need help unblending previously blended frames rather than dropping frames

[BilboFett]

Hi, I have a source clip I want to edit in Adobe premiere.
It is 1280x720 (720p) but the moron set the frame rate to 30fps.
30fps video is outside the spec for 720p format and won't display in premiere. (You can only do 23.976, 24, or 59.94 for 720p content).
What's worse, it was presumably shot in interlaced, then post-blended to become progressive, so wherever theres movement, theres blurry blended frames, and it looks pretty bad.
I've already scolded the gentleman and told him theres absolutely no reason he needs to be shooting interlaced for 720p target video. And I told him that if he's at least going to convert interlaced content to progressive from his HD camera, to use interpolation instead of blurry frame-blends. But what's done is done.
In order to edit this video, I have to convert it to standard 720p frame-rate spec, which is going to be 23.976 or 24 (59.94 is not an option).
Obviously when I do frame rate conversion (in something like vdub) to 24, it highlights/heightens the blurry effect and makes it even worse, probably adding jitter as well.
I need a recommendation for a tool to take it from 30 fps to 24 for proper 720p spec for importing into premiere.
So far I haven't had alot of luck (probably doing something wrong).
Any recommendations for some unblending tools
that may do a better job than just ditching some blended frames. I've already used stuff like decomb in avisynth to decimate from 30 to 24 but the blurry/blended frames are still there on all the movement. I did a simple framerate conversion in vdub to 24 and it greatly increased the perception of blurriness/shakiness/jitter.
Any guidance would be appreciated!

[poisondeathray]

30fps video is outside the spec for 720p format and won't display in premiere.

Yes it will. You can display non standard formats and framerates, you just don't have a preset for it but you can use "desktop" settings for your sequence which unlock all the options

I wouldn't try any framerate conversions, you're just going to make it worse. 30p=>24 is not a good conversion, they are not evenly divisible, so it will become more jerky (in addition to the "normal" 24p jerkiness) on top of blurry

Any recommendations for some unblending tools

You're probably out of luck unless you still have the original interlaced source

You can try the different modes in cdeblend, srestore , deblend , unblend, removeblend , but I doubt you'll get satisfactory results

If you have a some good frames dispersed between the blurry ones, you can try interpolating the frames eg. mflowinter

[BilboFett]

I've used desktop display in Premiere for 720p at 30fps, no image is displayed, only blackscreen. It wasn't until I changed the framerate on the source to 23/976 or 24 that an image was displayed. That's off-point though. I want to be able to make a bluray out of this, or at least display it on a TV, and 30fps at 720p is out-of-spec and will cause problems. I need it to be 23.976 or 24.
Are cdeblend, srestore, deblend, unblend, and removeblend all avisynth scripts? Any preference for any of them? Some work better than others? I haven't used any of them so I'm a tool noob.
Thanks for the quick response.

[poisondeathray]

I've used desktop display in Premiere for 720p at 30fps, no image is displayed, only blackscreen.

What version of premiere ?

What video format? Use mediainfo

It wasn't until I changed the framerate on the source to 23/976 or 24 that an image was displayed. That's off-point though. I want to be able to make a bluray out of this, or at least display it on a TV, and 30fps at 720p is out-of-spec and will cause problems. I need it to be 23.976 or 24.

Actually no you don't. 720p30 (720p29.97) is authored with double pulldown

Are cdeblend, srestore, deblend, unblend, and removeblend all avisynth scripts? Any preference for any of them? Some work better than others? I haven't used any of them so I'm a tool noob.

I haven't used them for your specific scenario. Perhaps if you posted a short sample, others can suggest possible settings you might use


I take it this is all you have ? Don't have access to the original camera footage ?

