My new 24p workflow on the Mac
 

For my first HD project last week, I followed the route of capturing in HDV, transcoding to Photo-JPEG (for some reason my eyes are fairly convinced AIC is inferior), carefully adjusting the cadence of each clip, then reversing telecine with Cinema Tools. I found it pretty tedious.

Last night, I thought I'd try out a freeware program called JES Deinterlacer (http://www.xs4all.nl/~jeschot/home.html#DEI) that had been sitting on my desktop for weeks. It's been discussed here before, but not in any of the recent threads, as far as I can tell.

Well, I'm amazed. Not only does it automatically detect the cadence, it works directly with HDV files, no pre-transcoding required. By default, it skips the Quicktime engine entirely and outputs a 4:2:2 Photo-JPEG movie that looks identical to the HDV file to my eyes. You can also choose to use Quicktime Export, with all the standard format options.

Going out to shoot some more stuff; can't wait to come back and edit it in a timely manner!

that does work pretty good. the auto-detection, and batch processing make this a nice little gem.

This brings up something I saw on another forum. How about some of the other plug-ins? I know Graeme Natress has a de-interlacer and I'm sure others do as well. Would they perform the same task?

Does the one you're referring to take care of everything? By that I mean can I just take the HV20 footage I've already captured, run it through the de-interlcaer and use it in my 1080p24 timeline without rendering?

Bill Doyle

Yes. And just to be clear, although JES does have a plain "Deinterlace" function, you would use "Inverse telecine." The program has a good help file if you get lost.

In FCP, as long as your timeline is set to use the same codec and frame rate, you won't have to render.

This tool looks promising, but I just tried to convert a clip and got nothing but black and white flashing frames. I tried with an AIC clip captured through iMovie and also a HDV 1080i60 captured via FCP. Both with the same result. I am dragging the clips into the input screen, selecting inverse telecine 23.976 and outputting to .mov h.264 file. If you had success with this could you provide more detail of the type of clip you converted and the setting you used?

Thanks for posting this app!

I tried with this workflow.

Input:

I chose my file.

Checked 'Top field first' & 'Video range'.

Project:

I chose 'Inverse telecine' and checked 'Standard', 'Detect cadence breaks'--'Make reference movies' & 'Output frame rate 23.976'.

Color: no changes

Output:

I chose my output file.

Checked: 'Progressive', 'Direct', Compressor 'Photo-JPEG' & 'Copy Sound'.

After playing nicely in FCP's Viewer, when in a 1080p24 timeline, I got a strip indicating it needed rendering. But when I clicked to render it wouldn't render. Odd.

TEST 2
When I tried changing only to 'Direct': 'Export' and 'Quicktime Movie' I got a clip that was completely white.

Notice any problems with my workflow?

Thanks again for providing the link to the app!

elmer

There is something wrong with the export to quicktime part of this app I think. I tried a couple different methods and just got black and white flashing frames.

However, it seems to work great with a direct export to photo-jpeg format. I haven't tried the other direct export types yet.

Can anyone explain why the file becomes so much bigger than the file FCP captures from the cam? In my example a 160mb file becomes 460mb.

Brandon, I don't know the cause of your specific problem, but I can tell you this will work best with an I-frame codec like Photo-JPEG or AIC. Those formats are also better for editing. There are plenty of other programs with which you can convert to H.264 for your finished product.

The bigger file is the nature of the codec; much like H.264, HDV gives you great bang for the buck in terms of file size, but isn't great for actually manipulating the video.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_c...me_compression

Not really, but maybe your FCP timeline isn't set up properly. Right (ctrl+)click on the sequence, click "Settings" and make sure your timebase is set to 23.98 and the codec is set to Photo-JPEG. You may have to create a fresh sequence to be able to modify these settings.

I'm not sure why the Quicktime export isn't working properly for you or Brandon. It works fine for me, just a little slower than the direct option.

check your size in the quicktime settings pane, i did an export to h264 to see if it did it to me, and it did, and then i went back an 2nd time and looked there there were some really funky numbers in the size setting. changed them to normal hd and hit export again and it worked like a charm.

also as far as making it work with other 24p stuff, what codec is your other stuff? hdv or aic? i exported using the quicktime exporter to hdv 24p with 48khz uncompressed sound, and i got no render bars in the stock hdv24p timeline setting, and same with aic in a AIC24p timeline.

Interesting workflow. I'd like to check out that freeware and update my V1u/Mac workflow.

When you make a photo - jpeg version, do you set it at 75% quality for 4:2:2 YCbCr?

heath

Wow! This appears like it could be the *killer app* needed right now for 24P (in 60i workflow). You don't know how badly I needed this!

Thanks so much Hal!!

Unfortunately, you can't adjust the quality, but it seems to default to something above 75% (based on filesize).

If you want to control quality, use the Quicktime export instead.

No problem. Thank the author of the software!

I had e-mailed Jan Schotsman last night, who wrote this application, thanking him and made sure he was aware that it had been discovered by this group.

I am also glad Hal had found this in the haystack of the web... I was beginning to wonder if the hassle of picking apart clips was worth it.

