deinterlaced output is not deinterlaced

Yes aubiem, I'm using Export using QT via share. I'm using h.264, best quality compression and the rest on auto. Trying other settings yielded some visible differences but none good enough to use again. The ony thing that helped my issue (and others on this thread) was shooting in 30p. Anything else was a no-go.

--David

Winston:

1) "Yes I did, it's the actual size of my source that's 1440. Sorry."

I'm confused: after you captured 1440x1080 -- what was the frame-size of the AIC file?




2) "However, I'm now able to export to 1080i (1440) again without such issues."

You originally said you couldn't export at 1080i without it looking bad. Only 540p looked OK. Now you say that you can export 1080i60 ..."

Exactly, what setting are you now using?

Is the 1080i60 export free of crap?

If yes, why is it working now but it didn't before?

Or, are you saying it still looks bad, but the external de-interlace cleans it up?



3) You say " ... I can now deinterlace my export externally and then export to 720p."

Again I'm confused.

What are you using (QT Pro or JES) to externally de-interlace the 1080i60?

" ... without an issue in QT."

Is your sentence backward? Did you mean "In QT Pro I externally de-interlace 1080i to 720p?

If so, exactly what are you doing in QT Pro to de-interlace?

I don't mean to be picky about language, but if you now can get clean 1080i60 and/or 720p30 -- then you have overcome the major problems with iM09!

If you haven't -- then we are all still where we were 24-hours ago. In this case, I see no reason to upgrade from 08 to 09. Losing clean exports of 1080i and 720p isn't worth the few "new" 09 features. Particularly since folks are reporting the Precision Editor and Stableizer are VERY SLOW.

Guess I will switch to 30p from 60i on my HF100. What about the already imported 60i footage? It's already edited and exported to MobileMe, etc. from iM '08 but eventually I will export to larger than 960x540. Am I screwed?

Yes, I think you won't be able to go larger than 540p for your original imports unless Apple fixes this.

1) "Yes I did, it's the actual size of my source that's 1440. Sorry."

I'm confused: after you captured 1440x1080 -- what was the frame-size of the AIC file?

It used to be 1440 x1080 (1920 x 1080), now it's 1440 x 1080 (1888 x 1062)

2) "However, I'm now able to export to 1080i (1440) again without such issues."

You originally said you couldn't export at 1080i without it looking bad. Only 540p looked OK. Now you say that you can export 1080i60 ..."

1080i/50

Exactly, what setting are you now using?

AIC/HDV 1080i-HD 1440x1080 (clean)

Is the 1080i60 export free of crap?

(50) Yes.

If yes, why is it working now but it didn't before?

Honestly don't know, I'm guessin I made that many exports at different settings through im09, it messed up. I did get to the stage where the same settings didn't give the same results each time. After you pointed out that  may have changed their default aperture settings, I tried exporting to AIC/other- HD 1920 x 1080 (classic) (since there is no 1440 classic setting), as you suggested and bingo! so I drew the conclusion that only that setting would work.

My previous exports to 1080i (1440) had produced interlaced video with combing as well. I say combing but it wasn't, if I checked single field or de-interlace in QT props I got wavy edges where they should be vertical lines, sort of like 5 or 6 consecutive lines had jumped a millimetre to the left and the next 5 or 6 had jumped a millimetre to the left.

So I may have misled you on that one.

What are you using (QT Pro or JES) to externally de-interlace the 1080i60?

" ... without an issue in QT."

Is your sentence backward? Did you mean "In QT Pro I externally de-interlace 1080i to 720p?

If so, exactly what are you doing in QT Pro to de-interlace?

I don't mean to be picky about language, but if you now can get clean 1080i60 and/or 720p30 -- then you have overcome the major problems with iM09!

No problem about the language, I have difficulties in putting thoughts into words, my mind races ahead so I forget exactly what I'm typing at the time, I try to re-read as much as I can, but long posts are hard work. I don't have any issues about being told about it, in fact I'd rather people do, when it's hard work typing, it's no fun waffling on if someone doesn't understand me, better I find out sooner than later and waste my time.

If I take my 1080i (1440) or any 1080i for that matter from my im09 export and deinterlace and convert it to 720p in JES (either single field or field blended deinterlace) , then yes it is clean. I can also deinterlace in JES and then convert to 720p in QT (I know no-one would do this, it's just for information) and it's clean.

So with a little work I have 720p from im09, albeit with a bit of help from JES.


