PsF clip "converted" to Progressive in Inspector needs rendering in Progressive Project?

Thanks for confirming that the PsF clips need rendering even after jumping through those hoops.

I think that deinterlacing just chucks away one of the fields.

You are therefore looking at an image sized 1920x540 instead of 1080.

This will degrade the image and sounds terrible but in real life I can't see any difference.

I have just been grabbing a few frames to make still photos from my interlaced footage.

I had to deinterlace them in Photoshop but even under close examination the picture looked just as detailed.

This was shot from about 200 feet at the back of a theatre using the Intelligent Auto setting at 1080i

The lighting etc. was not conducive to good results. It's just a straight screen grab deinterlaced in PS.

Click on it to enlarge.

I notice that the forum has squeezed it down to about 60% of the full size and introduced a bit of aliasing.

Message was edited by: Ian R. Brown

Thanks Dave.

I know that PsFs are not a new issue as I discovered it 4 years ago when I bought my Canon HV20 HDV tape camera.

At that time I didn't know about malignant and benign PsFs, my problem was simply that not only did PsF not display the promised improvement to the quality of my films, it actually created a less smooth depiction of motion than normal interlaced footage.

I tested it for a while but as the only difference appeared to be an increased jitter, I cut my losses and continued using 1080i.

I will be giving ClipWrap a test but even if it "cures" the recognition problem, it is unlikely to effect an improvement to the motion quality, so unless a miracle happens I will probably be using interlaced from now on.

Incidentally I notice in your thread that Tom considers the problem of incorrect recognition to be Canon related. As it affects my SD800 which has Panasonic's most advanced consumer technology, I think we can assume it is a universal problem.

Regarding my concerns over jitter, page 61 of the Panasonic manual, when describing the operation of Digital Cinema mode adds the following footnote but not in bold type:-

* The images may not appear smooth.

I think we can take that as official confirmation that PsF footage does not depict motion as well as interlaced.

Message was edited by: Ian R. Brown

I'm afraid I have bad news Dave.

I shot some video in Panasonic's Digital Cinema mode which is supposed to be 25p (PsF).

The files were then dropped into ClipWrap and Re-wrapped.

On importing them into FCP X they were recognised as 1080i in the Inspector and on dropping them into a 1080p Project they had brown render lines above them.

So unless I am doing something wrong, ClipWrap does not get round the FCP X bug.

I hadn't got the latest version of ClipWrap so I downloaded the 2.5.0 trial, but that was exactly the same.

Fearing I may have done something wrong I re-read the ClipWrap/PsF article again and noted that it was recommended to rewrap the AVCHD folder.

I had been rewrapping just the MTS files, so I dropped the AVCHD folder into ClipWrap but the new files were still recognised as 1080i by FCP X.

I then went a stage further and dropped the whole CAM_SD folder into CW but the result was the same.

Furthermore, whichever of the 3 methods I used, the results were the same. Even after altering them to Progressive in the Inspector, shutting and relaunching FCP X to make them recognised as 1080p, once they went into the timeline a brown render line appeared above them.

So CW doesn't appear to have any beneficial effect with my Panasonic PsFs.

Hi Colin, I can email you a couple of clips but as MTS files are around 2MB per second would just a couple of seconds each of Interlaced and PsF be enough?

Would it have to be a clip with movement or just something static?

My camera is the Panasonic SD800 (just superseded) using Panasonic's top of the range consumer technology so I assume that all Panasonic produced PsFs will be the same.

Dave, I tried your double-import technique but there was no change in behaviour.

The Inspector recognised the file as 1080i and when I dropped it into a 1080p project I once again got the brown render line.

The only way I can get the PsFs to work "properly" is to put them into a 1080i project.

I must say that I feel that PsF is a con to fool people who think there is something magical about progressive footage.

In the brief tests I did back in 2008 with Canon HV20 HDV (tape) PsFs and also the current Panasonic AVCHD PsFs I have never detected any improvement whatsoever.

In fact the reverse has been true. The PsF footage has not appeared to be as good, though that could possibly be due to slight discrepancies in my testing.

These findings hold true whether I view the raw footage straight from the camera connected to my 40" Sony HDTV or when used on my 27" iMac in FCP X.

So from what I can see, there is absolutely no reason to use PsF as it gives no improvement over Interlaced and just creates a load of time-wasting heartache.

Re my comments about PsFs being a con, I often feel that my life is a re-run of the The King's New Suit of Clothes as I have frequently found myself disagreeing with generally held beliefs in all aspects of life, not just photography and video.

Often my contentions have proven correct, but only after several years, when everyone involved has forgotten what I claimed in the first place! 😢

A prophet is never recognised in his own time. (Apologies to Matthew 13:57)

A typical example was when I was describing a particular idiosyncracy/fault in a brand of SLRs to a famous Fleet Street photographer/journalist, Victor Blackman, back in the 1970s.

He and many others said that I was mistaken and there was no such problem, but a few years later he wrote an article about said cameras concerning the fault, which he passed off as his own!

I felt like saying, "I told you so", but eventually resisted the temptation.