What cameras are used for "Days of our Lives"?

[Keith Walters]

I'm preparing material for a short talk basically on "Why do production people hate interlace?"

The freeware editor Avidemux has a "raw" playback window, which makes zero attempt at de-interlacing the .ts files I've recorded.

I noticed that with "Days of our Lives" you can step through the 12-frame Groups of Pictures that make up the recording , and every I Frame is perfect.

When you go to an ad break, though, the video is almost always interlaced-sourced, and anything with movement in it turns into a train wreck if you freeze it, because Avidemux simply pastes the two fields together with no attempt at "de-interlace" correction, (which is what digital TVs spend a large part of their time doing).

 

Editing software generally hates interlace because a "raw" composite frame like that contains an enormous amount of high frequency detail which was not part of the original scene, and the MPEG encoder craps itself and the picture goes all blocky and horrid. "Entropy goes out the window" is a good phrase for slipping into a conversation :D

 

It appears that "Days" is either shot with progressive scan cameras, or they have editing software with a really good de-interlacing algorithm.

It looks like it's done with either a Genesis, F35, or Alexa. Can anybody enlighten me? I just want to get my facts straight.