The bit that I don't understand is where the problem lies. It would seem in one way that QT is the problem in that it simply makes a real hash of deinterlacing, this seems true whether going through the QT interface or the im09 interface. If so then the problem must have been in QT prior to installing im09 and I simply didn't notice it.

This may also be true, I posted some of my source video on my idisk and someone who is still running im08 and QT 7.5.x ran it through both applications for me. They reported that through QT the 720p output was awful whereas the output from im08 was fine.

So perhaps the problem may lie with QT and that something in im08 corrected it, whereas what ever that was has been omitted from im09, sounds absurd I know. Of course 1080i source exported from FCE at 720p is just fine using QT conversion.

To add confusion if I use mpegstreamclip on my 1080i (1440) video to output a 720 QT movie/mp4, if I select deinterlace all is well (as I would expect), if I don't select deinterlace the export is not interlaced but our problem returns. I would have expected the later to be interlaced (but even if it wasn't it shouldn't be messed up).

I hope this helps rather than confuses things more.

An alternative opinion - no, not necessarily. You just need to make sure that you export any movie containing 1080i60 footage in 1080i60 AIC format, then use an external application like JES Deinterlacer or MPEG Streamclip to do the final encoding. You should still be able to do all your edits in iMovie '08 or '09 without too many problems.

If you want to do an entire project in 1080p30 but mix in some 1080i60 footage, your best bet would probably be to use the "Reveal in Finder" menu option for the 1080i60 clips of interest, then use JES Deinterlacer to do a full quality deinterlace to produce a 1080p30 file. Import the 1080p30 file back into iMovie as a new event, so you have both your original raw and deinterlaced footage available. You can then use your deinterlaced footage to work entirely in progressive mode and you won't need to worry about any of the interlace bugs discussed in this thread.

If you have the time and disc space, keeping both interlaced and high quality externally deinterlaced versions of your raw footage available is probably a good idea in general anyway, since it makes it easier to mix and match footage for any future projects or new versions of old movies that you might decide to do.

David, what are your encoding times? Last night I sent a 35 min project to Quicktime on these settings about an hour before I went to bed and when I got up at 6am it said it still had 15 hours to go! How can this be? I'm using a brand new Macbook Pro unibody with 4 gigs ram and plenty of HD space. My drive is upgraded for space to the Samsung Spinpoint 500gb HD. Not sure if that matters.

Steve Mullen wrote:
You need to convert 1080i60 to 720p60 before importing into iM ...
... The patch simply allows iM to export all 60 frames with the timebase set to 59.94 to codec. No special export tricks needed.

Doh, stupid me! Well in that case, the process isn't really any more or less clumsy than the mechanism I'd worked out myself. It's very useful to know that I can tell iMovie to do all of its transitions and animations at 60fps, though, so thanks for reposting the message describing the preferences file alteration.

It's 4:30AM and I'll need to sleep on this. It took me a very long time to confirm -- and then 6 months to re-confirm, the UPPER (classic) settings worked while the LOWER (clean) did not -- with 08. To do this I drew many 1-pixel lines (some landing by chance on odd lines and some by chance on even lines) in photoshop. Then ran the video thruim to BD to a 1920x1080 hdtv.

"AIC/HDV 1080i-HD 1440x1080 (clean)"

So with 09 it's the LOWER setting?

Here's an idea:

If we assume 09 now uses CLEAN when writing the captured file, then it makes sense that export should use CLEAN (LOWER).

Of course, that means the LOWER 1280x720 should work -- unless DEINTERLACE really has been disabled. I can't think why Apple would disable it -- unless it has never worked.

JES does such a good job deinterlacing that it is not too awful to use it to get 720p.

PS: By the way, I wouldn't be surprised to find video captured in 08 is screwed-up if imported into 09.

Interesting alternative. I think I'll just keep the 60i video 'as is' for now and consider your options if Apple doesn't address the issue. Since iLife '09 has been out for a week, we really don't know if the issue is the result of a deliberate change on Apple's part or if it's a bug.

The good thing is the 30p will work.

So with 09 it's the LOWER setting?

Well it seems to be either at the moment, without the aid of single pixel lines from a photoshop session, exporting to HD 1920 x 1280 classic and HD 1920 x 1280 clean look the same when I toggle the aperture setting in QT (can't test 1440, it has no classic counterpart option in QT). I might give photoshop a run out and clarify that at some point (should have kept the ones I did all that time ago).

PS: By the way, I wouldn't be surprised to find video captured in 08 is screwed-up if imported into 09.

