Question about de-interlacing

When I capture my footage, it obviously needs to be deinterlaced, so in Adobe Premiere Elements 3.0, I right-click on the clip, click "field options" then check "always deinterlace." The lines are now gone, but the footage looks very fuzzy. What am I doing wrong?

 

Elements.

A quick and easy way to fix it is to download a free trial of after effects, and de-interlace it there. A quick lossless export later, you're done. Unless you've already got AE, then you're set.

 

I don't have Premiere Elements so I can't be 100 % sure I'm right on this, but I'm fairly certain that what's going on is that Premiere is dropping one set of fields and interpolating between the lines of remaining one to get the progressive scan. While this works, it does mean that you are effectively losing 50% of your data, and this makes things look fuzzier.

The way I've always deinterlaced is using After Effects, and PixelMagic made a tutorial explaining what to do which I'm someone who currently has a tad more patience than me will link to

 

If you are strapped for cash, Virtual Dub is an open source video capture program. It deinterlaces and the quality it captures in is really good. I have Adobe Premeire and I prefer VDub. It's worth taking a look at.

 

So it deinterlaces AS it captures?

 

No. However the later versions of VirtualDub deinterlace already captured footage just as good as AE (I've ran several tests on both).

The deinterlace filter should be the very first filter you add. As long as your shutter speed was 1/48 for 24fps or 1/60 for 30fps when recording to your camera, the "Blend Fields" option will work best. After that, add a sharpen filter and set it somewhere between 6 and 10. Then you can resize, crop, color correct, etc.

Note: VirtualDub works with AVIs, not QuickTime MOVs. Some MPEG codecs will open in VDub as well. VirtualDubMod can open more types of MPEGs such as DVD VOB files and whatnot and supports muliple audio streams. However I only recomended that program if you really need it as it is not as current as the standard VirtualDub.

 

I decided that I didn't like the idea of deinterlacing, and field-separate my footage instead. I lose no image data that way. I import 29.97 fps (DV NTSC) footage, make sure the interpret footage is set to lower (once you set it there once, AE should remember...), drag that footage into a composition and set that comp to 59.94 fps. Bingo, no lines (AE "doubles" the lines from each field, no interpolation) and all the original data is there-- I can re-interlace it in the render panel if I so choose, after my effects are done. I can then deinterlace that final render, and the effects take on the same deinterlacing artifacts as the footage, the better to sell them, IMO.

 

A lot of rotoscoping and effects for The Forest II (see sig) were done in a similar-ish way (halving the speed of the footage, working with the half-rate footage, then doubling it back up once complete to get the final progressive scan with correct de interlacing artefacts in the effects)

 

Elements.


Well someone had to say it.

 

Hmmmm....so were you also hinting that I could be getting better quality video from capturing another way?

 

nah, Capturing footage is pretty much straight forward. You can even use Windows Movie Maker to capture. Deinterlacing, however, is something else, that is usually done in post. I suggest doing it in AE, since it's damn straigtforward, if you know where it is.

 

Last I recall, to deinterlace "true" 60i video in AE by blending the fields requires you to import the footage twice, have one set to interpret the upper field and the other to interpret the lower field, put both into a comp and set the top one to 50% opacity. Not all that straightforward. Easy yes, quicker or easier than deinterlacing in VirtualDub, no.

Also, like AE, VirtualDub also has 3:2 pulldown for video that is actually 24p converted to 60i.

 

If you're going to be deinterlacing by field blending, I believe it's better to leave that until the last step, using either my technique of a 50% slowdown or the framerate trick drewjmore posted above. This ensures your effects have the same deinterlacing artefacts as your footage - I might write a more detailed post in a new thread on why this is a good ideas at some point.

 

If Progressive is the goal for the final output, why would anyone want deinterlacing artifacts?

I prefer to deinterlace the video first before anything else. The final effects are not altered by this process whatsoever and look exactly the same as they would if done on a sequence of still images that have no fields.

 

The point is - if your raw footage is going to have deinterlacing artefacts anyway (the 50% opacity field blend method) then it makes sense to ensure that your effects have the same ghosting, or they may stand out a bit.

A good example is the shot in my demoreel (see sig) starting at around 0:57. The first thing I did was stretch out the raw footage to 200% in AE and render that out (AE separates the fields and gives you a 50% speed progressive scan). I then did all the roto (most prominently at the back of the van and around where the original van logo was) and effects work at this 50% speed, then as a final step brought two copies of this slow version into a composition, then timestretched them to 50% on alternate frames, moved the top layer 1 frame to the left, and set the opacity of the top layer to 50%.

Yes, such artefacts are undesirable, but then again so is noise and grain (arguably) and they all have to be accounted for to ensure maximum integration.

 

I think I know what you mean by deinterlacing artifacts but I'm not sure yet.

I want to very clear here and hopefully believed... ghosting does NOT occur when you blend the fields of "true" 60i video as long as the shutter speed of the camera was set to 1/60... period. Instead you get a more accurate interpretation of a camera that records at 30p with a shutter speed set to 1/30. Same thing applies to "true" 48i video using a 1/48 shutter speed. It's only when the shutter speed is NOT set to double what the framerate is that horrible ghosting occurs. I know this because I've ran several tests with 60i video and different shutter speeds that confirms this.

When I blend the fields of ANY 60i video clip that used a shutter speed of 1/60, the results are fan-frikkin'-tastic. I then add a sharpen filter and it looks as if I recorded the video progressively. My entire fight for LCC3 was done this way and I saw absolutely no deinterlacing artifacts.

Therefore, just live with only being able to use one shutter speed and you're golden, no need to add deinterlacing artifacts.