So (noob question, I know) what settings do you use FCP for initial capture, if using this work flow?

I capture using HDV Firewire Basic, and I uncheck "Create new clip on Start/Stop." That's optional, of course, but I like having an entire tape as one clip.

JES will handle Apple Intermediate Codec files as well, so you could certainly capture that way instead.

The only Photo-JPEG codec I see is the RT OfflineHD (Photo-JPEG).

Placed in a sequence with that codec the clip will play after rendering. It'd be nice not to have to render.

Which version of FCP do you have? Under Sequence Settings, you'll see QuickTime Video Settings. In there, set it to Photo - Jpeg, Quality at 75%.

heath

I've heard this JESdeinterlacer program didn't have the capability to do FULL QUALITY output, but only did half. Did they come out with a newer/updated version? Meaning, if you wanted to have the same HDV quality that you input, you couldn't have it. It would output half the quality... Weird by that's what I heard

I've checked its output side-by-side with the original HDV, and my eye can discern no difference.

Anyway, it's a light, free program, so I'd encourage everyone to experiment with it and see if they find it up to snuff.

Hal, thanks for the info!

Bruce

I see it now! Thanks, Heath!

@ Hal

We much appreciate your clueing us in to this little app!

best,
elmer

No problem, Elmer. Just remember, Photo - Jpeg at 75% quality gives you 4:2:2 YCbCr. Use it for DV, too.

heath

ps-Graeme Nattress of www.nattress.com and RED Digital Cinema fame was the one who originally told me about this in 2005.

i just emailed Graeme, and he indicated that Nattress' Film Effects would not do this job... which is a shame.

If it did, there's no chance i wouldn't pick it up - i wonder if we could prod him into adding it, seeing as how the HV20 keeps getting picked as a "best of"... there's going to be a lot of people using these as backup cameras and cameras put into harm's way in lieu of higher-end units.

Don, specifically what did Graeme say Nattress couldn't do? Remove the HDV pulldown?

heath

Here's my email to Graeme -
Subj: Film Effects and HV20

I'm shooting in the HDV 1080p24 mode which is telecined into HDV 1080i60. Also, each cut has a different cadence, meaning that i have to go thru and manually set the cadence each time i hit the rec/pause button outside of Final Cut with Cinema Tools. After all of that hard work - it actually looks pretty great... but the workflow is 3 additional steps and 4 times as long as using regular DV.

Would your Film Effects software

1. be compatible with FCS2 (they had me at "Smoothcam")
2. be able to automagically detect the cadence and bring me the 24p footage i'm longing for?

Thanks in advance.

Here is his reply...

Hi Don,
Yes, it's a right pain to remove pulldown and I don't have anything that helps here either.....

so 1) yes
2) no.

The code in Film Effects (that does the image processing) can do really nice things to the images, whether they're 24p, 60i or whatever, but the 60i to 24p conversion is only for normal 60i footage.

Graeme
______

btw: my workflow...
HV20 in 1080p24 mode -> DVHSCap over firewire to .m2t files -> MPEG Streamclip to AIC -> Cinema Tools -> AIC with reversed telecine

I checked my notes from NAB and I remember stopping by the Apple booth and seeing a V1u, so what does that mean for us? I can guess, grin.

heath

workflow
 

why not capture w/ FCP directly to AIC? i've been captureing to AIC then running that through the JES deinterlacer app, which does auto removal and batch processing, and can then output to back to AIC, photo-jpeg, HDV, or any other codec you want... it will remove pulldown on HDV files too, i'm currently playing with that...

on side note does anyone else have random issues with the JES deinterlacer? every once in a while there is a file that just won't do as it's supposed to, and JES quits mid stream

well, Final Cut doesn't treat HDV as 1920x1080 - it does it 1440x1080.

I convert .m2t's to AIC using MPEGStreamclip, and during that conversion, i make the files "native" 1920x1080. So that takes care of frame size.

Everything from that point on is done in the size i'm going to be working with in the end. When i reverse telecine the clips in Cinema Tools, there it is - just the clip i was looking for.

i've built a AIC 1920x1080p24 easy setting in FCP - bam. it all seems to work for me. I don't want to work in 1440x1080i60 - since that's not my final output.

i've looked at http://www.hdvxdv.com/ - and its obvious that they used DVHSCap as the base for their product, but i can't figure out what i get for $80 vs. the way i'm doing it.

i think i asked this question a few years ago when they made the DVDxDV product which took DVD video and transcoded it into .DV... in both cases, i used MPEGStreamclip to get to where i wanted to go.

Where do you find DVHSCap? The Apple developer page? I think I downloaded it.

heath

yeah - that's where i got it.

I'm having no problems with the JES application - it seems to be a significant step in reducing my workflow. I'm going to email the developer, offer him cash money to see if he will add .m2t stream files as input... that's about the only real "issue" i see, and even now, i'm quite happy reducing the bunch of steps i was doing before.

i'm also incredibly impressed with how efficient it is - my MacPro 3.0 (quad) is at 80% across all processors during conversion.

You don't need to remove a pulldown with 30p, if I'm not mistaken.

heath