Converting 576i to h264 interlaced

[tfhfony]

I am converting some old DVD's with Amiga demo's to H264. These demo's contain scrollers, and most software that converts MPEG2 to H264, will automaticly make the result progressive (25fps). The scrolltext look somewhat jerky because if this.
Which software will allow my to (easily) convert 576i to 50fps H264? I use Win7 Pro 64 Bit as OS.

[Guest]

Avisynth + your favorite bobbing filter + x264.exe.

[Dark Shikari]

Avisynth + your favorite bobbing filter + x264.exe.He could encode it as interlaced as well and drop the bobbing filter.

[Guest]

True but he asked for 50fps.

[nm]

I am converting some old DVD's with Amiga demo's to H264. These demo's contain scrollers, and most software that converts MPEG2 to H264, will automaticly make the result progressive (25fps). The scrolltext look somewhat jerky because if this.
Which software will allow my to (easily) convert 576i to 50fps H264? I use Win7 Pro 64 Bit as OS.
What kind of playback software or devices are you targeting? Progressive video (25 or 50 fps) is easier for computer playback, especially online content. For compatibility with standalone devices, it may be a good idea to follow Blu-ray specs and encode either as 576i50 or (bobbed and resized) 720p50.

[tfhfony]

What kind of playback software or devices are you targeting? Progressive video (25 or 50 fps) is easier for computer playback, especially online content. For compatibility with standalone devices, it may be a good idea to follow Blu-ray specs and encode either as 576i50 or (bobbed and resized) 720p50.

Right now I am using XBMC on Linux to playback my files. I have a HTPC in the living room, and am converting all my DVD's and CD's to a playable format.
Right now, I havew mostly been using HDConvertoX and Handbrake, but both these programs won't let me choose a format like 576i50 (Which whould be the most appropiate format.)

[nm]

Right now I am using XBMC on Linux to playback my files. I have a HTPC in the living room, and am converting all my DVD's and CD's to a playable format.
Right now, I havew mostly been using HDConvertoX and Handbrake, but both these programs won't let me choose a format like 576i50 (Which whould be the most appropiate format.)

HandBrake allows you to set x264 options manually, so you could add :interlaced to the string. However, many hardware players and some software decoders expect SEI signaling for interlaced streams so that they can be deinterlaced properly (top field first or bottom field first). Currently this requires NAL-HRD-patched (lib)x264 and setting more parameters (set VBV, enable HRD, specify the field order with parameter tff or bff).

However, XBMC still doesn't have a decent bobbing filter -- not even with VDPAU rendering -- so you would only get the same jittery 576p25 as when using some standard half-rate deinterlacing filter before encoding. Instead of fighting with interlacing on playback, I'd suggest doing as neuron2 said and bob to 576p50 before encoding. Use one of the better AviSynth deinterlacing/bobbing filters, or if you have an Nvidia GPU, hardware deinterlacing through DGNVTools.

[tfhfony]

HandBrake allows you to set x264 options manually, so you could add :interlaced to the string. However, many hardware players and some software decoders expect SEI signaling for interlaced streams so that they can be deinterlaced properly (top field first or bottom field first). Currently this requires NAL-HRD-patched (lib)x264 and setting more parameters (set VBV, enable HRD, specify the field order with parameter tff or bff).

However, XBMC still doesn't have a decent bobbing filter -- not even with VDPAU rendering -- so you would only get the same jittery 576p25 as when using some standard half-rate deinterlacing filter before encoding. Instead of fighting with interlacing on playback, I'd suggest doing as neuron2 said and bob to 576p50 before encoding. Use one of the better AviSynth deinterlacing/bobbing filters, or if you have an Nvidia GPU, hardware deinterlacing through DGNVTools.

Hmmm, XBMC doesn't have any problems with the original 576i50 mpeg2 source: it looks perfect when playing this back.
And yes, I have a Nvidia card: I will take a look at the DGNVTools. Let's see if that can help me.

Thanks for the support.\

[nm]

Hmmm, XBMC doesn't have any problems with the original 576i50 mpeg2 source: it looks perfect when playing this back.

Ok, I didn't remember that the "Automatic" deinterlacing setting enables a simple bob filter with linear interpolation (similar to MPlayer's -vf tfields=1). It does provide fluid motion, but you lose about half of the vertical resolution, which is not acceptable in my opinion. Perhaps your demo captures are already so blurry that you don't see the problem.

[tfhfony]

Ok, I didn't remember that the "Automatic" deinterlacing setting enables a simple bob filter with linear interpolation (similar to MPlayer's -vf tfields=1). It does provide fluid motion, but you lose about half of the vertical resolution, which is not acceptable in my opinion. Perhaps your demo captures are already so blurry that you don't see the problem.

Most Amiga demo's run in the native 320 * 200 resolution, so ;)

[AnonCrow]

Most Amiga demo's run in the native 320 * 200 resolution, so ;)

320x256 actually, as the majority of demos were made in countries that use PAL, not NTSC.

What emulator/encoding setting the mindcandy DVD creators used is another thing.
Unless you have some very rare intros/demos, good quality videos of many can be found on pouet/scene.org, demoscene.tv. HQ Videos of the few PC winning Amiga demos from this millenium at the Assembly are still hosted by the assembly organizing themselves , ditto for Breakpoint.

OCS/ECS , AGA or Picasso96/CGX demos ?
Any demos that make extensive use of copper, EHB or HAM6/8 ?
Might affect whether you want to better chroma encoding settings; assuming the original encodes are of decent quality.

Of course, you'd save some time and cpu-time if you used UAE to watch the demos in realtime instead of videos of them,
with the exception of the few PowerPC-requiring demos.

[tfhfony]

Well, this shows it quite nicely:

http://www.demoscene.tv/prod.php?id_prod=8996

The scrolling looks terrible. And this version has been taken from the mindcandy. From the original .VOB file, it looks great, but when converted to a progressive file, it looks like crap, as can be seen in the link above :-(

[nm]

That kind of skipping is not produced by bad deinterlacing alone. Something else is wrong, such as a 25p to 30p conversion (by duplicating frames) at some point.