shutter, without shutter, etc. Pretty much the full gamut of subjects.

I've been shooting a regular series that airs on an hd channel and it looks great even after the processes it has to go through to air.

I'd point to what you're viewing footage on. Or (since you don't mention what NLE) could the settings be wrong? Also, In fcp I see people have the canvas window set to "fit to screen" and the scale ends up at very random numbers which does impact the viewing quality.

Your camera may have an issue but I'd go that direction only after everything else is checked off.

Here's what I've discovered (duh):

I've been viewing progressive test footage by playing footage directly out of the camera on to the the HD screen I use for post. It looks horrible.

When I bring the footage into Final Cut, and either a: play back through monitor with progressive setting on Matrox, or b: render in 1080i timeline, all is well.

Which brings up another question, which probably best suits the post-production forum; if one is outputting for broadcast, should final edit be rendered into a 1080i timeline?

Thanks for your help. Lots to learn with so many formats.

From what I remember, 1080i is the standard for HD broadcasting, at least in the US. When I edited HD projects, I always used a 1080i timeline.

It's difficult to be entirely sure without knowing a few more details but it seems to me that this is interline twitter from source images where high frequency detail is just too sharp for 1080i (in this case p over i) output. The factory defaults will certainly cause this problem. And yes, you do need to cater for 1080i output/viewing for most work.

Have you tried the BBC recommended settings? If Alan has done his job well (and I would expect no less) then his settings for film look (progressive) should serve you well. It's a question of reducing high frequency detail just enough. FWIW the EX1 and EX3 defaults cause the same problem.