Motion Blurring with MPEG2 files from Sony Camcorder

[Chris_Music]

Hey guys

I have only just joined this forum, but i have had my Mac Pro for well over a year now, i would have joined sooner, but iv not had any problems with my mac (until now).

Yesterday i bought my self a Sony DCR-SR57 handycam, as i thought i would make a stab at making amateur movies (as im training to be a film composer). The camera is great, i cant fault it for the price. But when i connected the camera to my mac and played the video back in VLC, i noticed when ever i moved the camera, there would be a motion blur. The blur looked like small lines, and it only appeared on the object that was moving! I had already tried the movies on my PS3 prior to this and it didnt have this problem.

I called up sony and they said that their products are not mac compatible, so alot of use they were. So i figured it might be to do with the MPEG2 plugin for quicktime, so i reinstalled it (im using snow leopard by the way) and the problem still remains!

I tried the file in all the software i have that can play video and it worked fine in iMovie and Toast 10's own player, but it had the motion blur in VLC, quicktime and Final cut, which is no good, as i intend to use Final Cut for my editing!

I tried using handbrake to convert the file into something else, but it only copied the problem into another file format!

Im totally stumped, so hopefully someone could shed some light onto this for me, so i can enjoy the camera and do some video editing !

Thanks in advance !

 

[BenB]

You're seeing "interlace" artifacts, nothing you can to about them. Your computer screen is a progressive format, TV screens are interlaced, so you won't see it on a TV screen. In film and video, you can't move things across the screen an just any old speed you want.

 

[Nethfel]

You can use Handbrake to convert it and for the most part get rid of the interlaced artifacts, but you have to turn on either Deinterlace or Decomb.

They both work similarly, but they are mutually exclusive - otherwise you either use Decomb OR Deinterlace, but not both - if I recall correctly from how HB works, DeInterlace does its job on every frame for all portions of the frame where as Decomb is more of an intelligent deinterlace where it will only do it on the frames that require it. They recommend using the intelligent form because it won't mess with frames that don't have the artifacts leaving overall a sharper image (deinterlacing tends to blur the image a little). If your final output is to put it back on DVD tho, you might as well leave the footage the way it is, but if you want your output to be on a computer screen or uploading to a video service, you may want to convert it.

 

[Chris_Music]

What i dont understand is why the video is fine when being played through iMovie and Toast, but not when being played with VLC, Quicktime and Final Cut.

I dont really fancy converting it all the time, as i dont want any quality loss!

There must be a solution for it!

 

[Nethfel]

My only guess is that VLC, quicktime and final cut are not doing realtime/runtime de-interlacing. In VLC, with the file open, go to the Video menu, and you should see a deinterlace option near the bottom of the dropdown. Try different options in there to improve your output.

You can try to use: Download JES Deinterlacer for Mac - QuickTime deinterlacer. MacUpdate Mac Software Downloads for quicktime, but I doubt it works with quicktime X (only 7) and I don't know about 10.6 compatibility.

 

[Chris_Music]

My only guess is that VLC, quicktime and final cut are not doing realtime/runtime de-interlacing. In VLC, with the file open, go to the Video menu, and you should see a deinterlace option near the bottom of the dropdown. Try different options in there to improve your output.

That trick worked for VLC, everything plays fine now, but how do i go about doing it in final cut? i tried adding the de-interlacing filter onto the video and it made no difference!

Could it be todo with the PAL/NTSC differences as the camcorder is PAL?

 

[Chris_Music]

Just to finish this thread, i couldn't fix the problem in the end, so i took the sony camera back and got my self a Panasonic SD10 HD camcorder instead, which works perfect with both iMovie and Final Cut Express!

Also when i called up Sony they said the camera wasn't mac compatible, which is nice of them to tell me when it doesn't say it anywhere on the box or on their website!