Question about "Field order"

[erir]

Hi,

I am new in this forum and new to Premiere Elements 11. I am using a MAC mini 2.3 GHz computer with PE11.

I want to ask about the "Field order" in PE11.

When I am importing an mpeg-2 file to PE11 the projects details display me that the field order of this file is "upper field first". What I want to do is to export this file to a DV25 file for better video editing performance. So I am share the project as "File/Quicktime/DV25 file. In the option tab for the export I see that the field order of this format is "lower field first". So far so good.

My question is now if I need to change the "field order" of the clip (right click on the video clip in the timeline and than "Field options/Reverse field dominance") before I start the export in PE11 ?

Perhaps it would be better to set the project settings manual to the destination format first and import the clip than?

Should one set the project settings to the format of the clips that will imported or to the wished destination format used in the share video later? I am a little bit confused at the moment.

I would be very happy for some "Eye openers" for me.

Regards,
Erik

[RJ Johnston]

Welcome to the forum, Erik.

I did an analysis on this and the only way I could get the DV25 to play correctly is if I matched the project to the MPEG UFF video clip, and I set the option to reverse field dominance on the MPEG clip. After doing those things, I shared to the Quicktime DV25 format. I used Sony Vegas Pro 10 with a Vegasaur tool to analyze the playback.

[erir]

Many thanks for testing RJ. That helps me a lot and I will use it in that workflow now.

I would like to ask if there is any chance to test such things with PRE11 only too (without access to such tools like Vegas Pro 10 and Vegasaur)?

Regards,
Erik

[Steve Grisetti]

Welcome to the forum, Erik!

MPEGs are, as you know, upper field first by nature. And DV-AVIs are, by nature, lower field first. Why would you want to create an AVI that's upper field first? What do you plan to do with this output file?

There may be a more optimized way to create the file, depending on what you're trying to accomplish.

[erir]

Hi Steve,

many thanks for your answer.

I want to make a standard "lower field" DV file (quicktime) from a "upper field" mpeg-2" file. I was not sure if I need to do some "field translations" in the timeline in PRE11 before I do the export to the DV. So I want to do: mpeg2 (upper field) -> DV (lower field).

Regards,
Erik

[Steve Grisetti]

No extra settings needed, Erik. When you select Publish & Share/Computer/AVI with the proper DV preset, the program does the field order conversion for you.

(Version 11 usually sets up your project automatically, based on the video on your timeline. But just to make sure, check under Edit/Project Settings and make sure that your project is set up for upper field first. The program will then interpret the field order when it produces your AVI.)

[RJ Johnston]

No extra settings needed, Erik. When you select Publish & Share/Computer/AVI with the proper DV preset, the program does the field order conversion for you.

Steve, That is exactly what I thought. Even though GSPOT and MediaInfo show "Bottom Field First" on the DV-AVI created from the MPEG-2 UFF, when I take the DV-AVI file and burn a DVD in PRE11, the DVD plays back with the fields reversed on my old fashioned TV tube. I'm on a PC, not a MAC. Don't think that should make any difference, though.

[erir]

Steve, many thanks for your answer. So PRE11 does all the magic for me. Good to know but sometimes somewhat confusing. I tried both method again and I am not able to see any difference between the created output files. So I think PRE11 is clever and does always the right.

Many thanks to RJ and Steve for the very useful information.
Great weekend!

Regards,
Erik

[Chuck Engels]

Welcome to Muvipix Erik