[BilboFett]

I have no idea how to author 720p w/ double pulldown and no, I don't have access to the original camera footage as its most likely lost and gone forever. Adobe premiere version CS 5.0.3

Here's the printout from media info:

Format : Windows Media
File size : 1.08 GiB
Overall bit rate mode : Constant
Overall bit rate : 3 152 Kbps
Maximum Overall bit rate : 3 173 Kbps
SfOriginalFPS : 300000
Video
ID : 2
Format : VC-1
Format profile : MP@HL
Codec ID : WMV3
Codec ID/Info : Windows Media Video 9
Codec ID/Hint : WMV3
Description of the codec : Windows Media Video 9 - Professional
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 3 050 Kbps
Width : 1 280 pixels
Height : 720 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 30.000 fps
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Compression mode : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.110
Stream size : 1.04 GiB (97%)
Language : English (US)
NumberOfFrames : 87987
Audio
ID : 1
Format : WMA
Format version : Version 2
Codec ID : 161
Codec ID/Info : Windows Media Audio
Description of the codec : Windows Media Audio 9.2 - 96 kbps, 44 kHz, stereo (A/V) 1-pass CBR
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 96.0 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 44.1 KHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Stream size : 33.6 MiB (3%)
Language : English (US)

[poisondeathray]

You can't do double pulldown in cs5 , but you can encode it with double pulldown with x264, then author it with any program (to the authoring program, the streams will look like 720p60 and be verified as valid) .

Ideally, you don't want to do any framerate conversions for the reasons stated earlier. Given that this is what you have, it would probably be best to use 720p29.97 . There is a slight problem that you are using 30.0 fps, not 30000/1001 fps. That can be fixed quite easily by slowing down both audio & video in an avisynth script

That video should display in PP, it's probably a WMV issue. You could probably transcode to a digital intermediate and it would solve the issue of displaying properly ( you would probably apply the deblending script and framerate change to 30000/1001 at the same time so your DI is "fixed" and all ready to edit) . The audio has to be resampled as well

But I doubt you will get a drastic improvement in the blends

[Cornucopia]

IIWY, I'd harrass the camera dude and if it's at all possible, get AT LEAST the original 30fps 720 footage. But if it's gone, it's gone.

But...720p...Interlaced...? AFAIK, there is NO SUCH THING. I think your camera dude was BS'ing you because he (OBVIOUSLY) doesn't understand what works, what doesn't, etc.
All 720 footage is PROGRESSIVE (not interlaced). Either 23.97, 24, 25, 30, 50, 59.94 or 60fps. That's it.

What Camera was used? Maybe there's some quirks about it that someone here might know to help with.

Scott

[BilboFett]

IIWY, I'd harrass the camera dude and if it's at all possible, get AT LEAST the original 30fps 720 footage. But if it's gone, it's gone.

But...720p...Interlaced...? AFAIK, there is NO SUCH THING. I think your camera dude was BS'ing you because he (OBVIOUSLY) doesn't understand what works, what doesn't, etc.
All 720 footage is PROGRESSIVE (not interlaced). Either 23.97, 24, 25, 30, 50, 59.94 or 60fps. That's it.

What Camera was used? Maybe there's some quirks about it that someone here might know to help with.

Scott

Scott, I think he may have shot in 1080i and output at 720p and blurred the interlaced frames to progressive

[BilboFett]

You can't do double pulldown in cs5 , but you can encode it with double pulldown with x264, then author it with any program (to the authoring program, the streams will look like 720p60 and be verified as valid) .

Ideally, you don't want to do any framerate conversions for the reasons stated earlier. Given that this is what you have, it would probably be best to use 720p29.97 . There is a slight problem that you are using 30.0 fps, not 30000/1001 fps. That can be fixed quite easily by slowing down both audio & video in an avisynth script

That video should display in PP, it's probably a WMV issue. You could probably transcode to a digital intermediate and it would solve the issue of displaying properly ( you would probably apply the deblending script and framerate change to 30000/1001 at the same time so your DI is "fixed" and all ready to edit) . The audio has to be resampled as well

But I doubt you will get a drastic improvement in the blends

ok so in vdub, do I do "source rate adjustment" to 29.97, or "frame rate conversion" to 29.97. And if I do either, I'm having a bit of trouble understanding the math.. I need to then slowdown the audio by 0.999 percent (or is it 0.001 percent?) in an audio editor and remux it w/ the new 29.97 video?

