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-   -   Editing interlaced footage without destroying fields? (https://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/video-editing/8504-editing-interlaced-footage.html)

JamieStar99 02-22-2018 10:37 AM

Editing interlaced footage without destroying fields?
 
I have some VHS footage I have captured through VirtualDub as an interlaced AVI file (Huffyuv) at 720x576 (PAL).

At the moment my workflow has been to import this footage into Premiere Pro, strip any unnecessary footage out, merge and render out to MPEG2 for DVD authoring. However, I've realized that any kind of resizing or superimposing of other footage destroys the interlace fields when it comes to export.

I'm not too accustomed to working with interlaced footage, so my question is... how best to treat this so that I can resize, manipulate individual frames, etc and then reconstitute this back into an interlaced file to export to MPEG2 (ideally with 0 loss of original resolution).

Should I be deinterlacing the footage to 50 fps progressive, working with that, and then re-interlacing it back? Or am I overthinking things?

sanlyn 02-22-2018 04:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JamieStar99 (Post 52993)
At the moment my workflow has been to import this footage into Premiere Pro, strip any unnecessary footage out, merge and render out to MPEG2 for DVD authoring.

I haven't used PP recently, but if "render" is still the term they use for converting lossless media to DVD spec, it's the incorrect term. The correct term is encode. But compared to other issue at hand here, it's a minor point.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JamieStar99 (Post 52993)
I've realized that any kind of resizing or superimposing of other footage destroys the interlace fields when it comes to export.

Why are you resizing? Your frames are already the correct size for PAL DVD. You would likely have to deinterlace and resize to square pixel format for web posting. True, resizing interlaced or telecined video in its natural state will create some damage, distortion and playback issues, but it doesn't "destroy" fields. It can blend fields because of the way resizing is done in many NLE's, and can cause ghosting during playback.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JamieStar99 (Post 52993)
I'm not too accustomed to working with interlaced footage, so my question is... how best to treat this so that I can resize, manipulate individual frames, etc and then reconstitute this back into an interlaced file to export to MPEG2 (ideally with 0 loss of original resolution).

We might want you to explain what you man by "manipulate individual frames". I don't see how encoding interlaced video into its original interlaced state and frame size would lose resolution.

But in general it's a shame you're limiting yourself to Premiere Pro for this type of work. PP doesn't deintelace well, uses inferior and limited, largely outmoded resizing algorithms, and doesn't re-interlace well either. But it's no different from other NLE's in these areas, regardless of price, because other than a good color correction utility it's not a VHS repair or restoration tool intended for major modifications. It's an editor. It has no talent for the kind of cleanup needed by VHS with its floating tape noise, ripples, spots and other dropouts, chroma shift and chroma bleed, chroma noise, edge buzz or halos, or other common VHS defects. It causes a lot of complications when you want to do something simple like clean up, restore and even-up frame borders, which is something Avisynth can do in one step with no alteration of the core image. Nor does PP have anything approaching Avisynth's QTGMC, the best deinterlacer around these days by far, which also does a credible job of minimally-destructive noise reduction. The truth is that deinterlacing always has a cost whether it's reinterlaced or not, and you'd want to use the cleanest and least damaging deinterlace method around if you had to take route.

The way most advanced users and pros would do it is work with lossless huffyuv or Lagarith intermediate files, first going through some proper deinterlacing and cleanup. Then import lossless work into PP for color tweaking if needed and apply the specialized transitions, overlays, etc., while the media is progressive, then export the results as lossless. Reinterlace those files properly in Avisynth and then encode for DVD in Premiere (which for the price at least gives you a good encoder). All users who take a high quality approach use such intermediate workflows. Of course they seldom keep all the lossless work files after encoding and authoring are complete.

