I’ve been capturing my DV footage with Premiere LE that came with my Sony VAIO. And I’m wondering if that has anything to do with the quality of my captures.
I’ve included a screen grab of one frame from the footage to illustrate what appears to be lines in the image. I’ve even added a Gaussian Blur and a Compound HSV Arithmetic operator to help with the edges.
Is there a way to capture my DV footage with Combustion? Would that improve the quality of my footage?
That’s called interlacing and it is standard for NTSC video signals. If you wan tto get rid them you can shot in rpogressive mode which most DV cameras have and then it only take s30 fps instead of 60 fields per second.
I wouldn’t necessarily change the way you shoot. Progressive scan will remove the fields. But its usually better to keep them. Its better for broadcast stuff. In combustion, select you footage and change the source field separation to “lower first” or “upper first”. This allows combustion to read the fields as full frames.
Thanks, Punk. That’s what I’ve ended up going with. I tried “De-interlacing” in Premiere 6 LE, but, it did a terrible job. Combustion does a much better job at improving the footage with “Lower First”, in my case.
Thanks for everyone’s help. I appreciate it. I am having so much fun learning Combustion. 
Peace :wavey:
would you get better quality footage if you shot progressive scan on your camera as apposed to de-interlacing the footage in post? I would think you would because by deinterlacing you are losing information as it is just dropping one of the fields, I know it tries to interpolate but it doesnt look so hot. It’s something to keep in mind. I guess whatever your content is, because fielded footage looks cheap, a real video look, which is good for channel branding or wedding videos if you arent going for something creative and rather just the straight 70’s porn look [hooray for video,hehe], but progressive scan [frames] looks alot more like film especially with a nice grade.
Originally posted by spinpatrol
would you get better quality footage if you shot progressive scan on your camera as apposed to de-interlacing the footage in post?
Yes and No… you won’t have fields and you won’t be losing information but the images will have more blur in them depending on the “shutter speed” you have set the camera to or wether or not your camera even let’s you set it.
IE if you are shooting in bright light you can have a very fast shutter speed and get really crisp iframes but in lower light conditions you’ll need a slower speed which will give you more exposure but more “motion blur” when there is movement.
I’m entirely sure what the OP is asking? If he is woondering why his still frame has lines in it then it is because of itnerlacing and using progressive to shoot stills is the way to go.
If he wants to process the footage then you ned the fields but you have to treat the footage a special way depending on what program you are using. In AE you interprt the footage by dropping one of the fields but you set field rendering in the renderque settings and then it uses the other field when rendering thus giving you all the information.
BTW if you are working on a DVD then use progressive as if you play back interlaced footage on a laptop instead of a DVD player hooked up to a NTSC monitor the interlacing will look horrible.
Unfortunately, I don’t have “progressive mode” on my DV camera. It’s the lower end of the DV products. But, being Sony I still get good quality.
Using “Lower First” in Combustion I get a very good result. So, I’m pretty happy with that. Eventually when I get another high-paying client I will invest in a much higher-end camcorder. In the meantime, I will be able to hone my Combustion skills. Which is the idea, anyway.
Thanks all. 
>>Using “Lower First” in Combustion I get a very good result. So, I’m pretty happy with that. Eventually when I get another high-paying client I will invest in a much higher-end camcorder. In the meantime, I will be able to hone my Combustion skills. Which is the idea, anyway.
I’m not too familair with combustion but surely it works in a similair way as AE in that when you choose Lower First and then render it applys your effects to each field in that order and then recombines them into the finished frame.
That’s my understanding as well, gmask. My greenscreen work is much easier thanks to Combustion.
I just saw the new features of After Effects 6 at Adobe’s web site. I’m sure you’re pretty excited about that. It looks very good.
Originally posted by todd4cgi
[B]That’s my understanding as well, gmask. My greenscreen work is much easier thanks to Combustion.I just saw the new features of After Effects 6 at Adobe’s web site. I’m sure you’re pretty excited about that. It looks very good. [/B]
Oh yeah… it’s got plenty to be excited about… I think the two remaining big features they need to add are a better curve editor and a node based workflow in addition to the current interface and then it will be pretty hard to beat.
I like Combustion’s Curve editor. It seems pretty good to me. Although I am still a wee bit new at composing.
By “node-based workflow” are you referring to a schematic view type thing? Because Combustion has an excellent one.
I was exposed to After Effects first. I actually have AE 5.5 Production Bundle on my Mac. But, since falling in love with 3dsmax 5.1, I sought out Combustion for its power and compatibility with 3dsmax, and because I need a PC for max.
In the end, I really love Combustion’s workflow and interface. I find it easier to get around in. Not to mention the TONS of particle effects that come with it.
If you use Max then Combustion is the natural choice. Persoanlly i don’t think i would use the node workflow unless I had to… I can see some advantages to it but I like just being able to drag and drop large number of elements without having to connect them.
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