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I am working with 1920x1080 AVCHD clips in Pro X2 trial (full boxed product is on order). When I create high definition AVCHD discs on standard DVD+R discs, I select "Upper Field First" because that is the what the AVCHD clips are. The discs look excellent when played with a Blu-ray player.

When creating standard definition DVD's for familiy from AVCHD clips, I have been changing the Pro X2 default of "Lower Field First" to "Upper Field First". I thought the general rule was to keep the field order the same as the source material.

However, the standard def DVD's I have created have the following problem: horizontal surfaces looked like they are flickering or moving. This is to an extreme degree, not just a little bit. For example, clips taken at a baseball game: bleachers and tops of fences reveal this problem. The bleachers with their multiple horizontal surfaces look like window blinds that are being opened and closed rapidly.

On a hunch, I created a new DVD from the same AVCHD clips and kept the Pro X2 default of "Lower Field First". I kept all other settings the same. The problem almost entirely disappeared (there is a slight amount, but not very noticible, and I think a little bit of this is to be expected because of the compression). Using "Lower Field First" works well regardless of whether I create a disc directly from the project timeline or I create a file first and then do a create disc from the file.

So it appears that when creating standard definition DVD's from AVCHD, the field order should always be Lower Field First. Ths goes against my understanding that the source field order should be preserved throughout the project, so was my understanding wrong?

Comments?

Sounds wrong to me, but beond that I can't really say since I don't work natively with AVCHD files. I only have AVCHD from other people and also video I have converted to AVCHD. I have a HDV camera you see (high def mpeg-2 as opposed to AVCHD's high def mpeg-4). I make AVCHD hybrid discs from the HDV and, like you preserve the Upper Field First as that is also what HDV uses.

When I create a standard def DVD from my HDV, however, I have two choices with HDV -- to simply convert the captued HDV to standard def and DVD-compatible mpeg-2, or downconvert in the camera from HDV and capture as standard definition DV/AVI. In the first case, I preserve the Field Order as UFF following that rule you mention. And it works find, no jaggies etc to indicate the Field Order is wrong.

But when downconverting, a curious thing takes place: the original video is converted to Lower Field First DV as that is what DV uses... But it too works! No jaggies or anything to indicate a wrong field order -- apart from that slight shimmer you mention which is indeed a compression artifact associated with high definition video when panning horizontally. But I get that also in the original high def and standard def mpeg-2.

So initially, when I read your post, I wondered if somehow or other you had downconverted to DV -- which would have required it to be Lower Field First -- and then applied UFF when it was converted to a DVD. But then I see that a straight AVCHD > standard def DVD-compatible mpeg-2 also produced jaggies. So in the end, I am mystified...

Ken Berry wrote: So in the end, I am mystified...

Me too, but I guess I will go with what seems to work and use Lower Field First when creating standard-defintion DVD's from AVCHD clips.