Totally confused about interlace field naming convention

[tai]

I've got confused about how people name the two fields in an interlaced video frame. Some call them upper field and lower field, some call them top field and bottom field, some call them field A and field B, some call them even field and odd field. eg. bottom field in Tmpegenc 2.5x means upper field in CCE... In bitrate viewer, does "Field topfirst" means upper field first in CCE? Could somebody clarrify all these terms and describe how they are used in different programs please.

[Wilbert]

upper = top = A = odd
lower = bottom = B = even

bottom field in Tmpegenc 2.5x means upper field in CCE

I thought that this was a bug in CCE (but I'm not sure, since I don't use it).

[gerti67]

Hi there,

yes, indeed this is a CCE "bug", or to be more precise CinameCraft's (weird) way of handling fields.

If you tick the "upper field first" setting in CCE it shifts the fields around by 1 line each before encoding - and this can be the cause of many ugly results with CCE and interlaced or telecined material so it is better to uncheck this option in CCE.

And in fact CCE has no "lower field first" option - if you uncheck the "Upper field first" setting then CCE doesn't shift the fields around anymore - but all CCE encoded material is always "top/upper/odd/A field encoded" and you have to use tools like ReStream, Darim's Easy Changer, Pulldown or Bitrate Viewer to change to flag the whole stream "bottom/lower/even/B field first" if you need it.

Hope this helps,
Gerti

[tai]

gerti67: I though it should be the apposite. I've never have any problem when leaving "upper field first" checked in CCE when encoding dv avi files. But trying to encode ntsc interlaced dvd's which have field A first the video is messed up no matter "upper field first" checked or unchecked. I tried checking "upper field first" and use pulldown -nopulldown -tff even and the video look very smooth in TV. Am I wrong ? Here is what I did
- If the video is field B first (eg. most of dv avi files) then
encoded in CCE with "upper field first" checked

- If the video is field B first then
encoded in CCE with "upper field first" checked and run pulldown.exe -nopulldown -tff even

Am I doing things correctly ?

[1loser]

Originally posted by gerti67
If you tick the "upper field first" setting in CCE it shifts the fields around by 1 line each before encoding - and this can be the cause of many ugly results with CCE and interlaced or telecined material so it is better to uncheck this option in CCE.I have always left this setting at the default setting of "upper field first" because I have no idea how to determine what it's suppose to be. On my last conversion from DivX to SVCD (using CCE) I noticed a slight green tint in a certain area. Could this be due to having the field wrong? In the case of DivX to SVCD conversions how do I determine what the field should be? Is there any easy to understand documentation on the subject of fields?

[1loser]

Originally posted by tai

- If the video is field B first (eg. most of dv avi files) then
encoded in CCE with "upper field first" checked

- If the video is field B first then
encoded in CCE with "upper field first" checked and run pulldown.exe -nopulldown -tff even
In both cases you said "If the video is field B first", can you please correct this?