Imitation film look technique
 

This may have come up before and if it has just point me to the post...

I read about this simple technique on a Final Cut Pro site and now use it
with Premiere 6.02... but it should work with any other NLE out there.

1) Place clip on track 1A

2) Copy and paste same clip on track 2 (first transparency track) and delete it's duplicate audio track.

3) Select deinterlace for 1A track clip

4) Select 30% opacity (you can play with this setting... the higher you go the less the effect will be) for 2 track clip

5) Preview or render out

You are introducing a 30% lap dissolve of the two-field video track back into the de-interlaced video.

It will render very quickly which is a big advantage and is a rather neat looking effect, I think.

BTW: You can add your color/gamma corrections to the clip on the 1A track.

BTW #2: You can play with introducing a 1 frame offset in the transparency track. In Premiere, you would advance the top clip to the right 1 frame. You may wish to go up on the opacity to around 50% (move the red line up to about the mid point) if you do this or the effect may be too heavy.

I am giving this a try to compare with some 60i to 24p vegas output (vegas 6 2:3 template) and will see which I like best. This sounds kind of like the "poor mans" deinterlace method I have read about elsewhere, but still I want to give it try so thanks for the post.

Tried a 30sec test in Vegas and not really seeing the look. Just looks like normal deinterlaced video (30p which looks film motion anyway).

?

It is deinterlaced video on the bottom but you are introducing a percentage of interlaced video back into the clip to reduce the judder and missing lines from the bottom clip.

The amount you introduce by setting the dissolve rate will have an affect on what the clip looks like. If you add, say 100%, then there will be no deinterlaced effect left. Backing off on the dissolve rate it will be greater and greater until at some lower level, say less than 10%, it will be just deinterlaced video.

I think the idea here is to obtain a dissolve setting that still has the 30p look but no so much so that it is objectionable. Shooting 30p out of the camera (my DVCAM has no such setting) you are now stuck with full 30p.

This little technique gives you the ability to play with normal 60i video somewhat to make it not quite film-looking but diffferent from normal video.

Give it another try.

The pro video look
 

George, l would have to say that even though that technique does have some subtance, the only way to really achive a film look (other that shooting it on film...lol ) is to use thrid party plugins. For example, Natress has great film plugings that also include presets. They take the guess work out of it but still allow you to tweek it even further. For example, the bleach look give you the look of your film darkened somewhat and colours desaturated like in the film Bad Boys 2 and the blue look that was achieved in Minority report with Tom Cruise. There other software like MAgic bullet that are amazing but have a price tag to match. De-interlacing with tweaks can give that impression but not give you total control and the image suffers and when you have fast motion or fades from black, you can notice it. Of course many will not notice but Natress charge something like 100 australian dollars and what you get for your money pays back many times over and client satisfaction is gauranteed. I have skimmed on some of the issues that make third party plugins such a smart investment and which ever plug in you choose, you will know that the end result will make you realise how you went with out it for so long.
For the record, l have no input or bias towards natress plugings but l have used it and along with others and can safely say l have seen it with my own eyes.
P.S On reading the first thread, you probably already use these filters George and were pointing out for others then if nothing else, anyone else reading this will take a look at these plugings.
regards Michael