HDV footage: Progressive/Interlaced: Best way to combine the two?
 

Hi!

I recently shot an event where we used 3 different cameras...... Two of the cams were shooting 24p and the other was shooting 60i.

I used Premiere Pro CS3 to edit.

Due to time constraints, I ended-up using a timeline setting of 60i, and imported all videos into that project.

I am not pleased with the final product (fortunately, this was only for web), and I was wondering what others have done is similar situations?

Should I have converted the 60i footage to 24p by rendering out a progressive (i.e. de-interlaced) 24 fps quicktime movie, and then import that into a 24p project?

In other words, what is the best way to tackle a project where the video formats are different?

(In hindsight, the cameras shooting 24p -- Canon XHA1s -- should have been been filming in 60i to match the one camera shooting 60i.)

Any advice would be spectacular!

TIA!

Cheers,
Micky

Hi,

I guess the best way it to transfer all formats to one format. P formats are always better than I formats (encoding, quality aso) I would have transfered all to 25p.

All my best

Lutz Dieckmann

Hi Lutz! Thanks for the reply and the pro advice. :)

I definitely like the look/feel of my progressive footage.

Would the simplest way to do that be to export the 60I footage as de-interlaced 24fps footage?

Or, should I be looking at some sort of plugin?

I have access to FCP and/or Premiere Pro CS3/4.

Thanks!
Micky

Hmm, seems like if I put the 60i into a 24p timeline (without conforming) via FCP, the footage looks decent enough... Not optimal, but maybe this is a quick solution?

I have to say, Premiere CS3 did not like 24p footage in a 60i timeline/project. :(

What image size (resolution) will the final product be?

Hey there!

In this case the final output size is 1280x720...

After having thought about it a little bit, I think the optimal solution would be to output the 60i footage, de-interlaced @ 24fps, as a quicktime movie, and then import that into the 24p project.

Alternatively, I probably should have set all cameras to shoot at 60i.

What do you think? :)

Thanks!
M

I'd suggest shooting 24p in the future, for HD video destined for the web.

I haven't used a Mac since my kids were little squirts (I'm a grandpa now). It's not easy to convert 60i to 24p well. Is Magic Bullet available on Macs these days?

Yah, in hindsight, we probably should have ditched the 60i cam (or shot with the others in 60i mode)...

But, this was a track event, and 3 cams really made for a good multi-cam edit.

Unfortunately, the two different formats (24p/60i) were not the best choice for a multi-cam edit using Premiere Pro CS3. :(

Good question about the Magic Bullet app. I will check it out.

Thanks for the help Robert! I really appreciate it. :)

24fps is desirable for HD on the internet, if for no other reason, bandwidth concerns. If you shoot 60i, and use a service like Vimeo, you'll need to convert to 24fps one way or another (they will if you don't and it won't be a high quality conversion). If you do put 60i footage on the internet as 60i (like hosting it yourself perhaps), it will take more bandwidth to deliver a quality image and also potentially be poorly deinterlaced at the recipients end (their display will all but assuredly be native progressive). If you deinterlace 60i to 30p, you will still use significantly more bandwidth to get the same image quality you can get with less bandwidth using 24p, and that will make for longer downloads and/or streaming problems for some recipients. Deinterlacing 60i to 24p results in even a bigger quality hit, from format conversion than deinterlacing to 30p. You not only are deinterlacing, you either have to interpolate many entire frames (like with Magic Bullet) which induces more artifacts or, if you simply drop frames to get 24fps, induce a slightly mis-timed judder.

For 60i I thought it was best to convert to 30P for the de-interlace to P step and then do the pull down to 24P ???

going from 60i to 24P just doesn't sound right...

and if its for the internet is it best to stay at 30P ??

Whatever your method, getting to 24p from 60i is going to degrade image quality more than getting to 30p from 60i. (I don't know what you mean exactly by pulldown, but I'm guessing you mean dropping every 5th frame from a 30p sequence, which will make for a mis-timed judder.)

You can get better image quality, with limited bandwidth, at 24p. Limited bandwidth is a significant issue when streaming HD video over the internet.