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

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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!

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