is there a pc equivalent to magic bullet

hi,

i'm pc based and wondering if there is anything as good as 'magic bullet' for pc, i need 25i to 24p (and 25p),

errrr... thats it...

cheers.

[Rob Lohman]

There is no such thing as 25i (25 fps interlaced). What you are
referring to is 50i (50 fields interlaced). There are a lot of programs
and plugins that convert interlaced (50i) PAL footage to progressive
(25p) PAL. Or you can shoot progressive/frame mode to get native
25p (which I do). 25p is more or less the same as 24p. You
can change the framerate of the playback and stretch the audio
to fit.

The question I have, however, is why do you need 24p? To what
format are you outputting? If to DVD you can just stay 25p which
will look beautiful.

you're right i did mean 50i.

i will need 24p, because i want to transfer to film.

i'm not gonna shoot in frame mode cos i'm using the vx2000 which doesn't do this.

>>There are a lot of programs and plugins that convert interlaced (50i) PAL footage to progressive (25p) PAL

thats great, what are they? and will they also do 24p? are they as good as magic bullet?

[Rob Lohman]

I can try to look for you, but since I've been shooting frame/
progressive mode primarely I do not have (or tested) any of
those products. I hope someone else can chime in here.

Where are you from? I suggest you talk to the house that is
going to do your film transfer. Most houses prefer either 50i
or 25p. Not 24p. They will do that for you. Check with them first
before you waste precious time and even more precious money!

Try searching on this forum (search function is up above) for
words like: interlace, interlaced, de-interlace, deinterlace,
progressive etc. This will probably yield some threads which
have already discussed programs/plugins.

I think there are also some very good de-interlace programs
available for free. But these require a lot of tinkering with a host
of other applications to get these to work (real nitty gritty stuff).

If you need to know more let me know.

[Martin Munthe]

I would not think there is an equivalent option to MB on PC. MB's fuzzy logic deinterlacing (24p/25p)is quite unique and the best I've seen so far. MB will be available for PC some time next year.

[skyy3838]

www.digieffects.com

Check out Cinemotion(Highly recommended)

...and also these frame grabs featuring Cinemotion at:

http://fxone.n3.net/


Not bad for a 17 year old,I must say.....



A.

[Barend Onneweer]

There's no use trying to convert 25p to 24p. All films that were shot at 24fps are sped up to 25fps for PAL broadcast or PAL DVD distribution, so for a 'film-look' in PAL territory you're fine with 25p.

For transfer to film, they slow down the video to 24 fps and re-sample the audio to slow down but maintain the pitch.

As far as de-interlacing goes, there are a couple of solutions. I wrote an article on different techniques for de-interlacing in Adobe After Effects.

http://www.creativecow.net/articles/onneweer_barend/deinterlacing/index.html

To my knowledge there's no use using Magic Bullet for converting PAL to 24p, since even films shot at 24fps will be shown at 25fps in PAL.

The look suite is something different, but with some color-grading you can match the results with the standard After Effects filters.

Bar3nd

[Henrik Bengtsson]

Maybe no ones using it to go from 25p to 24p.. but definately from 50i to 25p. Magic Bullet does a bit more to the image when it goes from 50i to 25p than just the normal deinterlacing routines.

Regards,
Henrik

[Barend Onneweer]

Could you describe exactly what it does to the image in terms of de-interlacing and motionFX? And in what way it's different from a solution like the ReelSmart Fieldskit?

Bar3nd

[Henrik Bengtsson]

<<<-- Originally posted by Barend Onneweer : Could you describe exactly what it does to the image in terms of de-interlacing and motionFX? And in what way it's different from a solution like the ReelSmart Fieldskit?

Bar3nd -->>>

Well, ihaven't tried the fieldskit. But the one thing that sets a good de-interlacer out is how it interpoliates the fields. MB has a quite excellent system of guessing how the full frame should look based on the information in the fields surrounding the frame. Now exactly how it does this and if it does it better than Reelsmarts stuff i have no idea. Have to toss the developers of those two products together and see who survives :)

My point was that there are reasons to run Magic Bullet on PAL material, mainly to get it to 25p. You should really ask Martin M on this forum as he's the resident Magic Bullet expert and knows prob more than me on why MB is considered prob the best deinterlacing plugin on the market.

/Henrik

[Barend Onneweer]

Well, I can't do a side-by-side comparison, since I run a Windows operation here, but Re:VisionFX, the guys behind Twixtor, ReelSmart MotionBlur and the ReelSmart Fieldskit are generally considered the experts on motion-approximation. And the results are generally very good, AND customizable. And only 90 dollars :-)

If someone would be able to do a side-by-side comparison on the de-interlacing capabilities of these two solutions, I'd be very interested.

Bar3nd

[Martin Munthe]

I think Re:vision FX is doing a good job. The techniques of interpolating using fuzzy logic is quite similar. But I do think that MB does a cleaner job at it. I'm prepared to state that it even produces a cleaner and sharper image than the original interlaced image provides. My experience is that the reelsmart plugins demand much longer rendering times. And Magic Bullet is render heavy as it is.

BUT the Re:vision plugin for deinterlacing does only a small part of what the MB package does. The MB package consists of the letterboxer, broadcast spec, looksuite, magic bullet deinterlacer and opticals. To me this is a full set of tools that I need for film look specific operations within AE. Sure you could get all this by buying different AE plugins but it will cost you a lot more (and it won't be as handy).