deinterlaced output is not deinterlaced

Yeah, I have the same camera with the same iMovie interlacing issues. I've just decided that shooting interlaced is just not worth it. I mean, why do it now that pretty much all monitors are progressive anyway? And Im not using my footage for making big budget movies or anything like that.

So my advice is, just shoot everything in progressive if your camera can do it. Especially if web distribution is your thing. There are just too many issues that can happen letting software de-interlace your footage & it sometimes takes a hit in quality too.

I don't think you understand. iMovie still has issues with progressive formats. The interlaced format that this camera can do is extremely useful.

In an extremely minimal explanation:

24p - progressive, 24 frames per second. iMovie 09 somehow creates interlacing
This produces the "movie look" and it is also good for low light situations on this camera as each frame has a little more time to capture the light. Not as good for fast movement though.

30p - progressive, 30 frames per second. iMovie 09 exports this as progressive

60i - interlaced, 60 frames per second. iMovie 09 takes the interlacing and makes it MUCH worse. Instead of thin single pixel lines you get thick multipixel lines. It is absolutely horrible.

So, even the general "shoot in progressive" doesn't apply. You can only shoot in progressive at 30fps. Nothing else. At this rate I am thinking about just switching back to iMovie 08.


Since my previous post I have noticed some interesting things in the imported videos prior to export. I will have to put together a collection of screenshots so this makes more sense.

You dont have to explain the difference, I know. When I say "progressive", most people know that as 30p since thats what we use in the US. Yes, some use 25p overseas or even 24p here, but thats for a motion picture-like look, which not many iMovie users are too keen on doing. 😉

And actually, you can shoot 60p, although not many cameras do this at the moment. Anyways, most people should shoot in 30p if your camera allows it anyway. That will give you the least trouble in the end if you're distributing content on the web.

In my opinion 60i = Almost useless for standard users today

Well, I am completely unhappy with this. Common usage or not, this is a giant step back from previous performance. Fortunately, I can export without QuickTime and get good results (but can't get HD resolution). This gives me hope that a quicktime update can fix these issues. There has been a LOT of complaints from the 7.6 Quicktime update breaking all kinds of things. Hope the fix happens soon.

Your 24p setting is likely not 24p but 60i with pull down. This is possibly the reason that imovie struggles with it.

Interlaced video is not useless, even with imovie in its current state. The work around for the time being is to edit and export to full quality at the same resolution as your source content. You can then deinterlace and resize in a third party application.

mhgrover wrote:
24p - progressive, 24 frames per second. iMovie 09 somehow creates interlacing
This produces the "movie look" and it is also good for low light situations on this camera as each frame has a little more time to capture the light. Not as good for fast movement though.

Interlacing was not created by iMovie but the camera itself. Most 24p camcoders captures 24p but telecines it to 60i to record so that it can be viewed on TVs. And the recording media is also designed for 60i. For PAL 25p is simple, as 30p is simple for NTSC. You simplely record your full frame into two fields but there is not temporal displacement between the fields. But 24p in 60i stream is a headache. You need an extra step of inverse-telecine to extract true 24p from 60i, otherwise you'll always see those interlaced lines.

"And we haven't even got started on the black level errors introduced by using AIC (not so lossless after all) or the gamma curve jumping problems suffered by iMovie '08 during cross fades."

YES and YES!

The gamma shift is horrible when I convert h.264/AVC to AIC. That's why I've bought 09. It imports my camera's h.264/AVC files and uses then directly for editing. Otherwise, I have to convert to DVCPRO HD.

The cross fade issue is absurd. Somebody is a really bad programmer at Apple. Hopefully tis is gone in 09.

I've stayed with 10.4.11 this long and there's a snowball chance in **** I'll be quick to upgrade to Snow. Apple never gets an OS working right until the last update. Apple seems not to give a ****.

So hearing all this is pretty discouraging and I know we cant predict what Apple is going to do as far as updating iMovie 09, but for me I'm wondering is it even worthwhile to use this app in it's present state. I imported a ton of dv format video in iMovie 08 using a Canopus analog-digital convertor box, and I shot my entire trip to Italy this Christmas in 60i on the recommendation of users in the iMovie 08 forum, with my Canon HF100. I don't blame anyone of course as no one knew what iMovie 09 would bring.

Has iMovie 09 damaged my video in any way or is it only on export where the destruction starts? I was excited to get going on my video from Italy with iMovie 09 and got about half way through editing my video just the way i wanted, I used the effects and the stabilization tool and it looks great, at least on my iMac, then I started reading this forum.

Would you say it's safe to continue to edit and get my video the way I want until Apple fixes this issue. I love having all my old DV video in 09 too, but some of the video isn't that great of quality to begin with, and the idea of degrading it even more on export with 09 isn't appealing to me.

