Canon XH A1 & Bad visable Interlacing Lines
 

Sorry guys for the newby HDV question a head of time but why is the interlacing so visable when shooting in 60i HDV? Is this a characteristic of HDV or the camera? I don't ever remember seeing this with my XL1s. I'm currently using FCE HD for editing as my not so old G5 with FCP HD (4.5) doesn't support HDV. I plan on updating to the newest FCS soon.

Thanks for the help.

What are you viewing your footage on?

I haven't noticed any interlace lines, but I've only shot a little at 60i. Could it be that what you're seeing are jaggies on diagonal edges? You can get that if the sharpness is too high, which it was in mine out of the box.

To answer the viewing question, I've tried saving several different quicktime versions and viewed them on my MacBook Pro and I've also down converted to SD and burned a DVD for viewing on a plasma. I notice the horizontal lines mainly on motion when panning or trying to film a moving subject. I'm sure most of my issues will go away when I get the new version of FC Studio as I will be able to import native HDV, shoot in 24F and use a better compressor. Still open to your thoughts.

Interlacing becomes apparent in a full frame image pulled from interlaced video shot in interlaced mode when there is motion because the two fields are separated in time by 1/60th (for NTSC). The amount of interlace offset is determined by the speed of the pan/object, and its apparent sharpness is also influenced by the shutter speed as well as the image resolution.

I suspect you could make the interlace effect look worse by shooting in frame mode so the full field (both frames of the interlaced video stream) is captured at the same instant (and a normal frame grab would not show any interlace artifacts), and then capture the full frame with the wrong field order, so that the two fields in the wrong field order frame are now 1/30 apart in time. This would double the size of the interlace artifact from normal interlaced video.

A-1 Interlacing Isssue Update*
 

Guys,

I tried hooking up my A1 directly to my ED plasma and the video looks awesome! So I guess the issue is directly related to using the Apple 60i intermediate codec in FCE HDV. Is there a way to get a nice finished piece using just FCE HDV and iDVD? Or is the only way to use a more powerful software. Again for those of you just joining, I've shot HDV 1080 60i, saved as various QT videos and the interlacing is terrible. When I output directly from the A-1's special component cable, the video looks awesome. I've also down converted to SD with the same interlacing issue.

Any help is appreciated!

Thanks in advance

Hi Scott,

Any new solutions? I'm just looking at the first footage and the jaggies are so obvious it looks terrible, this is on a 37" LCD.