Messages posted by cassb

Quote This is what I meant by frame interpolation. So I took your basic file and simply produced to 60fps, PD will simply copy frames as I had indicated to get from 16 to 60 so roughly speaking a factor of 4. So essentially when viewed at the frame level you will have ~4 duplicate frames followed by a new frame. It will vary, sometimes 3, sometimes 4 as on an average I need 3.75 more frames. I also took the same 16fps file and interpolated the frames to 60fps. Now I won't have duplicates, but several generated frames that each one has like 1/3 to 1/4 the motion to get to your next real 16fps frame.

The attached pdf shows this effect. I'm cycling frame by frame in PD with 60fps timeline. I put a red dot on the eye for reference. The video on the left is PD file of 16fps produced to 60fps. The video on the right has frame interpolation. I'm simply cycling from the 8th to the 12th frame. So, both images match at the 8th frame, counter lower left corner of pics, they match again on the 12th frame. However, you see 3 motion interpolated frames in between for the right side video. The PD file on the left simply jumps from frame 8 to frame 12 based on the face movement relative to the red dot as it simply has the same frame duplicated 3 times (9, 10, and 11 frames) and then finally a new frame. The video on the right you see relative motion of the face to the red dot for every frame. That's interpolated, not copied. Is it perfect, nothing is, but it can create much more fluid motion when viewed than jerks between individual frames of low frame rate source video. Of no real value to you as you are happy with what you call "interpolation" that PD does, I simply wanted to clarify there is no interpolation in PD and how interpolation can look vs simple frame copy.

If one would take and create a 30fps produced file, essentially ever other frame would be deleted to get from this 60fps to 30fps.

Jeff

Thank you Jeff -- I understand interpolation better now. You're correct, PD is just duplicating or removing frames in the original clip to match the framerate of the timeline and output file. I am not sure what the interpolated video would look like at 30fps though. You can see in my previous post the poor results I got when I used the DAIN APP program. I just don't have the computing power probably to get the best results.

What program did you use to do the interpolation? Do you have a video file I could watch to see if it's worth the effort to do it?

Thanks!
Bryan

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Yes, but other things can interfere when you're making cuts, transitions and adding titles. This way, the clip is already converted and everything you do on the timeline will have ready-made, matching frames for PD to work with.

I think it would be hard to spot the difference, but the best way to know is to load up the 4 clips and see for yourself. I didn't do anything fancy when producing other than to add the mask and set the project and producing frame rates.

I also let my RTX 2070 do the hardware encoding which took a little over 2 minutes each time.

I'll give it a try and see. If it does look better to have the matching frames already in the clip, how did you process the file to come out at 30fps, so I can duplicate that on the other 14 clips?

Thanks!

Quote So here's what I think: If I set the project frame rate to 24 or 30 and produce at the same rate, the videos seem perfectly smooth to my eyes. With the project fps set to 24 or 30 and produced to 16p, there's hardly any difference - although there seems to be slightly less smoothness. Not anything to worry about but enough incentive to stick with a standard output frame rate.

Once the clip is produced to 24p or 30p, you can bring it back into your project and then do all the normal edits (including Star Wars scrolling text) because everything will now be done at the project frame rate.

I made 4 sample clips and have shared them here. Try the 30p one with your current edits (and project frame rate set to 30) and see how it turns out, then try out the 24p clip with a 24fps project rate if needed.

A very easy way to do those tests is to rename your original clip so PD can't find it when you open the project up. Browse to the new clip when prompted and PD will use that instead of your original clip everywhere in the project.

Note that I put a mask (like an old TV) to block out all the sprocket holes and bleedovers, but you should be able to tell how well things work overall.

OK, thank you for working on that... you are quick! :

So how is it different importing a 30fps file into a 30fps project vs. importing a 16fps file into a 30fps project and rendering at 30fps? Wouldn't PD do the conversion during render the same way as you did when you rendered just the clip at 30fps and imported into a 30fps project?

I'm assuming the rendered output would look the same as when I play the 16fps clip on my 30fps timeline, correct? Or did you do something else to the file when you converted it to 30fps?

Quote OK. I've downloaded it and have saved a copy in this OneDrive folder, so you're free to delete it from your G Drive and anyone who wants to get a copy can still do so.

I'll play around with it and see what I can turn up...

