This is not exactly a big deal, but it's odd and annoying. I'm kind of a paleo-user. I do some work in modern formats, but I also have a lot of old NTSC content I'm working through. I capture the analog material through a Canopus AVDC-110, which apparently uses a Sony chip for analog-to-DV conversion. One of the things I captured recently, via PS24, was an old, animated children's video on VHS. The captured AVI file looked fine on review, and I did some minimal editing to trim off blank heads and tails. Then I exported it in two formats, as I normally do: a DV AVI file for archive and an MPEG-2 file for viewing, using the defaults for each. The MPEG file looks fine, but the AVI file, which I would expect to look at least as good, is marred by a kind of jerkiness of the image in many places, not something obvious, if it exists at all, on other such exports I've done. I tried selecting "same as timeline" and exporting again, but the result was the same. Then I tried exporting via PS22, again with the same result. I inspected import and export AVI files with MediaInfo,and that turned up one oddity, but not one I would think would be significant. It reads the capture file's original frame rate as "29.970 (29970/1000) FPS" and its frame rate as "29.97 (30000/1001) FPS". The PS24 export's frame rate is listed as "30.000 FPS", however, and the PS22 export's frame rate is said to be "29.97 (30000/1001) FPS". The two exports look alike, however, and worse than the capture file. And other export AVI files show the same "29.97 (30000/1001) FPS" frame rate without exhibiting obvious problems, at least to me. Like I said, not a big deal, but I'd like to fix this if I can, so I'd be grateful for any ideas. Thanks.

I'm assuming that the original material is interlaced, and that you are capturing it as interlaced (not converting to progressive...)

What are you viewing the exported DV AVI file with? If it's a media player on a PC, is the jerkiness an artefact of the deinterlacing done by the media player software, rather than something wrong with the exported file? FWIW I do notice slightly more jerkiness here if I play interlaced material using VLC than when the same material is played in Windows Media Player.

Another cause of flicker could be a field order issue - but IMO that would be much more severe and be very apparent in any areas having a lot of motion. But to rule that out you could check the files with MediaInfo (I would expect the DV AVI files to be bottom field first and the MPEG-2 files to be top field first).

Regarding the 29.970 vs 30.000 - has PS24 misidentified the source file and isn't treating it as NTSC (thinking instead that it's 30.0fps? You could try using a Correction - on the "adjustments" page force the aspect ratio as 4:3 NTSC or 16:9 NTSC according to the source aspect ratio (4:3 or widescreen).

HTH
Richard

culpanr:

I'm assuming that the original material is interlaced, and that you are capturing it as interlaced (not converting to progressive...)

What are you viewing the exported DV AVI file with? If it's a media player on a PC, is the jerkiness an artefact of the deinterlacing done by the media player software, rather than something wrong with the exported file? FWIW I do notice slightly more jerkiness here if I play interlaced material using VLC than when the same material is played in Windows Media Player.

Another cause of flicker could be a field order issue - but IMO that would be much more severe and be very apparent in any areas having a lot of motion. But to rule that out you could check the files with MediaInfo (I would expect the DV AVI files to be bottom field first and the MPEG-2 files to be top field first).

Regarding the 29.970 vs 30.000 - has PS24 misidentified the source file and isn't treating it as NTSC (thinking instead that it's 30.0fps? You could try using a Correction - on the "adjustments" page force the aspect ratio as 4:3 NTSC or 16:9 NTSC according to the source aspect ratio (4:3 or widescreen).

HTH
Richard

Thanks. Yes, interlaced captured as interlaced. Viewing with Windows Media Player. All the AVI files, original and exported, are bottom field first, and the MPEG file is top field first. On the timeline, the original file identifies as 4:3 NTSC at 29.97 FPS, as does the exported file if I pull it into the editor. And when previewed on the timeline, the exported file looks okay. I tried exporting that file to an MPEG file, and that MPEG shows the same problems as the exported AVI, which are not apparent on the MPEG export from the edited capture file. As noted previously, an AVI export of the project from Studio 22 looks just like the export from Studio 24. It's all very puzzling. I wonder if there's a subtle bug in Studio's AVI export code, which Pinnacle may not have looked at in a long time, given that probably not many people are doing such exports anymore. One would think there could not be any export simpler than going from DV AVI to DV AVI, however. Or maybe there's just something weird about that particular import that isn't showing up in MediaInfo. It's not a problem I've noticed before, despite having done many such exports.

I don't have any NTSC material here, but I don't see any flicker issue with captured PAL DV AVI files, or with DV AVI exports from Studio (with DV AVI, MPEG-2 or H.264 source material).

Does the flicker occur just with that one captured tape (animation)? If so, I wonder if the original animation was created Progressive, and then put on an interlaced tape. As an experiment it may be worth trying the export as Progressive, or using a source correction tio label the captured footage as Progressive, or to deliberately swap over the fields (force it as top field first in case some weird field-order swap occurred when the tape was captured).

Regards,
Richard

Thanks again. I've not seen obvious problems on anything other than AVI exports from this one tape, though now I sometimes think I see subtler effects on others. Could be my imagination, though; it's really obvious on the animated tape. The idea of forcing top field first is interesting. I'll give that a shot.

If you're able to capture a short fragment of that animated tape that exhibits the issue and upload it in the cloud I'd be happy to take a look and do some experiments here.

My thought about reversing the fields stemmed from very old memories of troubles with early capture software and 8mm/Hi8 - when the camera recording was paused and restarted sometimes it would "lose" one field on the tape (if the capture software didn't spot that, the fields would end up becoming "swapped" after the place where that "bad" pause/restart of the recording happened)!

Regards,
Richard

The capture looks fine -- it's just the post-edit AVI export that has problems. I created a brief clip in both AVI and MPEG formats for your perusal, but the board barfs when I try to attach them. (Maybe it's a size issue; the MPEG file is about 19 MB.) Is there another way to get them to you? Meanwhile, Studio won't export an interlaced AVI with top field first, but it will export progressive, so I tried that. It's better than the interlaced AVI overall but has a certain busyness to it that isn't present in the original or the MPEG export. I also tried exporting with uncompressed frames, both bottom field first and top field first. These looked pretty much the same as far as I could tell and perhaps on par with the progressive output overall, but they still didn't look as good as the original AVI input or the MPEG export. Thanks again for your interest in this very odd little issue.

To get a test file for me (and others?) to try, I would suggest using a cloud service (OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.); upload the files and create a "public" view-only link that you can post here in the forum.

The forum is quite fussy about file size - I think the maximum is 512kb (so only any use for still-images).

With regard to field-order swapping, what I was suggesting was to use a source correction to tell Studio that the source file was top field first, but you'd still do the normal DV AVI export (bottom field first). With the file on the timeline, double-click it to open the editor, choose Corrections, then (1) Adjustments and on the Interlacing drop-down list choose Top Field First or Progressive to override what Studio thinks the file is... If there isn't anything wrong with the field order, the outcome will likely look worse. But Progressive might give a good result if the animation was created as Progressive but then recorded onto the tape as Interlaced.

Regards,
Richard

Fascinating. Thank you! If I make that correction to the source, the AVI export comes out looking fine. An MPEG export, on the other hand, looks messed up in the same way as the first AVI I made. I was even able to make a decent looking MP4, which I've never found possible with interlaced originals before, presumably because of the half-assed way the codec handles deinterlacing. The new interlaced AVI still looks better than a progressive export, however, and the MP4, for that matter. Anyhow, odd solution for an odd problem. Thanks again.