Converting 60i to 24p

[Ruben Pla]

I tried Sharpening it (at various levels) and it looks pretty good and seems to match the rest of the film...on a regular TV. But then I check the Sharpened scene on a widescreen TV and it looked terrible. It had a "choppy/broken edges" quality to everything...really stood out differently from the rest of the film.

Reshooting is not an option, since the actors and location are not available, and I can't cut the scene out because it is to integral to the storyline.

I'm really at a loss as to what to do. I've been working to solve this problem for months now and have tried everything I can think of.

Does anything else come to mind? Is there a way to avoid or cut out that black frame in DVDA2? Because I could live with the "Magic Bullet" look...that looks ok on the big screen, but the "Sharpenened" scene doesn't.

Thank you,

Ruben

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

Originally Posted by Ruben Pla

I tried Sharpening it (at various levels) and it looks pretty good and seems to match the rest of the film...on a regular TV. But then I check the Sharpened scene on a widescreen TV and it looked terrible. It had a "choppy/broken edges" quality to everything...really stood out differently from the rest of the film.

Reshooting is not an option, since the actors and location are not available, and I can't cut the scene out because it is to integral to the storyline.

I'm really at a loss as to what to do. I've been working to solve this problem for months now and have tried everything I can think of.

Does anything else come to mind? Is there a way to avoid or cut out that black frame in DVDA2? Because I could live with the "Magic Bullet" look...that looks ok on the big screen, but the "Sharpenened" scene doesn't.

Thank you,

Ruben

Your comment makes no sense. The picture is fine on a "regular tv" but not on a widescreen? What this tells me is you're upsampling from SD to HD, and that just isn't gonna look good, almost no matter what, without some serious processing preparation.
Also, I don't know what you mean by "black frame."
You could...Use HDAnywhere in AE and upsample there, sharpen, process, whatever, and then downconvert it back to SD for your project. That might work. Do your processing while viewing on your HD screen, that might help you find the right setting as well. Since we can't see the other images, all we have to judge by is the frame you posted, which looks pretty normal to us. Maybe post other images?

[Ruben Pla]

Douglas,

I appreciate you and David trying to help me. I'm sorry if I didn't make sense in the last post. By "regular TV" I mean my regular Sony TV at home which is 32" wide. By "widescreen TV" I meant that I went elsewhere viewed the DVD on a 50" screen and that's where I saw the "choppy/broken" look.

I don't know what "upsampling from SD to HD" means.

Regarding the "black frame", I mean that, when I bring the 3 separate segments (two 24p's with a 60i inbetween) to DVDA2, they flow nicely without pauses but there is a brief "black frame" (or a "no video" frame) between the 2nd and 3rd segment, which isn't there between the 1st and 2nd segments. I don't know of any other way to explain it.

Can you tell me a little more about the "unsharp masking, and denoising..." you mentioned? I tried "sharpening" but I'm not familiar with unsharp masking and denoising.

Thank you,

Ruben

[Mauritius Seeger]

several observations

yes the 24p is noticably more blurry than the original. in vegas i would expect deinterlacing to introduce either a type of ghosting when using frame blending or a vertical blurring when using interpolate - as methods of deinterlacing. although i am not quite sure what happens in this type of pulldown. probably interpolation. in which case this add blur everywhere, regardless of motion. so what you see is not surprising really.

try outputting to 30p and see if the same thing happens. i bet it does.

i suspect using software with a more sophisticated deinterlacing method is the solution to your problem.

[Ruben Pla]

Thank you for your input, Mauritius. I'm currently using Vegas and am not able to get a new editing program and learn it.

Douglas, any tips on the "unsharp masking and denoising"?

Thank you,

Ruben

[Mauritius Seeger]

Originally Posted by Ruben Pla

Thank you for your input, Mauritius. I'm currently using Vegas and am not able to get a new editing program and learn it.

Douglas, any tips on the "unsharp masking and denoising"?

Thank you,

Ruben

your welcome

unsharp masking will not restore the image to it's original caus the information is lost (every other line is missing and has been 'invented') but it will make the image appear more sharp. when you set the radius (i think that's what it's called in vegas) you want it to be roughly the size of the blur - which you know is 2 pixels (due to interpolating every other line).

denoising is going to introduce further blur. i wouldn't have thought noise is your problem. infact any kind of blur reduces noise so the 24p should be LESS noisy than the 60i version. however, what happens when you use unsharp mask is you amplify noise too, so if it looks like a problem after sharpening, try denoising. otherwise stay well clear of it.