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Jay C - Atlanta
Participating Frequently
March 5, 2025

After Effects DOES NOT HONOR INTERLACE CHANGES to Interpretation upper/lower -- STILL.

  • March 5, 2025
  • 4 replies
  • 377 views

After Effects 25.0.1 (Build 2).  HUGE INTERLACE BUG.  Adobe please fix.

 

NTSC footage - when changing intrepretation from UPPER or LOWER FIELD or vice-versa, AFX still does not honor changes when reversing the interlace, as After Effects has always done.  Emptying the disk cache does not help.  I must save the project with the interlace interpretation change, quit After Effects, and when reopening the project fresh, only then is the interlace interpretation change executed.

 

Big and quite annoying problem, as I'm constantly fighting to set the proper field order, and I'm used to After Effects immediately honoring and displaying the interlace change as always in the past.

4 replies

James Landy
James Landy
Inspiring
March 11, 2025

I’ve made multiple attempts to reproduce the issue you’re describing with Ae 25.0.1 stable 2 (your version) and with Ae 25.3 beta 14 on Mac and Win.

I verified I can use the Interpret Footage to separate fields, and the comp viewer updates to display the selected setting (lower or upper field first).  

To get an in-house repro, ff possible, can you please provide a source clip that fails to update along with a screen recording of the problem?

Thanks.

JohnColombo17100380
Community Manager
JohnColombo17100380Community Manager
Community Manager
March 5, 2025

@Jay C - Atlanta Thank you for those details.

 

I see that you've posted about this previously in the Discussions section, mentioning that this is occurring in both After Effects 2024 and 2025. If that's the case, I'll see if our team is able to reproduce in either of those versions.

 

Regarding format, are you primarily working with footage from a camera or files exported from another video application? What codecs are being used by the interlaced files?

 

Thanks for any further info,

- John, After Effects Engineering Team 

 

JohnColombo17100380
Community Manager
JohnColombo17100380Community Manager
Community Manager
March 5, 2025

Hi @Jay C - Atlanta,

Thank you for reporting this issue. You mentioned that you're used to After Effects immediately honoring the interlacing change—what version where you using previously that honored the change immediately?

 

Also, what is the interlaced format you are working with?

 

Thank you again for reporting this issue,

- John, After Effects Engineering Team 

J
Jay C - AtlantaAuthor
Participating Frequently
March 5, 2025

Thanks very much for the attention John …

All previous versions of After Effects since its inception (ver 3 I remember using, decades ago) instantly reflect the Interpret Footage Interlace change, in all compositions.

This is definitely a newly introduced bug.

It’s standard NTSC (SD) footage, and two common sizes: 720x480 and 720x486.  Normally 720 x80 is Upper Field interlace dominant and 720x486 is lower field dominant, but occasionally the “interpret footage” interlace setting needs to be changed, to render the two fields in a single frame in the right order.

To be more specific, one NTSC frame is composed of two fields (odd scan lines for one field, even for the other).  Each field is a different point in time in 1/60 sec increments.  When you set the interlace in “interpret footage”, you are telling AFX which field comes first in time.  When incorrect, the field order, time-wise, is jump ahead two, then back one, ahead two, back one, repeat.  This yields the common incorrect field dominance “stutter” effect, as each field isn’t displayed in the correct order in time.

Again, this change has always been instantly reflected, you could see the field switch from one to another in a composition as soon as the interpret footage setting was changed.

I could try previous versions to make sure the last version worked properly … my problem is that I can’t open current projects in previous versions.

Jay

J
Community Manager
jenkmeister17177426Community Manager
March 5, 2025

Sorry for the issue. I've logged the bug for reproducing and we'll see what is going on.

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