If you shoot progressive (the "p" in 30p) then there is nothing to deinterlace. Progressive is the opposite of interlaced.

And there are no fields in progressive footage either. So if you are shooting progressive, there are no fields to worry about.

Stunning footage can be produced on the Mac, but they sure as heck don't make it obvious. Mac software spends a lot of time trying to make everything "easy", but not nearly enough time trying to make things their "best". There should be a button for best that REALLY does do best, including the frame controls in Compressor. That seems to be the magic potion that makes this downres actually look decent on a Mac. But I don't have a Mac, so someone else will have to talk you through the workflow.

And for the record, the only NLE that I've found that has a decent downres was Avid. All the rest looked AWFUL.

Just to add to what Perrone said, if you do decide to shoot in 60i then AVCHD is upper field first, which is the opposite to standard DVD so if you make a DVD at 720x480 from interlace AVCHD then I've found it better to change the default lower field to "upper field first".
If however you are just down scaling to 720P then 30P is probably preferably.

I to am not familiar with Mac and have never used Avid so can't compare, but from my limited experience with AVCHD 1920x1080i I've found the best program to convert to 720P is Premiere CS4 using the MainConcept H264 Video codec,

Thanks guys. So if I shoot in 30p I should do lower field first? I love the mac but cs4 was better as f'r as you got what you got! No hidden switches! Most people say to stay away from H.264 when exportng frm timeline. The quality is excellent though! The only gotcha to that is chapter markers you created on your timeline don't come over! And DVD pro doesn't see h.264 but iDVD does!

Thanks guys. So if I shoot in 30p I should do lower field first?


How did you get this from what we wrote? If you shoot 30p there ARE NO FIELDS. They don't exist in your source. If the format you are converting *TO* requires fields (meaning it's going to interlace the footage) then follow whatever it demands. The only time you should be getting a lower field first option is if you are recording or converting to miniDV. Other than that, everything should be either progressive or upper field.

Does this make sense?


I love the mac but cs4 was better as f'r as you got what you got! No hidden switches! Most people say to stay away from H.264 when exportng frm timeline. The quality is excellent though! The only gotcha to that is chapter markers you created on your timeline don't come over! And DVD pro doesn't see h.264 but iDVD does!

It's not an issue of the quality. If you are going to DVD, then the ONLY format DVD understands is Mpeg2. If you export using the proper templates from FCP or Compressor, or whatever, you make a compatible Mpeg2 file that goes straight into your DVD authoring program and no further conversion is necessary. If you export with mpeg4 or some other format, you footage will be compressed once when you export it from the NLE, and then be compressed AGAIN when you try to author the DVD since it *will* change it to Mpeg2. There is a quality loss at both those compression steps so you want to try to avoid that if possible.