Jagged lines in rendered footage

Yousef-Sheikh wrote on 8/26/2025, 5:54 PM

Hi - I really hope someone can help me here as this issue is driving me mad.

 

This involves old (but beloved) tech, I know.

I've long used GH2s in 24p mode to film live music and been very happy with the footage. On a recent project I shot in 25p to match the framerate of a different camera and am having a nightmare processing the footage.

Every which way I render it in my usual MAGIX AVC/ACC MP4 (25p, 24p 50i) I get horrendous jagged lines on horizontal movement. Interestingly, this doesn't appear to be an issue during editing/preview but is painfully obvious on rendering.

I suspect this may be due to the fact that the GH2 saves the 25p footage in a 50i wrapper and Vegas is struggling to recognize it for what it is. I can't seem to find a program that will let me change these attributes easily other than a Mac one called Clip Wrap 2 but I don't really use Macs and I'm also hesitant to spend money if it turns out this isn't actually the issue.

I asked on the old Personal View website which was once the gold standard for all things GH2 but I don't think there is much footfall there so several months on I haven't had an answer.

I'm using Vegas Pro 18 Build 527 on a Window 11 machine. The source footage is all 1920x1080 25p. The rendered footage looks equally bad on both of my monitors.

I've tried the above mentioned frame rates, I've tried right-clicking each clip on the timeline and making sure they are flagged as "field order: none" and I've also tried disabling resampling for every clip

Has anyone any bright ideas here? The footage in question is otherwise really enjoyable and I'd love to get it sorted.

Comments

RogerS wrote on 8/26/2025, 7:54 PM

Could you share a screenshot of your project and render settings? You do want to make the interlaced footage progressive and render to a progressive format.

EricLNZ wrote on 8/26/2025, 8:32 PM

I've tried right-clicking each clip on the timeline and making sure they are flagged as "field order: none"

Assuming you are seeing interlaced combing I would have expected that to fix the problem.

Anyway try going to your Project Media pane and there select all your GH2 25p clips. Right click on one and go to Properties/Field order and select None (progressive scan). That should change all the selected clips.

See if that makes any difference.

EDIT: Further thought after reading your post again - if you are seeing combing then your source must be real interlaced with different fields, and not progressive saved labelled as interlaced. Do you have a short clip you could upload to a cloud server, like Google Drive, for us to download and play with.

3POINT wrote on 8/26/2025, 9:40 PM

Or give us at least a Mediainfo of the GH2 clips.

EricLNZ wrote on 8/26/2025, 11:14 PM

Or give us at least a Mediainfo of the GH2 clips.

I suspect Mediainfo may be misleading if the GH2 does what my Canon AVCHD camera does. It "records" 25p as 50i. But the files are actually true 25p. Yousef said "the GH2 saves the 25p footage in a 50i wrapper" which is I suspect is the same. I forget the reason for this which is historical.

If the files are true 25p then irrespective of them being treated as progressive or interlaced shouldn't give combing as both fields are from the same time. So we await more info in order to determine what the problem is.

3POINT wrote on 8/27/2025, 12:17 AM

Jagged lines is a result of rendering interlaced to progressive without deinterlacing. So I doubt that the camera records true 25p.

Yousef-Sheikh wrote on 8/27/2025, 1:56 AM

Thank you for the replies thus far.

 

I'm just about to leave the house but when I get back will post file info and clips.

Yousef-Sheikh wrote on 8/27/2025, 12:50 PM


Here are my project setting, render settings and media info re the GH2 files.

And here is a short file from that camera - apologies if it isn't the most interesting footage but I wanted to find a clip short enough to upload as-is without having to edit it and risk introducing further confusion:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/142RvNmHuky99zV6iAsBUw2HmpItGeyBO/view?usp=sharing

And here are a couple of rendered files, one in 24p and one 50i - both of which seem to have the same issue. This link should be live for the next three days, I think:

https://www.transfernow.net/dl/202508274Pun9vP2/m8KgNg0r

Very grateful for the input so far - please let me know if there is further info I need to be sharing.

3POINT wrote on 8/27/2025, 1:38 PM

As expected your footage is interlaced, set project settings as follows

and render with a AVC or HEVC rendertemplate

3POINT wrote on 8/27/2025, 1:44 PM

This is the media info of your AVCHD file:

General
ID                                       : 0 (0x0)
Complete name                            : C:\Users\theoh\Downloads\00003.MTS
Format                                   : BDAV
Format/Info                              : Blu-ray Video
File size                                : 72.1 MiB
Duration                                 : 18 s 991 ms
Overall bit rate mode                    : Variable
Overall bit rate                         : 31.7 Mb/s
Maximum Overall bit rate                 : 33.7 Mb/s
Frame rate                               : 25.000 FPS
Recorded date                            : 2025-02-15 21:20:34 UTC
Writing application                      : Panasonic

Video
ID                                       : 4113 (0x1011)
Menu ID                                  : 1 (0x1)
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                           : High@L4
Format settings                          : 2 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC                   : No
Format settings, Reference frames        : 2 frames
Codec ID                                 : 27
Duration                                 : 17 s 800 ms
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 30.3 Mb/s
Maximum bit rate                         : 32.3 Mb/s
Width                                    : 1 920 pixels
Height                                   : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate                               : 25.000 FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Interlaced
Scan type, store method                  : Separated fields
Scan order                               : Top Field First
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.584
Stream size                              : 64.2 MiB (89%)

Audio
ID                                       : 4352 (0x1100)
Menu ID                                  : 1 (0x1)
Format                                   : AC-3
Format/Info                              : Audio Coding 3
Commercial name                          : Dolby Digital
Codec ID                                 : 129
Duration                                 : 17 s 824 ms
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 192 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Channel layout                           : L R
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 31.250 FPS (1536 SPF)
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 418 KiB (0%)
Service kind                             : Complete Main
Dialog Normalization                     : -31 dB
compr                                    : -11.02 dB
dialnorm_Average                         : -31 dB
dialnorm_Minimum                         : -31 dB
dialnorm_Maximum                         : -31 dB

Text
ID                                       : 4608 (0x1200)
Menu ID                                  : 1 (0x1)
Format                                   : PGS
Codec ID                                 : 144
Duration                                 : 17 s 336 ms

Yousef-Sheikh wrote on 8/27/2025, 2:24 PM

Thank you once again.

 

I wonder if the hacked firmware on the GH2 is to blame for misleading me here.

 

I'll try again and use your recommended settings and will report back.

Yousef-Sheikh wrote on 8/27/2025, 3:59 PM

@3POINT - this looks great. I am incredibly grateful for your expertise and time.