25p effect via Firewire?
 

I'm playing around with the much fabled film look, in particular Graeme Nattress's Film Effects plug-in. Desaturating and applying an S-curve does make a difference, but I can't see any difference between 50i and 25p (PAL). Should I be able to, playing from FCP through the Firewire port via the camera (PDX10) to the TV?

I used to be able to connect my Mac to the TV via an S-video cable, but that doesn't seem to work any more for some reason. If that worked would that show the difference up more clearly?

On a TV it is very hard if not impossible to tell the difference. A
TV *is* interlaced so it will not show the interlacing effect. It is
much easier to see this on a computer.

Why are you so interested in seeing the difference on a TV?

Yes, I see what you mean. I know that TVs are interlaced, and I suppose, now that I think about it, that I wouldn't see any difference. I couldn't see any real difference on my computer (LCD) monitor either, at least with moving images (still images show the deinterlacing very clearly).

So, whilst I can see the benefits of the film look, unless I'm missing something I'm coming around to the view that deinterlacing is overrated.

If you have a Film Look plug in that can change 50i PAL footage into 25P video and it changes the motion effect that is normally spread over 50 "interlaced" frames/second, then there must be a difference. 25P material is written down on a mini-DV tape that must be compatible with tv's otherwise you can't show it. The main thing is the way the 50i footage is converted, for instance: if the plug-in combines a first and second frame and combines it to 1 new frame (doing something smart with movements etc), that is repeated over frame 1 and 2 during the conversion then you will see a difference during playback on tv.

Rob, any thoughts from you on this? Or am I missing something?

Peter

Peter and others: it is a complex system. It is very hard to
predict what will happen if you do it one way or another. It also
depends on which camera captured the footage and in what
kind of mode etc.

What did you use to play the footage on your computer? For
example: if you encode (your interlaced file) to MPEG2 (interlaced)
and play that back in a software DVD program it *SHOULD*
de-interlace the footage on the fly for you so you would still
NOT see this effect.

Same goes with DV. Per default the Windows Media Player
DOES NOT playback DV at full resolution. It plays it back
at 50% resolution and you will again NOT see the interlacing
(since you are only seeing one field, not two). In WMP you can
change this to let it show the full 100% DV. Some software DVD
players will let you turn of de-interlacing as well.

Just some thoughts...

I'm using Quicktime (on a Mac) or just playing through FCP (which I believe uses the Quicktime 'engine' behind the scenes) but I've no idea if it deinterlaces on the fly or not. There are no options for that. If it does then that would perhaps explain why I can't see any difference.

On the PC I go into the movie properties and somewhere on the
video portion there is a checkbox labeled "High Quality". As soon
as I tick that (which is only available in QuickTime Pro) the DV's
will improve tenfold in quality and interlacing is visible as well.

I have no idea if the same is happening/possible on the Mac, sorry.