[budwzr]

You're not getting the point. The numbers don't matter anymore. The die has been cast, the fat lady has sung.

[poisondeathray]

I would do it in avisynth so you can do everything in 1 step including your filters , deblending , audio resampling.

Download ffmpegsource2, unzip and place contents (the avsi and dll) in the avisynth plugins folder
http://code.google.com/p/ffmpegsource/

Create avs script , add the deblending filter at the end. The "AssumeFPS" will slow everything down, including audio. The SSRC will resample the audio to 48KHz

FFMpegSource2("video.wmv", atrack=-1)
AssumeFPS(30000, 1001, true)
SSRC(48000)
#some deblending filter

Preview the .avs script in a media player like MPC. Make sure it's in sync because some WMV files are variable frame rate or variable sample rate and may need different methods

Then open the avs in vdub and encode to an intermediate format for import into PP. UT Video Codec or Huffyuv should work well

When you're done editing, export uncompressed video and use x264 to encode your compliant streams with double pulldown. You can use this guide as a starting point (look for the 720p29.97 settings), feel free to modify the settings e.g. you might not want to use "very slow" settings
http://sites.google.com/site/x264bluray/home

[budwzr]

Hmmm...if all this works, then it would be like a "System Restore" in Windows. I'm excited to see the result.

If this DOES pan out, I think SD=>BD should be next. Heck, let's go for IMAX.

[poisondeathray]

Hmmm...if all this works, then it would be like a "System Restore" in Windows. I'm excited to see the result.

The hard part is the deblending. Blend deinterlacing is just about the worst thing you could do

Everything else should work and is very simple. I tested the various pulldowns and fake-interlaced settings several months ago, and they work for blu-ray. (Others with access to pro studio level software, and verification software have verified the streams as well)

If Bilbo would post a sample, then some better suggestions could be made about what filters/settings could be used

If this DOES pan out, I think SD=>BD should be next.

You mean upsampling? Because SD to BD can be done right now (as in SD blu-ray)

[budwzr]

If this DOES pan out, I think SD=>BD should be next.

You mean upsampling? Because SD to BD can be done right now (as in SD blu-ray)

Yeah, but I call that "faux" HD. Here's my point:

WMV is a weird animal, something like VP6, where you can never get back even close to the original file. So taking WMV to uncompressed AVI is going to be interesting.

To me, rendering to WMV is a final one-way path, that's why I never use it, neither do most people unless they have to. So the OP's video guy's biggest mistake was not the framerate, it was choosing blend as the deinterlace mode, and WMV for the final.

That's a fatal combination, AFAIC.

[poisondeathray]

If this DOES pan out, I think SD=>BD should be next.

You mean upsampling? Because SD to BD can be done right now (as in SD blu-ray)

Yeah, but I call that "faux" HD.

It's not HD at all, it's SD. That's why it's called SD blu-ray. Blu-ray comes in SD and HD formats ...

The benefit is you can use higher bitrates, better compression (AVC) than regular DVD-video. You can fit more hours of SD source on a BD 25/50 than a DVD 5/9 media . Often the ~9Mb/s video bitrate isn't sufficient with MPEG2 used with regular DVD-video, you get DCT artifacts and macroblocking

Here's my point:

WMV is a weird animal, something like VP6, where you can never get back even close to the original file. So taking WMV to uncompressed AVI is going to be interesting.

I think you might have drank a few too many budz...

The point of the uncompressed AVI stage is to prevent farther generation loss from lossy compression, not to get restore the original file

To me, rendering to WMV is a final one-way path, that's why I never use it, neither do most people unless they have to. So the OP's video guy's biggest mistake was not the framerate, it was choosing blend as the deinterlace mode, and WMV for the final.

Totally agree, and the 3Mb/s for 1280x720p30 WMV3 isn't going to look that good.

[budwzr]

Hahaha, yeah I'm not being clear, too many Budz.

What I really meant by "get back to" was what was on the timeline right before render, even with the frame rate issue, had it been rendered to mpeg2 or X.264 with blending enabled.

Right, the low bitrate you mentioned is for streaming.