Anybody got any ideas? Any consolation to offer 🙂

Thanks

This discussion is about 1080i video, not 480i video.

DV always has a field dropped so its no longer interlaced -- which is bad for resolution, but what we are talking about is not an issue.

If you want to get full resolution with DV you need to do a work-around. You captured footage is fine and can be used. This will use a lot of disk space.

As mentioned by others in the thread, have you tried exporting to 1080i60 and then sing a third party deinterlacer like JES to encode?

Original iM 08 export
http://sanjeevandlisa.smugmug.com/photos/465409379_eQs7v-X2.png

I tried it with one video that I captured in 60i:

iM 09 export:
http://sanjeevandlisa.smugmug.com/photos/465409433_C5Zna-X2.png

exported to 1920x1080 AIC and encoded in JES Deinterlacer:
http://sanjeevandlisa.smugmug.com/photos/467990678_xpgqo-X2.png

The JES AIC exported JES deinterlaced seem good.

But I like the iM 08 color and contrast better.

Has iMovie 09 damaged my video in any way or is it only on export where the destruction starts?

Would you say it's safe to continue to edit and get my video the way I want until Apple fixes this issue. I love having all my old DV video in 09 too, but some of the video isn't that great of quality to begin with, and the idea of degrading it even more on export with 09 isn't appealing to me.

If you import 960x540 that's where destruction occurs but the rest is ok. If you do it 1080i you can still get full 1080i if you don't use stabilziation or cropping. If you use those features you can output clean movie at 960x540, until Apple makes it work for 1080 or 720 sizes as well.

For DV I would manage clips and do rough cut with iMovie but finish editing with Final Cut express for max quality, because I don't think Apple will change anything when it comes to DV.

I've only imported at full res 1080 from my Canon HF100. My trip to Italy was shot entirely in 60i. Unfortunately I will have to use stabilization on some of my clips, the motion is so much cleaner with it turned on, but I understand that any zooming on still images or video will cause a loss in resolution.

I did see the problem first hand last night when I exported a movie with mixed frame rates at 1280x720. The first part of my video was shot in 60i and man were those lines visible, thought I was watching an FMV game from the mid nineties. The last was part was shot in 30p or 24p and no lines appeared at all. I exported this same movie at the same resolution a few months ago in iMovie 08 and no such lines appeared, but I couldn't tell you if iMovie 09 or the latest QT broke this. Anyone can clearly see that something is broken though.

Thanks

Joshua Garrett wrote:
Unfortunately I will have to use stabilization on some of my clips, the motion is so much cleaner with it turned on, but I understand that any zooming on still images or video will cause a loss in resolution.

Resolution loss due to stabilization zoom is always inevitable, but mostly the tradeoff is worth it. Problem with 1080i source is that trade off is not worth it. Interflaced patterns get really ruined and yields unacceptable quality. But if you set your output QT size to 960x540 that problem goes away because iMovie drops one field to process 1080i source to 540p. For now, 960x540 output is the solution and I hope Apple will make it work for 720 or 1080 output size.

I did see the problem first hand last night when I exported a movie with mixed frame rates at 1280x720. The first part of my video was shot in 60i and man were those lines visible, thought I was watching an FMV game from the mid nineties. The last was part was shot in 30p or 24p and no lines appeared at all.

iMovie 08 always made 1080i video to 540p for output, except when you output 1080i. 720p from iM08 was cleaner because it went through 1080i ->540p -> 720p. iMovie09 tries to use entire frame when converting to movie bigger than 960x540 so unless you shot 30p mode, interlaced lines of 1080i video will be screwed up.

On the way to iM09, I'm using iM08 with 7.5.5.

1920x1080i clip plus stills with odd OR even lines.

As expected, NO visible combing on clip.

As expected, both odd and even lines are visible on stills.

Export as Upper 1080i -- visible combing on clip.

Export as Upper 1280 AS P -- both odd and even lines are visible on still.

Now I'll install 7.6.

CORRECTION:

As expected, NO visible combing on clip.

As expected, both odd and even lines are visible on stills.

This wasn't "expected" because iM08 sometimes showed combing and sometimes didn't. So scratch the "expected" comment.


Next iM08 with 7.6:

1920x1080i clip plus stills with odd OR even lines.

NO visible combing on clip when viewed by iM.

Both odd and even lines are visible on stills when viewed by iM.

Export as Upper 1080i -- visible combing on clip.

Export as Upper 1280 AS P -- both odd and even lines are visible on still.


Now iM09 with 7.6:

NO visible combing on clip.

Both odd and even lines are visible on stills.

Export as Upper 1080i -- visible combing on clip.

Export as Upper 1280 AS P -- both odd and even lines are visible on still. HOWEVER, on fast mice teeth are visible. The teeth and gap are 2-pixels high.

Looks like it is 09 itself that is broken.