How to get good looking 23.98 fps from 29.97?

Sebaz wrote on 10/18/2010, 9:30 PM

Inexpensively talking (meaning no fancy $$$ plugins) is there a way to get cinematic look from 29.97i footage? I tried lowering the undersampling rate in the event properties to .800, which it says there leaves the footage at 23.976, but with any of the three resampling choices (off, smart or force), the motion looks terrible. So is there any other way to do it properly in Vegas, or do I have to rely on some expensive plugin for it?

As for the look itself, are there any curves that anybody can recommend? I get great results with the YUV curve in Edius Neo, but with the RGB curve in Vegas, not so much. I think they work differently. I might get New Blue's Cinelook if I don't have a choice, but I would prefer to save the money by coming up with a curve that works as good as their filter.

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 10/19/2010, 3:37 AM

Personally i wouldn't change the frame rate. About 99.99% of the appeal of the "film look" is the color grading, not the frame rate. The only reason to associate 24fps with film is because film is shot at 24fps, not because that is some magic frame rate used to achieve a particular "look".

On top of that, altering the frame rate either means interpolation which will cause fuzziness from blended frames fading in and out several times per second, or cadence issues from dropping occasional frames. I would say that either of these effects detracts far more from what you want to achieve than leaving it at 29.97 will.

corug7 wrote on 10/19/2010, 9:18 AM

I've had good luck on small projects using the Mike Crash smart deinterlace filter (usually when I need to conform footage to 24p.) Put your interlaced footage on a 23.976p timeline and make sure the deinterlacing in the project properties is set to none. Make sure your interlaced footage is recognized as interlaced and the correct field is first. Add the smart deinterlacer filter and adjust until you find a look that suits you. I have found that this method tends to create the smoothest 24p from 30i without looking like there are dropped frames or blended frames. Be aware that you should not zoom in on the clips or you will get weird interlacing artifacts.

kairosmatt wrote on 10/19/2010, 2:40 PM

I've always had better results with DVFilmaker, and its only $45.

http://www.dvfilmstore.com/dvfilmmaker.html

kairosmatt

Sebaz wrote on 10/19/2010, 3:50 PM

Thanks for all the suggestions. I will try them out as soon as I can.

rrrrob wrote on 10/19/2010, 4:19 PM

Is the source video progressive or interlaced?

If it's progressive, I've used DVD2AVI, using the FORCE FILM option, but the video has to be greater than 95% progressive content for it to work well.

If it's interlaced, that's probably best handled by avisynth scripting...Vegas' internal deinterlacing choices (blend or interpolate fields) compromise quality significantly.