Yes, we air interlaced. I think what's messing this up is the need to output in HD from a SD source plus the time stretch. Camera tracker doesn't work on stretched footage, and when I collapse the precomp it screws up the camera. I need the text clean, not scaled from SD.

On Sat, Sep 30, 2017 at 12:55 PM Jim Curtis <AE-List@media-motion.tv> wrote:

Do you broadcast interlaced?

Once I’ve converted my 29.97 interlaced to 23.976, I render it out at that frame rate and leave it there.  I can reintroduce the pulldown and fields later if necessary, but it’s rarely necessary.  One of my spot delivery services demanded 59.94 for a while; then they relaxed it and started taking 23.976.

This is pretty basic, so I suppose you know that if you have interlaced footage, it’s best practice to put it in a comp that’s double the frame rate - 59.94 so that you are tracking or roto-ing the fields separately as frames.  You can recombine the fields later in output.

On Sep 29, 2017, at 3:58 PM, Byron Nash <AE-List@media-motion.tv> wrote:

We get a lot of older SD footage here that we up-res to HD for our network broadcast. Some shot need camera tracking, roto, and vfx. I have a shot that is confounding me and wanted to see what steps some of you would take differently. 

Here's my normal procedure for dealing with footage shot on 24 and coming to us at 29.97.

1. remove 3:2 pulldown and interpret fields correctly
2. put footage in a 23.976 comp
3. enable any speed changes and enable pixel motion frame blending
4. perform roto and tracking
5. render to 29.97 with 3:2 pulldown and appropriate fields

The goal is to work on the footage in it's original cadence. We often get shots that have been scaled or stretched in time.This greatly exacerbates the issue. This brings me to my current problem. I'm trying to camera track a shot that is SD and has time stretch. I want the tracked in graphic to be overlayed in a HD comp. However, the camera tracker doesn't want any scaling done to the shot first. I know this is an order of operations problem. Just having trouble getting the pieces lined up.

Thanks for any input. 

Byron