Deinterlacing: DVFilm Maker vs. Vegas

[Dave Largent]

I did a deinterlacing comparison using the default
settings of the Film Maker trial.
Vegas removed all the stair stepping and Film Maker
*did not*. Frame grabs show Film Maker *maybe* a
touch sharper, but whites were blown out and had
a light gray cast.
Are there any settings in Film Maker to improve
performance?
I noticed that the original interlaced footage
and the footage deinterlaced by Vegas were
identical in size whereas the Film Maker footage was
a smaller file: 94,666 vs. 94,420.

[Boyd Ostroff]

That's interesting. I can't really help with the Vegas question, but I've used DVFilm Maker on a Mac quite a bit. Have never noticed that it changed anything with the colors, and it certainly never "blew out the whites". I wonder if this might be related to it converting Windows files to Quicktime or something?

[Simon Wyndham]

It's funny you should mention all this as I did a similar comparision a few days ago. I did a straight interpolate deinterlace using Vegas and a DVFilmmaker deinterlace.

I put 2 of the same frames together and kept going back and forward between them. The result. I found the deinterlacing of Vegas to give a more detailed picture than DVFilmmaker! The result was even more in Vegas' favour when DVFilmmaker had it's softening of horizontal lines option turned on.

The footage I was comparing was where the camera was constantly in motion. So DVFilmmaker will just have used the line doubling method I would assume. On still images such as title cards the results were the reverse, obviously.

I didn't notice any blowing out of the whites.

[Jean-Philippe Archibald]

Guys, can you put some frames online so we all can judges the two methods?

[Simon Wyndham]

I'll give t a go. My problem is finding anywhere to upload.

Interestingly the demo of Fieldskit produced even worse results with the picture being overly soft by comparison.

[Jean-Philippe Archibald]

If you don't have any space to host your picture, you can email them to me and I will post the link online here.

[James Ball]

The primary business these guys do is to convert DV, HD, betacam, etc. to film.

I drove to Austin to watch their blow-up demo reel taken from the work of clients. I was very impressed. This was several years ago before 24P was in the video vocabulary. I though film gotta die any day now.

Then it happened!

A beautiful aerial view of a city and GAK! all those horrible morray-ing vertical lines. It totally blew away the illusion that this stuff started out on film.

A lot of times we look at just single frames and make a judgement, but these guys are looking at reducing artifacts they see going out to film.

I can't speak to the aliased edges but the vertical lines problem is affected by their world view. DV 2 FILM.

[Dave Largent]

Just looked at some more frame grabs.
Whites take on a faint gray/blue cast with
Film Maker. Also, Vegas retains more detail.

[Jim Lafferty]

I did a side-by-side a while back, and posted images scaled up to 200%. Hands down, Vegas produces better results -- however, the best results I've seen yet are through manually combining fields -- i.e. rendering out two separate versions of the same video, one with Upper fields first, one with Lower; placing them in sync, one ontop of the other, in a Vegas Progressive-scan project, and rendering it out.

Lots of work but by far the best results. I'll look for the images and put them up soon.

- jim

[Jim Lafferty]

Here you go:

http://ideaspora.net/progressive/

These images were direct screen-grabs from the source footage, magnified to 200% in Photoshop, and saved to .jpeg set at level 12.

- jim

[Don Donatello]

reading over the post i do not see which deinterlacing method was used in VEGAS ?

in Vegas project properties you must set the deinterlace method. was it set to none, blend, or interpolate ?
guessing -from the pic's it looks like blend ??

the filmmaker clip was render out to ? avi? QT ? using ntsc dv template or uncompressed ..
Vegas clip was rendered out as ? avi? Qt ? template ?

did the frame grabs come from Vegas or another program ?

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

In doing this in Vegas, the preferred mode is "Blend"
There is a tutorial on how to get a great film look in Vegas, converting 60i to 24p, http://www.sundancemediagroup.com/tu...s/filmlook.htm
that also has some low-rez streaming examples.
Vegas is very, very good at doing this.

[Brian Mitchell Warshawsky]

DSE wrote:
>>>Vegas is very, very good at doing this.>>>

So, the $4000 question is:

Can you take a Panasonic DCV80 and run it through Vegas, and have it look as good as/better than a DVX100?

Brian

[Don Donatello]

"as good as/better than a DVX100?"

IMO NO .. not be as good and no way better.
and i would say you would loose some resolution going from 60i to 24p (or even 30p) as you would be blending fields.

will it look good - yes ...

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

I don't know that I'd say 'not as good as' but I'd not say 'better,' either. How about very good, and different.
Anytime you transcode framerate, resolution, fields, something will get lost. But...if you don't have a DVX, then this is the best alternative, IMO. You gain a lot by shooting 60i and then inserting pulldown than you do by shooting 30p with most any DV cam, and then inserting pulldown.
The panny is it's own tiger. I don't think it's as cool as so many claim, but it does have a unique look. I prefer my XL1 with an X3 lens for most things anyway, and then use the film look workflow I showed in the tutorial. It's fun, as today at the NAMM show one of the FCP demo guys came up and insisted that some footage I'd shot and am displaying on a large plasma screen had originated in film. Kept telling me "He could just tell, because he's got a lot of film background." Then I showed him the original on my laptop. Was sorta fun.
But if you really want that original 24p cadence with full rez, and great control, get a 24p cam. I just happen to not be a monster fan of the DVX100. I usually do swim upstream tho