That would be great, thanks very much for your help! If you come up with a way to interpolate this video to 29.97fps (or 30 I guess would work as well), let me know how and I'll have to do it for all 15 clips like this one. Each clip is one 50ft. reel of 8mm film.

Bryan

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Your first post was 3 days ago, and uploading a 3GB file would take far less time than that even with a slow DSL connection. I have 1Gbps up/down so it's only a few seconds to access your content once it's in the cloud.

OK, here's a link to the file: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1k2uPx86JKv6TlzrsmoTvWkbj6RerSJGK/view?usp=sharing

Let me know when you downloaded it and I'll remove the file. I only have so much space on Google drive. :

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Your first post was 3 days ago, and uploading a 3GB file would take far less time than that even with a slow DSL connection. I have 1Gbps up/down so it's only a few seconds to access your content once it's in the cloud.

OK -- well, Google was giving me an estimated 3.5 hours to upload. I'll give it another try and let you know, thank you!

Quote Use a cloud folder on OneDrive or Google Drive to share your GIFs, and also please add one of your 16fps clips so the experienced volunteers who are trying to help you can work with it directly.

I think the gifs got uploaded finally.

The clip is 2.3GB, which will take too long to upload/download. I'll see if I can figure out a way to save just a piece of it from Davinci Resolve, where I did all the color balance and digital cleanup.

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If that's the meaning of an interpolated frame for you, then yes, PD is fine as is with your 16fps footage. PD17 will always simply copy or delete timeline content source frames in some fashion to make it compatible with the produce profile fps specification.

Jeff

Yeah, I did a small clip with that DAIN app and it's not doing a good job expanding the 16fps into 48fps. The interpolated frames have all kind of artifacts and weird colors. I tried to attach one frame from the original, and the interpolated frame before it, but the server keeps timing out.

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If that's the meaning of an interpolated frame for you, then yes, PD is fine as is with your 16fps footage. PD17 will always simply copy or delete timeline content source frames in some fashion to make it compatible with the produce profile fps specification.

Jeff

Yeah, I did a small clip with that DAIN app and it's not doing a good job expanding the 16fps into 48fps. The interpolated frames have all kind of artifacts and weird colors. I attached one frame from the original, and the interpolated frame before it.

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If that's the meaning of an interpolated frame for you, then yes, PD is fine as is with your 16fps footage. PD17 will always simply copy or delete timeline content source frames in some fashion to make it compatible with the produce profile fps specification.

Jeff

Yeah, I did a small clip with that DAIN app and it's not doing a good job expanding the 16fps into 48fps. The interpolated frames have all kind of artifacts and weird colors. I attached one frame from the original, and the interpolated frames before and after it.

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Might check that produced file in the timeline advancing frame by frame for visual inspection. PD simply duplicates a prior frame, it does not interpolate a new frame by any of the methods I'm aware of, simply a pure duplicate frame to achieve target fps. So yours will simply have ~14 frames duplicated every second.

Jeff

Yes, there are duplicate frames, I guess that's what I mean by 'interpolated'... it converted the 16 to 30fps.

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yes, article highlights one such piece of alpha software but others also available too. Since already 2K, I was guessing you don't need AI type video enhancement to enlarge and enhance resolution, just more interpolated frames for playback fluidity with other source. PD terrible at both aspects so one really needs to supplement techniques with other tools.

Jeff

I have been experimenting and it looks like this AI interpolation is going to be way more work than I want to do. The link I mentioned shows how to convert 16fps to 48 with DAIN-APP software, and then back to 24fps with AVIDemux. The DAIN-APP needs way more video card memory than the 8GB I have to convert at full 2K resolution. There are tools to break down the conversion so it works with less memory, but video output is compromised. I may try converting a small clip to see what it looks like at 24fps, but then I may decide to keep the 16fps jittery look because that's how I remember watching the movies from the projector.

PD does do some interpolation obviously, because it rendered the 16fps clips to 2K H.264 video at 29.97fps and the movie clips are jittery but not much worse than watching a projector. I might play with it a little more, but I want to finish this project! :

Quote cassb, do you plan on posting any of the 16fps source? What I'd probably suggest with such low fps is to look at any of the many available frame interpolation techniques, this would be outside of PD as PD does not really do frame interpolation. One would then create a 29.97 fps source that could be used for editing in PD and should improve fluidness vs basic PD duplication of frames.

