Help solving "jaggies" problem with diagonal lines from DV source footage...

Hey, all...

It's been a long time. Happy New Year to all!

I'm having a really hard time with some footage I shot years back and need to solve how I could get rid of this.

Footage was shot on a Sony PD-150 in 1/30 shutter mode, which while produced an in-camera flicker effect I liked, turned out that the shutter speed whacked out some stuff in the visuals and I have read of this problem online before. It looks like it puts diagonal lines all out of whack giving a "jaggies" effect. I tried a method on Creative Cow for de-interlacing, but it's not the underlying problem of my footage as the problem still existed after the filter was rendered.

I have purchased over the last couple years the Adobe CS4 Production Premium suite, Red Giant Software's Magic Bullet 2008 suite, and FXHome's Visual Studio. These are the plugins and tools I can use to hopefully fix the problem, if anyone can help point me the right way.

Here's the footage without any filters:
[image=http://www.imaginessence.com/images/720x480.jpg]

I would REALLY appreciate any help if there's any trick to getting rid of the jaggies on the diagonal lines, as this footage is NOT re-shootable being many years later now.

Thanks very much in advance!

 

The problem may actually be that you're de-interlacing footage that was not interlaced originally. We ran into this problem with the RVD footage -- since we shot in progressive frame mode, it wasn't interlaced, but the software assumed it was, so it actually threw out half the image information, interpolated from the other half, and created the stairsteppy look (check it out -- example #1).

This may well be the issue -- it's easy enough to check by going back to the source footage. Import the raw footage directly into After Effects; then in the project window, right click and go to Interpret Footage > Main.

Under "Fields and Pulldown," make sure Separate Fields is set to "Off." With that done, pull it into a composition and check for jaggies.

If the jaggies aren't there, then you know it's an issue of the software's interpretation of the footage and not the footage itself, and you'll just have to troubleshoot downstream, find where the problem is being introduced, and rectify it.

If the jaggies are there, then that's just the way DV looks sometimes and that's why we stopped shooting with it. To my knowledge, there is no simple, procedural way to fix it.

 

Scott-

Thanks for the fast reply. I appreciate it.

Prioryo troubleshooting I tried a few things within After Effects. One of them was that option, but here's what all I did:

- Interpret > Main > upper fields first
- Interpret > Main > lower fields first
- Interpret > Main > separate(off)
- Interpret > Main > Guessing pulldown(s)

It also shows if I just click the source clip in any media players I have.

I have a feeling it has a lot to do with the settings I chose in recording the footage that caused this. The PD-150 showed weird results. I wonder if I go into shutter angle if this might change. I wish I had THEN what is available to me now. I would have never tried creating in-camera film shutter speeds. Back in 1999-2000 there wasn't accessible and affordable software that could achieve these "looks" so I had to do what I could in-camera.

 

Well we've established it's not AE and it's your camera. Which would mean aliasing. I'm thinkin it just a sampling problem of some sort with your sensor. i'm not sure why your camera would be discarding/averaging pixels or doing what it's doing but at lower resolutions (SD) and even a lot of new HD cameras this is VERY common.

 

If it shows up in AE with the interlace removal set to "off", then its "baked" into your footage, and extremely difficult to remove.

-Spiff

 

Thanks for the responses!

Well after an exhaustive search on solutions I finally came across a solution that looks like it will fit my needs and that I'm not alone!

Boris FX has an image correction package with a tool called DV Fixer:

http://www.mytoolfarm.com/video/boris-bcc-dv-fixer

Unfortunately it looks like It will be about $94, but this will help with a lot of my old video so I think it would be worth it for the results.

Anyone ever used this? I know BorisFX is a reliable name in product quality. I'm thinking I'll have to spring the bucks to get it.

 

Hmmm... doesn't seem to be doing much of anything with this trial version I am using. Gah....

 

would this help, maybe?
VCP Tutorial

 

hm, I had my fingers crossed for you on the DV fixer: you seemed confident they had your solution.
"DV fixing" usually involves smoothing out the 411 compression artifacts, and interlacing is not specific to DV.

So I didn't think DV was the problem, as much as a line-doubled deinterlace. Since we've determined that the flaw is baked-in, I suggest that one field of the video has been thrown out and the remaining field's lines are doubled. That is the easiest type of de-interlace filter to implement in software, and a default in some, so you need to try a re-cap without deinterlace. Can you go back to the tape and re-capture?

Another thing might be to trick AE into removing the doubled lines and then re-apply a smarter deinterlace filter on the original single field. I know how to do that if it sounds promising.

 

That was actually one of my first spots to try.

To the poster below, yeah... it looks like that on the DV tape too. It was shot that way. It's hard to see these things looking through a 2.5" LCD screen. Later on I tried seeing what the deal was and it appears EVERY time I pop it into 1/30 shutter mode it does this weird doubling line thing you speak of. I see that when I do the VCP deinterlacing the problem is still there.

The odd thing is that everything that is NOT diagonally lined appears fine.

I don't know why this happened through the camera. I can't believe Sony wouldn't see this problem before releasing the camera. It was s shutter speed change, but seemed to really screw with the horizontal diagonal line resolution in the process.

I contacted a Boris rep to see if they have a solution. I'd be willing to purchase this plugin if it works! I just can't get it to smooth the lines it says it can, and those are some nasty jaggies!

Drew, I'll try that method in After Effects and see what happens. I MAY have tried it though. I'll retrace my steps to be safe.

 

If you read this thread it might shed some light on way dropping down to 1/30 is affecting your image.

http://www.hv20.com/showthread.php?t=6604

 

Well I see they just removed that feature from the later model of the PD150p series.

It makes some sense, though why Sony let this camera get released if the results were showing the way they were I'll never understand. So it sounds like since the camera is running at 60i and putting in 1/30 shutter it forced the image to be capturing double fields to make a sort of virtual 30p, but canceling one of the sets of fields which caused the stair stepping effect that I can't seem to remove.

Wow this is so messed up finding this out years later. Amazing. Someone must've figured out a fix for this somewhere on the net. I can't be the only one.

 

Okay, well that is incredibly un-awesome. A lot of my film was shot half resolution. I found more forums of people talking about their issues with the PD150 and it appears that the "film look" recommendation of doing 1/30 shutter speed came at the cost of reducing my vertical resolution to half at 30i.

Whoever put this option in the camera as an even half-logical feature was an idiot.

Now I have to figure out of there's any way to fix this. It's bad enough I don't have HD stuff, but this is horrible news reading years later after the fact when no one reported any issues before.

My web version probably won't show these problems, but when it comes to the DVD it'll be totally noticeable.

 

try a 3 or 4 pixel fast blur, vertical only.

 

Andrew Kramer has a deinterlace tutorial.

I've used it and it works great.

http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorial/deinterlace_in_ae/