"choppy" movement when transferred to DVD
 

I've shot some dance material on a PD170. When transferred out of Avid Xpress into a QuickTime reference movie and then into Procoder for transfer to DVD the movement gets a "jaggy" look, with lines coming out of edges giving the movement a strange look.
I think this is an interlacing problem. De-interlacing helps a bit, but my question is this - can it be avoided in the first place, rather than trying to correct it afterwards? Are there settings I should be looking at when importing the material or even beforte shooting it?
Is progressive scan any help when recording fast movement? (Though I read on another thread that Sony prog scan is not "real").
Any thoughts and advice for both solving the problem in the most effective way and of avoiding it in the future would be greatly appreciated.

Does it look bad when viewed on a TV rather than through a computer?

Yes, it looks bad on both TV and computer.

It sounds like somewhere along the line the two fields that make up a frame are being combined. That is what would give you the "lines coming out of edges", or combing effect. I don't have any experience with Avid or QuickTime reference movies, so I'm afraid I can't give you any advice on exact settings.

Yeah, it sounds like an interlacing problem. I would deinterlace your footage, that should take care of it. Well, as much as it can be taken care of. But really, if you do a deinterlace it shouldn't be a big issue. I don't think there are any settings you can do to change this. 60i is interlaced, and that is what your camera shoots in. If you do have a "progressive" setting on your camera then it's simply a frame-blending mode that is a pseudo-progressive mode, not true progressive. True progressive frames will not have any interlacing issues, due to the nature of the imaging system.

I'm not a user of Avid Express either so I'm not sure what else to tell you. If you know how to deinterlace the footage (and it sounds like you do) I'd do that. If you can post a before/after picture that would also be helpful. It really shouldn't be noticeable after you deinterlace, and I would assume Avid Express can handle deinterlacing.

Is your television a CRT, or is it an LCD, Plasma, etc?

Have you checked to see if your DVD player is set to output interlaced or progressive scan video?

The TV is CRT - I'll check about DVD player settings. Thanks for all the advice so far - I'll report back. Also found this site about de-interlacing which is worth a look: http://www.100fps.com

hi,
I always do de-interlacing as the very last thing in editing, right before going to dvd. If you do it earlier on and then apply an effect it can create all kinds of problems

If you shot your footage in 60i and then exported it to DVD as progressive footage without de-interlacing first this can be the source of a problem. Make sure to output the footage with the same settings it was shot in. That will at least get rid of one problem if viewed on a standard TV. Make sure to remain with a "lower field first" setting throughout your various capture and transfer stages.

If viewed on a progressive scan monitor such as a computer monitor, then you will see the lines if it's not de-interlaced. The only way around is to shoot progressive scan. But by doing so you might trade the combing effect for some jerky looking video if shooting fast paced action with lots of movement.

Unless one has a good deinterlacer I would not recommend deinterlacing footage shot in 60i, as you would lose 50% of your resolution. Personally, I've always shot 60i and I've never had a problem with interlacing when playing my DVDs on a television.

Playing interlaced footage on computer monitors is another thing, however, and probably always will be due to the fact that computers monitors are progressive scan. In this case the quality of the playback depends on the software player and the settings therein.

The fact is, while I can understand the combing effect when playing the 60i DVD on the computer, he should not be getting it on the CRT TV. That is an abnormality and should not be happening. A setting is wrong somewhere in Avid or his DVD authoring software. Deinterlacing should not be required to fix this problem.

I had the same problem when I change clips from Pal to NTSC. I'm currently using a Pal sony pd-150 cam and living in canada, toronto.

Okay - I'm not sure exactly how, but I seem to have solved the problem. I went back to Avid and re-exported, then re-coded and it now runs smoothly when viewed on a TV. I checked all the settings carefully (particularly "lower field first" ones) so I guess that I must have had a setting wrong somewhere, though nothing obvious appeared as I was checking. I'm new to Procoder, having used TMPGEnc before, so I suspect that I did something wrong there. Anyway,thanks for all help and advice.