Progressive or interlaced

Ok, AlwaysHD just confused me. They wrote and said that a video shot in 30p, needed to be rendered to PhotoJPG progressive. I had rendered it in MotionJPG progressive. They said sometimes it causes "ghosting". I re-rendered it in PhotoJPG just to make them happy and now I see the ghosting....when I did not see it before, so it is not better. I could shoot in 60i and render to MotionJPG interlaced upper, but is that better? What is going to sell better in the long run? What are the customers going to be looking for? Can you tell the difference? I looked it up on Wikipedia but that only told me what they are, not what is more useful. I have PM'd one of you on this, but thought it might be something to throw into the forum, I might not be the only one with this question. Thanks -Sandi

Progressive is better, and the error you got could be from rendering in one, then the other.

The reason progressive is better is it supports fast movement better then interlaced. The principle of interlaced is just what it says it's interlacing the frames odd field then even, upper and lower is the field first basically, upper or lower field first. If you have to de-interlace you will get a loss on image quality where progressive can be interlaced in the final output without a double loss on quality. So if someone needs upper or lower, progressive is fine too. That's my take on it, some of my points may be wrong, things change in the industry. Every thing I do is progressive and I would not buy a camera that did not shoot progressive.

Sandi,
You should render at whatever your camera natively shoots.
If its interlaced you have to render motionjpg
If its progressive render photojpg.
Never try to de-interlace your footage if the camera shoots interlaced.

Hmmmm, now I am more confused on the camera, after reading your post Jake. I have it set at 30p....but in looking on the Canon site......

Frame Rate
60i, 24p Progressive (records at 60i), 30p Progressive (records at 60i)

does that mean it is shooting in interlaced natively? seems all of the settings are starting in 60i, so interlaced. It does not speak of this in the manual, just that you can change between them. Maybe this is where the problems are coming in....I am trying to convert them and de-interlace and did not even know it. Am I reading this all correctly?

Hi Sandi,
It seems your camera shoots interlaced at 60i but has a progressive mode which usually isn't true progressive.
Since it's interlaced I would keep it at that setting and render motionjpg.

The clips you have already shot, just render the original footage as photojpg and use those. but from now on use the interlaced mode.

Jake

Yeah listen to Jake on the camera stuff he knows what he is talking about, I'm 100% CG so the camera stuff is out of my area of expertise. An if you come up with a really odd camera question Ironstrike is also a good one to ask.

Thanks, that helps a lot. I think I was doing it wrong before. But considering what little I knew not too long ago, this is fix-able. And I did not have that much footage online before I found out I was doing something wrong. Live and learn. Thanks guys :) -Sandi

Sent ya an e-mail. Canon 60i is interlaced and like Jake said leave it in M JPEG. The 30f is a quasi progressive and can be processed as progressive P JPEG. Even though the camera has a progressive capability it is more closely designed to shoot interlaced. I suggest using interlaced. There are so many arguments on which is better Progressive or interlaced and it really all depends if you plan to do fast motion, slow motion or even the subject matter. One is better sometimes and the other other times. Both modes will be acceptable for a long time. I've learned to leave the XH-A1 in interlaced most of the time and use the 5D MKII for progressive. Have fun and keep joining in.

Sandi,

I have a Canon HF11 and I have done a TON of research on this. The Digic II/III processor on the camera ALWAYS captures images at 60i, no matter what you have it set for. However, the captures are processed and recorded to AVCHD according to what your settings are. So if you set the camera to 30p, the two interlaced frames are combined "in-chip" to a single progressive frame and recorded to the file that way. If you record in 60i, then the AVCHD file is encoded at 60i. (24p is encoded in the file as 30p, but with special encoding tags that are too long for me to explain, unless you really need the explanation.)

So if you record at 30p, then encode your files at 30p. If you record at 60i, then encode your files at 60i.

--Dave

My camera shoots interlaced, so I capture and render interlaced, but neither motionJPG or photoJPG. Instead, I render uncompressed DV.