Jeff

Hmm... I could try that. I just watched a video that converted 16fps to 32 and it looks pretty good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYef7JyvBX4

Here's an interesting article about it... is this what you mean?

https://forums.kinograph.cc/t/using-ai-motion-interpolation-software-to-achieve-24fps-for-16fps-or-18fps-8mm-films/1786

Quote As I was waking up I remembered this discussion. OP there didn't say what fps they were producing to, but it appears they were happy with the results.

Thank you! Actually, I produced a second H.264 file at 29.97fps and amazingly it looks acceptable. Obviously the source videos at 29.97 look fine, but the 16fps sources look OK to me. 16fps is always going to look jittery anyway because your mind can see the frames at that speed. So I think I'll go with 29.97 and create a BD-R from the video. Then I'll create an output file at the highest resolution and frame speed offered for archive.

I wish I could count on PowerDirector being around forever so I can recreate the project again in the future, but my first iteration of this video was in ULead MediaStudio Pro 7, which was discontinued and only runs in Windows XP. So I'll keep all the source material and the high-res output file.

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Darn, so I have to undo all those cool titles and crossfades? :

Actually, I did do a couple titles using the Star Wars crawl and others. I'll have to look at the output and see how bad it is.

Unfortunately... it's bad.

I need to figure out now how to produce a smooth video file with 29.97fps and 16fps clips in it.

Quote Hi cassb -

You can do that, & you're on the right track. To get a 16fps profile, though, you need to manually edit the Profile.ini

Make a new custom profile called (say) "2K 16fps"

Select the options you want - you could select 15 as the frame rate - and save the profile.

Go to C:\Users\User\AppData\Roaming\CyberLink\PowerDirector\19.0\UserConfigure to find your Profile.ini

Open it with Notepad

Where it says "<Frame Rate>16.000000", change it to "<Frame Rate>15.000000"

Save it and close.

Back in PDR, in the Produce module, select your 16fps profile and hit Start.

An example profile is attached, as is the MediaInfo report from the produced file.

Cheers - Tony

Thank you, Tony, that did the trick. Now I have to figure out how to produce a video file with both 29.97fps and 16fps clips in it and keep it from being jittery. :

Quote One other thing I can add is to limit the use of motion graphcis on your timeline. Because PD's projeect frame rate will be 24fps, any motion or fades will be based on that rate and when 1/3 of the frames are skipped during producing, you'll end up with some skipped/jerky motions.

Using titles with a clean in/out appearance will look best, and the same goes for any transitions you might add.

Darn, so I have to undo all those cool titles and crossfades? :

Actually, I did do a couple titles using the Star Wars crawl and others. I'll have to look at the output and see how bad it is.

Quote I think there are two potential issues in trying to produce to a non-standard frame rate.

The first one - which you're looking for the answer to here - is straightforward.

You can create a custom profile and then open the Profile.ini file (where the settings are stored) in Notepad and manually change the frame rate to 16.0000. The file located in the C:\Users\[user name]\AppData\Roaming\CyberLink\PowerDirector\17.0\UserConfigure folder.

When you save the file and open up PD you'll see that custom option:

The main issue is that there's no way to set the project frame rate to 16 or any multiple of 16. Using 24 fps might be your best best as PD will use a pattern of 2 frames, 1 frame, 2 frames, 1 frame etc., for each of your source clip's individual frames, but you may notice a stuttering during preview.

If you produce to 16fps, however, the issue may actually go away since (hopefully) PD will be able to match the source frames to the produced output and everything should look smooth.

Thank you very much, that helps a lot to know I can at least get it to accept a 16fps rate. Hopefully PD will actually output the file at 16fps... not sure if it's only capable of the presets or not. And yes, the preview does stutter as it duplicates a lot of frames. I was told by the company that scanned the film that the best quality output would be H.264 at 16fps and 20Mbps. I'll try producing that and see what it looks like on the computer and the TV.

Thanks!

I have some 8mm movie film scanned into 2K ProRes H.264 files at its native speed of 16fps. I imported the scanned video files into a PD 17 project and added some titles and narration. I want to produce a H.264 2K file from the project at 16fps, but I don't see that in the output options. Does any new version of PD allow 16fps output speed?

Thanks!

I have some 8mm movie film scanned into 2K ProRes H.264 files at its native speed of 16fps. I imported the scanned video files into a PD 17 project and added some titles and narration. I want to produce a H.264 2K file from the project at 16fps, but I don't see that in the output options. How do I get a 16fps file from PD?

Thanks!