Converting interlaced mpg2 movies to progressive scan

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Have you ever noticed when you author a DVD, that sometimes it will look perfectly fine on your television set, but then it will look horrible when you play it back on your LCD computer screen? Click on the picture(s) below and you'll see what I'm talking about.

Here's the problem:

DV-NTSC is an interlaced video format that draws all the even fields first, and then all the odd fields next. This is perfectly fine when played back on an interlaced television.

However, when you play an interlaced movie on a progressive monitor, such as a computer monitor, you end up seeing both odd and even fields blended into one frame. The result often looks terrible, especially on shots with a lot of motion.

Fortunately, if you use Apple Compressor, which is included in Apple's Final Cut Studio suite of products, you can use frame controls to convert the interlaced movie into a progressive movie. The frame controls provide quality that was use to require very expensive hardware converters. Keep in mind, turning frame controls on, will increase the rendering time.

Start by launching compressor and navigate to the settings window. Within the settings window, create a new mpg2 setting blue clicking the (plus) icon. Give the setting a name.

Within the setting's window double click on your newly created setting. This setting should now appear in the inspector window. Within the inspector window click on the Frame Controls icon.

In order to turn the Frame Controls, you need to click on the asterisk. Otherwise all the Frame Control options will be grayed out. Change the output fields category to progressive. Adjust the other settings accordingly, depending on the quality of movie that you want. When your done, click the save button.

I recommend that you save your setting as a droplet. Droplet's make it much easier to compress your files. After your droplet has been saved, youâ€™ll just drop your movie(s) onto the droplet icon and compressor will do the rest for you.

After dragging your movie(s) onto a the droplet icon, simply press the submit button.

The Batch monitor will appear showing the your computerâ€™s progress for each movie that is being compressed.

When you are done, you can then take the newly create progessive movie into DVD Studio Pro (or an equivelant DVD authoring program). The result will be a DVD that plays fine on both progressive computer monitors and on NTSC television sets.