12 November 2009 - 17:53#04: Changing That God-Forsaken Field Order

In this episode, we’ll combat the stuttery mess of wrongly imported or ingested interlaced video footage by swapping the field order with the help of the Matte Key real-time effect. Buckle up, this one’s going to get geeky! And don’t forget to check out the show notes for more.

Download 480p | 720p

Download the scanlines for the Matte Key:

HD (1920×1080) | PAL (720×576) | NTSC D1 (720×486) | NTSC DV (720×480)

Learn more about field order:

All About Video Fields by Chris Pirazzi. From a graphics designer’s perspective. But – like us – he hates the mess that is fields.

Digital Video and Field Order by DVMP.

Which format uses which field order?

Generally speaking, it boils down to this:

1080i – upper field first
NTSC – lower field first
PAL (except PAL DV) – upper field first
DV (PAL/NTSC) – lower field first
PAL (Avid DV Codec) – upper field first (Simply because it’s more fun. No, actually because they wanted to stay with the broadcast field order.)

Confused yet? Pop quiz in five minutes!