field order

[blacktooth]

I owned an 8mm Sony Handycam many years ago. When it broke, I bought a Sony Digital8 Handycam, which of course is compatible with 8mm tapes. While I now use hi-def, I still have many old 8mm tapes. Occasionally I digitize the 8mm cassettes and put the resulting AVI files on my computer using the Digital8 camcorder.
Like some other folks, I am confused about the field order of these videos. I’ve been reading up about this and trying to make sense of it. If I understand correctly, the field order of these AVI files is all hardware related. Since I’ve only ever used my Digital8 camcorder to digitize the film, all of the resulting files should have the exact same field order, right? And this should be independent of how the field order is set in the ‘Project Properties’ of VideoStudio, right?
Can someone please verify for me that I understand this correctly?
Thank you!

[lata]

Hi blacktooth

Field Order – Upper Field or Lower Field is dependent on the original video type.

DV-Avi, tape based, Digital 8, TV Tuner capture, Analogue video all used Lower Field.

The introduction of High Definition now uses Upper Field.

At one time video studio used Lower Field for its default templates in line with the more popular video formats.
That is until High Definition, now Video Studio defaults to Upper Field.

Video destined for a DVD or Bluray disc should use the original Field Order.

For internet use Frame Based or Progressive would be used, and indeed Avchd video may use Progressive.

So your video file from Digital 8 may use Lower Field, they may however been converted to use Frame Based.??

Place a clip in the timeline, right click and select properties, if there is no indication of Upper or Lower then its Frame Based.

Changing the field order from Lower to Upper field may show as jagged edges within the video.

[blacktooth]

Hi lata, thank you for the great info. Just following up….
1) So no matter what the field order is set for in the ‘Project Properties’ setting when I capture, it will always actually be lower field first. Right?
2) How can I make a project using both AVI files derived from my 8mm tapes (lower field) and my avchd files (upper field)? Will I just have to live with the imperfect results?
Thanks again.

[Ken Berry]

1) So no matter what the field order is set for in the ‘Project Properties’ setting when I capture, it will always actually be lower field first. Right?

Well, yes and no. If you captured your AVI (and I assume here it is DV/AVI) using the Firewire port on your Digital 8, then your captured video will always be Lower Field First (LFF). To that extent the Project Properties are irrelevant. But depending on what you want to make from the video -- for example, a DVD -- the AVI has to be converted to DVD-compatible mpeg-2 (which the international DVD standard requires). Now if the Project Properties by default are set to UFF, then you run the risk of converting your LFF AVI to UFF mpeg-2, with the bad effects mentioned by lata...

So you have to choose Custom as the output format, and then make sure you choose, in the dialogue box which appears, mpeg-2 as the format. But change it from UFF to LFF. Then you won't have those problems.

2) How can I make a project using both AVI files derived from my 8mm tapes (lower field) and my avchd files (upper field)? Will I just have to live with the imperfect results?

I'm afraid so. But as mentioned by lata again, you could render the AVI, again using Custom, perhaps actually setting it to AVCHD as the output, but this time setting the field order to Frame Based. That way there should be no conflict with your UFF AVCHD.

[blacktooth]

I'll try making a few sample projects with mixed file types and play around with it. Thank you so much for the help!