MC 2023.3.1  OSx Big Sur

I have encountered a major image quality problem.

I have a series which must deliver 1080 59.94i.  Much of it is shot in UHD, which by definition will be progressive.

When the UHD  material is placed in the sequence and the Framflex setting is at it’s default scale of 100, there are severe artifacts that point to incorrect scaling of Progressive material in an Interlace sequence.

If Frameflex is set to scale of 50 (basically pixel to pixel - no scaling) then the image looks good.  No artifacts.  But as the scaling moves towards 100, the image quality begins to deteriorate.

If I switch the sequence from 59.94i to 29.97p this problem goes away.  Whether scaled to 100 or 50 or dynamically adjusting.

There are workarounds which are time consuming and should NOT be necessary.

EDITED: Changed conversion of P to I to scalling of P in I.

I think this is an old issue, where the scaling is being done to the entire frame, rather than to the individual fields. Heard that one before some years ago. Forgot what the workaround was.

Well the workaround I am suggesting to the client is mixdown the UHD / FrameFlexed shots after switching the sequence to Prog.  This creates HD shots.  Then switch back to Interlace for output. 

This works but should not have to be done. I am really surprised that this still exists since FramFlex and UHD have been around so long.

• ➤  Bug Number: MCCET-3702. Image Quality issues when adding UHD progressive clips to an HD interlace sequence:

  The process Media Composer uses to mix and match video formats in a sequence is to transform the source clip's frame rate and frame layout to meet the project specifications; the motion adapters are added first, then spatial adapters are applied in order to provide expected playback dimensions.

  For example, if you have a UHD 50p clip that you want to add to a 1080i Timeline, the UHD clip first gets split into 2 separate fields (UHD format), then each field gets independently resized to 1920x540 in HD. The export process puts those resized fields back together into a progressive HD frame but does not maintain the clarity of the original progressive frame. 

  0. Workaround: If you first transcode the UHD progressive clip to HD progressive and then add the HD clip to the interlace sequence, it forces the resize operation from UHD to HD to be done before the split gets into interlace mode. 

Job ter Burg:

• ➤  Bug Number: MCCET-3702. Image Quality issues when adding UHD progressive clips to an HD interlace sequence:

Thanks for finding that Job. When was that bug reported? I do remember it now. I also remember reading the suggested work around and laughing as it basically said "You can not take advantage of UHD resolution in an interlace project".  Well, I am not laughing now.

I realize I have not run into the issue before as the majority of projects that I have done in which there was UHD source for a HD finish were 23.97p.  Any conversion to interlace occured after the creation of a HD master.  That is not practical for this series as there is a lot of native interlace material.  Deinterlacing those sources to progressive just to turn around and add interlacing back is NOT a good workflow.

I have opened a support case.

Jef

A bit of research shows that the bug MCCET-3702 shows up in the Limitations section of the release notes for MC 2021.6 of June 17, 2021.

Over 2 years ago.

Jef

Jef:

Any chance you can share a tiny sample? I don't typically master OUT of Avid using interlaced, but if I grab a UHD 23.98p clip and drop it into a test 1080i sequence, I don't see any clear artifacting on my end.

I've tried with Sony, Cannon, and RED UHD clips and above.

j