Ok, I posted here roughly a year back trying to figure out how to get QT7 to deinterlace a DV clip on export to large-frame h.264. After literally three days of experimentation, I thought I had the solution:
1) Create a reference movie with Deinterlace (or Single Field--having both on is the same as single field) selected. High Quality, too, if you want.
2) Size the reference movie approprately, and save it.
3) Export the movie as a .mov using 29.97fps (I'm assuming NTSC here) and leave the size "as is" in that section of the export dialogue.
If you DON'T set the framerate, or you are so audacious as to try and set the export size in the export dialogue, it turns off whatever deinterlace options you selected, and you get an export that looks like garbage.
As it turns out, there's one more thing I was missing here.
4) You MUST resize the clip from it's original size, even if it's only by a single pixel.
Now, I just spent an entire day of wasted encodes trying to figure out #4 there, because I used the handy built-in recorder in QT Pro, set to "passthrough", to record a DV stream and save time instead of going through iMovie. Except for one thing I didn't count on: iMovie captures DVD at 720X480 (non-square pixels), while through whatever method the passthrough produces a file at 640X480.
Since my target export size was 640X480, when I was rescaling the iMovie imports, I was accidentally meeting criteria #4, while with the simplified capture video, it was literally impossible to get a deinterlaced export unless I resized it (again, even a single pixel smaller kicks in perfect single-field deinterlacing).
Now, QT 7.1 (or maybe 7.1.1, I can't remember which, as I upgraded in the middle of my experimentation) FINALLY adds a functioning deinterlace option (as well as some bonus controls) to that problematic Size setting in the export dialogue.
This is very nice, and ACTUALLY WORKS, but for one caveat: It does deinterlacing, not single field. If you don't mind the "overlapped" frames of a straight-deinterlaced source, then this is ok. But if you prefer the lower-rez but clean-framed Single Frame option for whatever reason, you need to jump through all of the above hoops to get it.
Ugh. I hope this benefits somebody. I want to find whoever was responsible for the decision to make the quality/deinterlace/single field flags not apply to exports UNLESS you resize the output and stab him or her in the foot with a fork. You could technically argue that this is not a bug, as those are playback options, but they're valuable for export too, and WYSIWYG is supposed to be the norm. Judging by the number of annoyed people on the QuickTime Dev List who were basically told to use the $500 Cleaner for this, the fact that it borders on an unsupported hack is a boneheaded ommission from an otherwise great product.
1) Create a reference movie with Deinterlace (or Single Field--having both on is the same as single field) selected. High Quality, too, if you want.
2) Size the reference movie approprately, and save it.
3) Export the movie as a .mov using 29.97fps (I'm assuming NTSC here) and leave the size "as is" in that section of the export dialogue.
If you DON'T set the framerate, or you are so audacious as to try and set the export size in the export dialogue, it turns off whatever deinterlace options you selected, and you get an export that looks like garbage.
As it turns out, there's one more thing I was missing here.
4) You MUST resize the clip from it's original size, even if it's only by a single pixel.
Now, I just spent an entire day of wasted encodes trying to figure out #4 there, because I used the handy built-in recorder in QT Pro, set to "passthrough", to record a DV stream and save time instead of going through iMovie. Except for one thing I didn't count on: iMovie captures DVD at 720X480 (non-square pixels), while through whatever method the passthrough produces a file at 640X480.
Since my target export size was 640X480, when I was rescaling the iMovie imports, I was accidentally meeting criteria #4, while with the simplified capture video, it was literally impossible to get a deinterlaced export unless I resized it (again, even a single pixel smaller kicks in perfect single-field deinterlacing).
Now, QT 7.1 (or maybe 7.1.1, I can't remember which, as I upgraded in the middle of my experimentation) FINALLY adds a functioning deinterlace option (as well as some bonus controls) to that problematic Size setting in the export dialogue.
This is very nice, and ACTUALLY WORKS, but for one caveat: It does deinterlacing, not single field. If you don't mind the "overlapped" frames of a straight-deinterlaced source, then this is ok. But if you prefer the lower-rez but clean-framed Single Frame option for whatever reason, you need to jump through all of the above hoops to get it.
Ugh. I hope this benefits somebody. I want to find whoever was responsible for the decision to make the quality/deinterlace/single field flags not apply to exports UNLESS you resize the output and stab him or her in the foot with a fork. You could technically argue that this is not a bug, as those are playback options, but they're valuable for export too, and WYSIWYG is supposed to be the norm. Judging by the number of annoyed people on the QuickTime Dev List who were basically told to use the $500 Cleaner for this, the fact that it borders on an unsupported hack is a boneheaded ommission from an otherwise great product.