Deinterlacing question
 

An odd question here...

if you de-interlace footage, does that make it progressive? I mean *true* progressive?

More specifically, if you de-interlace 1080i footage, does it become 540p or something?

No. It is still going to be 1080i. It's just deinterlaced 1080i footage.

Okay... so deinterlaced footage is not progressive... so if you deinterlace 1080i footage, is it merely keeping only the odd (or even) fields and tossing the other fields out?

I believe that it becomes progressive footage, but suffers some loss during conversion.

Mike

I think if something is labeled as "true" progressive then it should be captured as such. Deinterlacing uses temporal interpolation and guesses the movement of things in the shot and corrects the image accordingly. You do loose image information but depending on your camera it shouldn't be too bad. 1080i video from a $4000 camera thats deinterlaced will more than likely look just fine while cheap handycam's deinterlaced footage will have lots of data loss. 1080i is the best format to deinterlace because your computer has more initial data to "guess" from.

-Kyle

Here's my dilemma: I have a JVC HD100 and I prefer to shoot in 30p. I'm wondering if using the Canon A1 or Sony Z1u as a second camera would match well if I deinterlace the 1080i footage from the A1 or Z1u?

The A1 would go just fine with the HD100. A1's image rivals the XL-H1 in resolution so compared to the HD100 it should do just fine. Deinterlacing causes you to loose data but like I said 1080i footage form a nice camera like the A1 would look just fine. The Z1 would do fine too but if you can get the A1 use that instead, heck you might even warm up to it ;)

-Kyle

Bill, a Z1u would do favorably in this situation. I can attest that smart deinterlacing via a program such as DVFilm Maker loses barely any resolution at all.

There are a lot of things wrong here. There are several different methods of deinterlacing, most involving temporal interpolation, but some not. While $4000 camera footage can look great, so can a "cheap handycam's" footage. All a camera needs is light, give it enough and it will give a good image back. Deinterlaced footage from a handycam can look just as nice as $4000 footage put through the same paces in post. Keep in mind none of this will look as good as $10,000 footage so keep your pants on.

To answer the question fully, in the context I believe you asked it, yes, deinterlacing interlaced footage will yield a "true" progressive image in the sense that all NLE's will treat it as such. In the back of your mind you'll know it was originally interlaced, but after you convert it, the image quality is the only thing that matters. It does not toss out one set of fields, it uses interpolation or other "smart" methods with both sets of fields to determine what a progressive image might best look like.

Check Wikipedia