Help choosing deint and/or TIVTC for this clip?

[outhud]

Few seconds video clip here https://www.dropbox.com/s/649guaf2vvie5x0/clip.mkv?dl=0 (5MB)

I'm working with the above source video from DVD. Not sure how to say for certain if this is telecined or not, but I assume so.

I've tried using different combinations of QTGMC, VFM and VDecimate to prepare it for encoding.

QTGMC removes interlacing but doesn't remove blending.
VFM and Vdecimate removes blending but leaves combing lines.

I've tried combining both, but I wonder is this really the best way. There are still frames that look blended, and maybe this is more quality loss than necessary.

video = haf.QTGMC(video, Preset='Slower', FPSDivisor=2, TFF=True)
video = core.vivtc.VFM(video, order=1, cthresh=10)
video = core.vivtc.VDecimate(video)

Any advice on how I should combine some or all of the above filters to get the clip suitable for encoding?

[Boulder]

If it's blended, take a look at SRestore (in the havsfunc package).

Something like this:
from vapoursynth import core
import havsfunc as haf

clp = core.ffms2.Source(source=r"f:\temp\captures\clip.mkv")
clp = core.nnedi3.nnedi3(clp, field=2)
clp = haf.srestore(clp, frate=25, speed=-1)
clp.set_output()

[outhud]

If it's blended, take a look at SRestore (in the havsfunc package).

Something like this:
from vapoursynth import core
import havsfunc as haf

clp = core.ffms2.Source(source=r"f:\temp\captures\clip.mkv")
clp = core.nnedi3.nnedi3(clp, field=2)
clp = haf.srestore(clp, frate=25, speed=-1)
clp.set_output()

Great, thanks for the tip!

This looks perfect, no blending and no comb lines. :)

My only question is about frate 25. Is this OK to use for a NTSC DVD?

The DVD is 29.97fps, but it's a US release of a European movie, so maybe 25 is correct.

[Boulder]

The sloppy 25 -> 29.97 fps conversion is quite common in such cases, and it happens also with blu-rays. SRestore is used to undo the process so in this case, it returns the original framerate and progressive frames. If you were to encode the result as MPEG2 and put that back on a DVD, it would not be compliant. In that case you could encode it and then use DGPulldown on the result to do a 25->29.97 fps pulldown to make it compliant for authoring.

[outhud]

Thanks a lot. Makes sense to me now.