MiniDV -> CCE 2.67.. Upper or lower field first?

[Colmino]

Subject says it all. What I'm doing is working with MiniDV video from within Premiere Pro and encoding it with CinemaCraft Encoder 2.67. The three options are "upper field first", "lower field first", and.. (I forget; related to deinterlacing the video). I'm more than a little certain that MiniDV video is interlaced, and that it would make a lot of sense to keep the field order when encoding.

I've been assuming that "lower field first" is the correct choice. If I have to re-encode these videos yet again, I may as well know for certain which one to pick. Anyone know?

[racer-x]

1st let me say that CCE sucks out loud for interlaced source. No matter what setting you use, it will always encode the video "Top Field First" wich is the wrong setting for your camcorder.

Acording to the guide I read for CCE 2.67, you set the "Line Offset" to 0 for Progressive and TTF interlaced source and set it to 1 for interlaced BBF source. By setting the "Line Offset" to 1, it cuts the top line in the video so it makes it act like BBF. A pretty Micky Mouse way of doing it if you ask me. If you video is encoded with the wrong field order, you can run it through Restream to change the field flag to BBF. No rencoding nessesary.

Ive done exhausted test with CCE and Main Concept on Progressive Video. In my opinion, Main Concept blows it away in speed and quality.

[thor300]

Never mind the field order, leave it default, if the encoded m2v file plays jerky in PowerDVD then run it throug Pulldown.exe setting the field order to odd or even. Just post back if you have questions about pulldown.exe syntax.
Im in pal country, CCE has always worked perfect for me when converting DV, it does in no way suck for interlaced sources.

[Colmino]

Well, that's the thing. I don't know what the default is. I changed it once because I needed a progressive video at the time, and I don't know what to change it back to. I'm not worried that the video it produces may not work for creating DVDs; I'm sure it will. What I do worry is that the setting I have chosen is eliminating one scanline, needlessly. This would be difficult to detect, particularly since I don't know what CCE does to cover that discrepancy (insert a black line on the other end?).

As for CCE's quality vs. other codecs.. Shrug. I did tons of research and found a few pages that showed closeup A/B comparisons. There's a reason why it is a very popular codec in spite of its dubious availability and documentation.

[thor300]

CCE is the best, not always comfortable to use but.. Its easier to own a corolla than a ferrari, same as with CCE over encoders, it does the job better once you learn to handle it. Did you change the settings in the template? Usually when you change settings in CCE it only concerns the video you are encoding, once you restart the program the settings are back to default. I cant help with defaults in 2.67, never used that version, not even as trial version. Just leave Top field first unchecked if in NTSC country, and look for that line offset and set it to 0. And uncheck progressive.
If the video gets jumpy when movement in the picture, use this syntax for pulldown:
Pulldown.exe "c:\inputfile.m2v" "c:\outputfile.m2v" -nopulldown -tff even
or (cant say which one to use since i have pal DV cam and i think you have NTSC)
Pulldown.exe "c:\inputfile.m2v" "c:\outputfile.m2v" -nopulldown -tff odd

[Colmino]

Thanks for the advice. If the video is jumpy, I'll probably just go back and pick "upper field first" and re-encode. But if I have to use pulldown.exe... Does it re-encode the video or just change some flags or something in a non-destructive fashion?

[thor300]

Pulldown will not reencode, it just change the headers and so on of the file, doesnt take long at all. No quality loss.