How to correctly extract interlaced VHS video fields to edit in Photoshop?

[brodenn]

I apologise if there is a guide for this somewhere, but I haven't had much luck looking. I have my VHS capture that I am happy with (i.e. all remaining errors seem unresolvable in the capture process), and I would like to do some manual touch-up on a few fields. The issue I have is I don't know how to extract/re-insert edited fields into the footage.

The way I normally do this when working with progressive video is to import my video into Premiere Pro, find the frame(s) that need editing, click 'export frame', make my edits in Photoshop, save the new frame as a PNG, and re-insert the frame after editing.

Because Interlaced video works in fields, When I try this in Premiere, I always inadvertently extract two fields at once because of how Premiere Pro deals with the footage. Just to be clear, I am not trying to de-interlace, I trust my TV enough for that. All I want is to be able to edit fields individually.

[lordsmurf]

Premiere is useless for this.
Use Avisynth (or Vapoursynth), and Hybrid (or AvsPmod) can help if you're new to scripting.

You need to use QTGMC to bob/separate the fields. Export a clip.

Do not use a video player like VLC to screenshot. Extract actual frames. VirtualDub2 can do this.

You can reassemble in Premiere.

Note that any Photoshop editing can effectively mess up the interlacing. So just leaving it deinterlaced may be needed. You can certainly try to reinterlace in Avisynth, but don't be shocked if it looks odd.

[lollo2]

Quote:

All I want is to be able to edit fields individually.

In AviSynth do: SeparateFields(), SelectEven(), SelectOld()

In alternative you can use a lossless deinterlacer at double framerate, like Nnedi3(field=-2) or QTGMC(lossless) to build the frame from the 2 fields, do all your processing, and then interlace back.

[brodenn]

Thank you both for your help! I was actually going to try a script, but then I though surely there's a quicker way to do this. No matter, the script I did worked perfectly and line doubled each field to make two frames. Then I wrote an additional script to re-combine the fields into a single frame.