Matchmoving Interlaced Footage

[LFGabel]

I do a lot of matchmoving, and most, if not all, of it is film (24p) at HD resolution. For that I am quite thankful. :D

Ideally everyone would shoot 24p video. However, there a lot of times where I need to matchmove 30i video. The way I have done it in the past is to matchmove the deinterlaced fields, which results in twice the number of frames to work on. Is this necessarily the best way to do it?

Is it better to:
- deinterlace the shot first (separate the fields, extrapolate the missing data, remerge), then matchmove 30p
- matchmove 30i without deinterlacing

I would think that matchmoving interlaced footage would be a pain, which is why I've never tried it.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Much appreciated.

[ShadowMaker SdR]

What software are you using? It may have settings for interlaced or non-interlaced footage. In either way if the movement is big, you should matchmove all fields, because otherwise you could get small mistakes within a frame. Imagine a zip-pan. The two fields that make up a frame will be radically different.

[LFGabel]

Good point. I was using SynthEyes, and it does have good field options. Thanks, es-diar.