Understanding Field Order in Compressor, Episode Pro and Squeeze - Part 1

This multipart write-up will give you a better understanding of Field Order in Compressor, Episode Pro and Sorenson Squeeze Compression Suite. First of all, video uses two fields and when you are encoding interlaced sources you need to be able to recognize how the field order is labeled so you can remove a field if necessary. Field Order is also known as Field Dominance. When you see references such Even, Lower, Lower Field First and Bottom, this refers to the Second field. Odd, Upper, Upper Field and Top refers to the First field.

With that said lets look first at how Compressor displays field order in the Deinterlace filter. Notice under Algorithm there are 4 options but I want to focus on three, Blur, Even and Odd. Selecting the Blur algorithm inside the Deinterlace filter during encoding actually blurs the Odd and Even fields. Choosing Even for the algorithm will deinterlace the video source during encoding keeping the Even field and getting rid of the Odd field. Choosing Odd for the algorithm deinterlaces the video during encoding keeping the Odd field and removing the Even field.