I'd advise using something other than Premiere Pro, such as Avisynth and/or VirtualDub, that would be more suitable to your intended task, and let PP handle the part it was designed for, which is edits rather than detailed modification and restoration. Otherwise what you will have by using PP alone is what looks like a very noisy copy of a VHS tape with some added MPEG compression artifacts.

lordsmurf 02-22-2018 04:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sanlyn (Post 53000)
PP doesn't deintelace well, uses inferior and limited, largely outmoded resizing algorithms, and doesn't re-interlace well either. But it's no different from other NLE's in these areas, regardless of price, because other than a good color correction utility it's not a VHS repair or restoration tool intended for major modifications. It's an editor. It has no talent for the kind of cleanup needed by VHS with its floating tape noise, ripples, spots and other dropouts, chroma shift and chroma bleed, chroma noise, edge buzz or halos, or other common VHS defects. It causes a lot of complications when you want to do something simple like clean up, restore and even-up frame borders, which is something Avisynth can do in one step with no alteration of the core image. Nor does PP have anything approaching Avisynth's QTGMC, the best deinterlacer around these days by far, which also does a credible job of minimally-destructive noise reduction. The truth is that deinterlacing always has a cost whether it's reinterlaced or not, and you'd want to use the cleanest and least damaging deinterlace method around if you had to take route.
The way most advanced users and pros would do it is work with lossless huffyuv or Lagarith intermediate files, first going through some proper deinterlacing and cleanup. Then import lossless work into PP for color tweaking if needed and apply the specialized transitions, overlays, etc., while the media is progressive, then export the results as lossless. Reinterlace those files properly in Avisynth and then encode for DVD in Premiere (which for the price at least gives you a good encoder). All users who take a high quality approach use such intermediate workflows. Of course they seldom keep all the lossless work files after encoding and authoring are complete.
I'd advise using something other than Premiere Pro, such as Avisynth and/or VirtualDub, that would be more suitable to your intended task, and let PP handle the part it was designed for, which is edits rather than detailed modification and restoration.

^ This. Great post. :congrats:

Quote:

But in general it's a shame you're limiting yourself
He knows something is wrong, hence coming here to ask questions. :wink2:

Quote:

Why are you resizing?
Yep, this needs answering. :2cents:

JamieStar99 02-23-2018 03:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sanlyn (Post 53000)
I haven't used PP recently, but if "render" is still the term they use for converting lossless media to DVD spec, it's the incorrect term. The correct term is encode. But compared to other issue at hand here, it's a minor point.

Why are you resizing? Your frames are already the correct size for PAL DVD. You would likely have to deinterlace and resize to square pixel format for web posting. True, resizing interlaced or telecined video in its natural state will create some damage, distortion and playback issues, but it doesn't "destroy" fields. It can blend fields because of the way resizing is done in many NLE's, and can cause ghosting during playback.

We might want you to explain what you man by "manipulate individual frames". I don't see how encoding interlaced video into its original interlaced state and frame size would lose resolution.

But in general it's a shame you're limiting yourself to Premiere Pro for this type of work. PP doesn't deintelace well, uses inferior and limited, largely outmoded resizing algorithms, and doesn't re-interlace well either. But it's no different from other NLE's in these areas, regardless of price, because other than a good color correction utility it's not a VHS repair or restoration tool intended for major modifications. It's an editor. It has no talent for the kind of cleanup needed by VHS with its floating tape noise, ripples, spots and other dropouts, chroma shift and chroma bleed, chroma noise, edge buzz or halos, or other common VHS defects. It causes a lot of complications when you want to do something simple like clean up, restore and even-up frame borders, which is something Avisynth can do in one step with no alteration of the core image. Nor does PP have anything approaching Avisynth's QTGMC, the best deinterlacer around these days by far, which also does a credible job of minimally-destructive noise reduction. The truth is that deinterlacing always has a cost whether it's reinterlaced or not, and you'd want to use the cleanest and least damaging deinterlace method around if you had to take route.

The way most advanced users and pros would do it is work with lossless huffyuv or Lagarith intermediate files, first going through some proper deinterlacing and cleanup. Then import lossless work into PP for color tweaking if needed and apply the specialized transitions, overlays, etc., while the media is progressive, then export the results as lossless. Reinterlace those files properly in Avisynth and then encode for DVD in Premiere (which for the price at least gives you a good encoder). All users who take a high quality approach use such intermediate workflows. Of course they seldom keep all the lossless work files after encoding and authoring are complete.

I'd advise using something other than Premiere Pro, such as Avisynth and/or VirtualDub, that would be more suitable to your intended task, and let PP handle the part it was designed for, which is edits rather than detailed modification and restoration. Otherwise what you will have by using PP alone is what looks like a very noisy copy of a VHS tape with some added MPEG compression artifacts.

Thank you for the solid advice. I will try and adopt this workflow going forward.

Also, the reason I need to resize the footage is to warp stabilize portions of it.


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