I'm making assumptions to why you say this, but it doesn't appear to have done so far. But for the avoidance of doubt it isn't simply that im08 imported classic and im09 imports clean, but rather that all my older im08 imports as well as my im09 ones now are reported as clean when I open them in QT.

I wouldn't have thought that if things work as they ought that classic or clean it shouldn't make any difference, I understand these are display settings only and not the actual resolution of the video.

You're right about encoding times and file size. Just under 3 minutes of raw footage took probably 30 minutes to process and generated a qt file of 2.5 gb in size. Is this normal? Then again, I was really looking for quality in my tests. Now I'll have to start fiddling with size and speed options. It never ends... 🙂

I've been busy catching up to this thread. Very interesting development here.
As for capture, there seems to be no difference between 08 an 09. I compared two 1080i clips captured in 08 and 09 and they both show this info:

Apple Intermediate Codec, 1440 x 1080 (1888 x 1062), Millions
Normal size 1920x1080
Current size 1920x1080

So I don't think iMovie09 enforced clear aperture on importing.

To me, the big difference is how iMovie now uses single field processing while editing but not exporting. This is a good and bad new for me at the same time. It is much easier to export 1080i in any format. I tested even Photo-JPEG at 1920x1080 HD (upper setting) and interlaced lines are there, only without field dominance info. I was able to easily save out full 1080i Quicktime movies as long as I used '1920x1080 HD size'.

The bad thing is that iMovie could've been a little more intelligent about how it exports interlaced footage. Because it uses both fields no matter what and treats two fields as one frame, exporting to 720p is unusable option for 1080i source and 'deinterlace the source' function is broken in a very timely fashion. 1080i -> 720p is always a compromise but had iMovie been a bit more thoughtful of how to deal with deinterlacing it could have at least use single field to make 720p out of 1080i source, or deinterlacing. So now the only option for clean 720p output, like Steve and others said, is to either ingest in 960x540, or ingest 1080i and deinterlace it outside iMovie to 1080 30p, or to keep it all 1080i in and out and deinterlace/resize to 720p outside iMovie.

It feels as if Apple is saying 'Did you want both fields? Here you go.' And now de-interlace function is broken and there is no way to go from i -> p without this combing mess. (within apple only solution, that is) Perhaps it's because Apple figured majority of users never bothers with 1080i and always uses 960x540, which I don't know if statistically true or not, and those use 1080i want full frame export back to 1080i.

ps- And what is up with that lower HD size options? I understand now that they want to output clear aperture, or some kind of action safe zone, for HDTVs. But shoudln't they crop the picture instead of scaling? It just messes up the fields and picture is not good for anything. I guess I'll be careful never to use those lower settings.

I am following this thread with great interest. While some of the technical explanations are a little over my head I can follow most of the conversation. Some of what I am reading leaves me scratching my head and wondering ***!
Example is Steve's post:
+• Video: compression type Apple Intermediate Codec, frame rate Current, compressor preset "Other", Interlaced and "top field first" ticked+

+• Size: "1920 x 1080 HD" and not "HD 1920 x 1080 16:9" is vital for iMovie '08 since it holds video at true 1080i."+

+I agree -- with 08 this produces a nice looking 1920x1080i60 or 1440x1080i60 movie for BD. In fact, it is the ONLY way to get a true 1080i movie out of 08.+

Steve in your iMovie 08 book on pages 28,29, 88 and 89 you suggest using the lower 1920x 1080 16:9 for full HD export for Blu-ray or AVCHD disc. I wanted to paste the actual text but it is password protected.
Am I miss understanding something now or has something changed with iMovie 08 as well as iMovie 09?

Remember I said "... and then 6 months to re-confirm,"

When I wrote the book I didn't have a 1920x1080 hdtv so I couldn't be sure. Back then I thought UPPER was a single field doubled while the LOWER was a frame -- so it had all lines but also had combing. Now, I THINK that UPPER is a full frame (based upon my photoshop tests and new hdtv).

I completely forgot the book still recommended LOWER for BD.

I need to fix this, but before I do I'd like to feel more comfortable understanding what's going on in iM09 and QT.

If CA is simply adding a tag, then why now can Winston use both upper and lower? Why is what's output seeming to change from unusable to useable? Why does neither 720p export work?

PS: I suppose not having a Clean tag may have been what made upper and lower produced different quality video in 08. Thus, it may be iM08 was broken. After all, Apple did ask BM to add CA tags. It must be important in some way.

But why isn't DEINTERLACE working in 09? Is it broken in QT export or is iM09 turning it off? Why?

Winston -- does DEINTERLACE work in QT PRO?