Swap Field Order: when should I use this?

[JohnMK]

I'm looking for a heuristic of sorts as to when I should use this. I tried this with a Star Trek The Next Generation episode and I'm not sure if it made a difference or not. If anything it was very subtle.

Can anyone offer me some advice on this setting and tell me when I should use it and how to tell if my material might benefit from swapping field order?

Thank you,

John

[trbarry]

Can anyone offer me some advice on this setting and tell me when I should use it and how to tell if my material might benefit from swapping field order?

The simplest answer is never use it.

But there may be material from broken capture cards or other sources that need it. The symptoms would be jagged diagonal lines, even on still scenes. But you have to be careful to not confuse these with weave artifacts caused by interlace, which should be handled by IVTC or deinterlacing.

- Tom

[JohnMK]

So basically any Region-1 NTSC DVD (such as Star Trek The Next Generation Seasons 1 - 4 thus far) is probably produced using high-quality equipment that wouldn't mix up the field order? That's my last question. :)

[trbarry]

Yep. You might find exceptions if you looked hard enough but generally I wouldn't worry about using field swap on DVD material.

But that's just my own experience. Please someone else chime in here if there is a class of DVD's known to be a problem with this.

- Tom

[ohliuv]

There was something mentioned in the Force Film, IVTC, and Deinterlacing (http://www.doom9.org/ivtc-tut.htm) article, I think in the PAL section

[hakko504]

Yes, usually the only time you need to worry about it is PAL films, NTSC will be corrected by a good IVTC module anyway.