Help correcting de-interlacing problems, please.

[3hj]

Hello.

I have a VHS tape, recorded many years ago on a consumer VHS-C camera. What I have now is a second-generation dub on a VHS tape, made from the original VHS-C tape.

A while back, I borrowed a DVD recorder from someone, with the hopes of getting a digital copy of this video. The results were okay - not horrible, but I could only get MPEG-2 video from the device.

Wanting to get an uncompressed good quality capture of the tape, with the aim of doing post-processing to improve the image, I sent my tape in to a 'professional' capture facility and paid them to capture it for me. Why? Well, they advertised that they had professional S-VHS decks, external TBCs and were able to provide uncompressed video. The VHS has quite a few dropped frames and horizontal lines in certain parts, so this was an attractive option.

They didn't end up delivering uncompressed video - simply another MPEG-2 file - but that's besides the point. Their TBC noticeably helped the rough parts of the video. The problem, however, is that they badly deinterlaced the result.

Here is a detail (so that the de/interlace effects can be dramatically seen) from one of the frames of the DVD recorder capture I made:


Compare that to the exact same frame from the capture I got from the production house:


Notice how both fields seem to be blended together. This motion smearing effect appears throughout the video, and is horribly annoying. Their capture is better in a lot of other ways, though, so I'd like to be able to salvage it.

For comparison, here's the same frame again, from my DVD recorder capture, run through the Yadif filter, showing what a 'correct' deinterlace of that specific frame should achieve:


So my question: is there any way to "re-interlace" this footage? As in, separate the blurred end product back into the original field order? Or, at least, fix this issue and end up with non-ugly deinterlaced footage? Ideally I'd like interlaced footage, but at this point I would be grateful for any kind of improvement!