Hi John

Thanks for the offer. Maybe I am not quite right in describing - it is probably not trailing, but more flickering.

Because the work is not mine, I cannot post clips here, but I'll try and make a screenshot and e-mail it to you.

Thanks.

The MPEG file you sent absolutely positively has the fields reversed, unless you intended to make it Top Field First. Normally, SD DV video is bottom field first.

However, since you did not send either the MOV or the VEG file, which I had requested, I cannot tell you why the fields are reversed.

Thanks John - that was my suspect too.

The actual file, from wich I sent you a small clip, is actually an AVI from birth, but I have 8-10 MOV's too with the same behavior. They are all about 1 GB big.

I took a screen shot of ok and not ok AVI from both Vega sand GSpot:

Ok file:
www.ezzenz.dk/301.jpg
www.ezzenz.dk/G301.jpg

Not ok file (the same I sent you):
www.ezzenz.dk/405.jpg
www.ezzenz.dk/G405.jpg

I hope maybe theese screenshots maybe will be ok instead of uploading the whole 1 GB file.

What I of course spot is the difference in field order. Can you change this somehow. I get the posibility to do it when it's DV AVI within Vegas but not at MOV's.

The whole reason for asking is simply to know if I can tell the client that a few clips out of nearly 200 have this behavior, and it will be difficult to correct this. Then it will be just too bad, but on the other hand, if it was possible to do something quite simple to correct it, it would be as shame not to.
The clips are the result of a competition (http://www.videomarathon.dk/uk/forside_engelsk.asp) so it is 200 different people that have made the clips in different NLE's and mixed PC / Mac.

Thanks again.

/Ulf

To my knowledge, GSpot doesn't actually analyze the field order of the files, it just looks at the field order flag (if there is one) and reports it. The same is true of Vegas.

The "TMPGEnc 4.0 Xpress" encoder from Pegasys is the only application of which I am aware that actually looks at the video to determine the field order. It has been correct every time. (It's possible that the free version of TMPGEnc might have the same field order analyzing mechanism in it, but I'm not sure.)

http://tmpgenc.pegasys-inc.com/en/index.html

For what it's worth, DV should always lower field first and will be if it came straight from the camcorder. If it's been through an editor, there is a possibility that the field order could have gotten messed up due to human error.

Quickest way to check this is with a CRT monitor connect to your edit system. If motion looks like it goes backwards, forwards, forwards, backwards when you play it on the T/L it's a cert the field order is wrong. To check for certain, change it in the medias properties. I ALWAY check any video of dubious providence i.e. when I'm given files and not camera tapes. You can change the field order of MOV files the same as AVI files, in fact the only time I've had wrong filed order it's been in MOV files.

Bob.

Thanks Rob and John C

Got soem of them to woprk just by changing the field option in Media under properties. :-)

/Ulf

Got some of them to work just by changing the field option in Media under properties. :-)

Yes, that's how to fix the problem, if the field order in the video header is wrong (i.e., the actual field order is different from what is reported).

It is easy, using AVISynth, VirtualDub, or TMPGEnc, to tell whether any video file is upper or lower field first. If Gspot says one thing (e.g., upper field first) and then you find out using one of these apps that the video is really the other thing (lower field first), then you do what you did, and change field order in media properties.

If you do this, I ALWAYS recommend encoding a few seconds to whatever final format you intend to deliver, and then play that short clip on whatever display or monitor you or your client will be using. In my case, since I deliver almost exclusively on DVD, I burn a test DVD on a DVD+RW. The test encode and burn only takes a few minutes, and saves HUGE amounts of time later on.