wrong forums but here goes anyway

[craigweb2k]

hi everyone,

this is and isnt a thread related to avisynth.

I've been using DVD2SVCD to try and rip my PAL Star Trek - The Next Generation dvds and I am having real problems de-interalcing. Anyway the creator of DVD2SVCD said that decomb.dll would possibly cure my problem.

I am ripping the DVDs using Telecide de-interlace and most of the DVD rips perfectly there are just 1 - 6 scenes in each episode where the field operation changes and as a result I get choppy playback.

He suggested that I would be able to do something with this 'decomb.dll' to sort the problem but I dont really have a clue.

any help in this one would be greatly appreciated as I have tried *many* times now to figure it out myself.

thanks in advance.

- c r a i g w e b -

[DJ Bobo]

May I ask you how you're doing that telecide deinterlacing on a PAL source!? what's the command you're using?

You can try using only: FieldDeinterlace()

[craigweb2k]

hi

I didnt make myself clear I can see :)

I am a n00bie, I am using DVD2SVCD which accepts commands like AVISYNTH :s but you can also use the GUI to encode and in that it has the option to use a telecide encode and I used that

the resulting mpeg ends up like this

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/craigweb2k/svcd-test.mpg

I contacted the programs author and he suggested that I use decomb.dll but since I have no idea how to I was looking for help and asking if indeed it would help me

ideas?

[DJ Bobo]

You're kidding yourself! using the standard Telecide option on PAL video is senseless, the playback is choppy ALL THE TIME (I think you get 20fps that will be assumed as 25fps when encoding, but still only 20fps), but you'll notice it only in panoramic camera views or in scenes where there is movement.

You better go with FieldDeinterlace.
Your AVS-Script will look like this:

LoadPlugin("...\decomb.dll")
...
mpeg2source("project_name.d2v")
FieldDeinterlace()
...

Notice that the FieldDeinterlace line must come directly after the mpeg2source line

[Kedirekin]

I disagree - according to many posts, telecide can be very effective on PAL video. Check the read-me that comes with telecide; it even describes how to use it with PAL.

The intent is to recreate progressive frames, and post processing (i.e. deinterlacing) will only happen on frames that remain interlaced. As long as you don't decimate, PAL should be okay.

[DJ Bobo]

But he tried Telecide and the playback is choppy as you can see in the mpeg file! so Telecide won't work with his video!

[Kedirekin]

Sorry - your post made it sound like telecide should never be used on any PAL material - thus my disagreement. I didn't realize you were talking just about this source.

Okay, I'm on dial-up, but I've now taken the 20 minutes to download the clip. It is indeed choppy. If you look at the mpg, you'll find it's at 20 fps, which strongly indicates that decimate was used. I believe I can say that decimate should never be used on PAL video.

craigweb2k, I'd try again using decomb's telecide without decimate. If possible, you should just do the chapter with engineering scene to test it out.

[craigweb2k]

decimate? im sorry guys, like I said im new to this, I dont have a clue what your all on about.

[dividee]

I never used DVD2SVCD, but I think there's a checkbox or button somewhere labelled 'Edit Avisynth script'. Use it and remove the Decimate call from the script.

[Kedirekin]

The decomb plugin comes with an html 'readme' file. It really is quite educational. I encourage you to read through it. If you got the plugin via DVD2SVCD, you should find the decomb dll and the html file under the DVD2SVCD directory in InverseTelecine/DonaldGraft. Look around, I'm sure you'll find it.

In a nutshell, the decomb plugin includes three new functions for avisynth: Telecide, Decimate, and FieldDeinterlace.

Telecide attempts to reconstruct progressive frames. This is an ideal way to get rid of combing artifacts, because you lose no detail. By default, Telecide will perform deinterlacing on any frames the can't be reconstructed, but deinterlacing will result in some loss of detail, as it has to blur even and odd lines to get rid of the combing. The nice thing about telecide is the blurring only happens when it's necessary.

Decimate does just what its name implies - it removes frames from the video stream. By default, it removes 1 frame in every 5, thus 25 fps decimates to 20 fps. Decimate is intended for IVTC. Except for extremely rare circumstances, Decimate shouldn't be used on PAL video. With the default settings, the video will jerk slightly every 4 frames (because the 5th frame is missing).

FieldDeinterlace also does what its name implies - it deinterlaces. However, unlike Telecide, it deinterlaces every frame, even the ones that don't really need it. FieldDeinterlace is really only intended to be used when you know for a fact that every frame of the video has combing in them, or when Telecide messes up. When in doubt, always try Telecide first.

[Krajensky]

Let me tell you, this is not an isolated problem. Everyone is having trouble with the PAL TNG DVDs. They were encoded using a 2:2 pattern (delayed field), which by itself is not a problem and easily fixed. However, the dominant field is changing at every scene change...


One attempted solution I know of is to use Decomb's Telecide with no Decimate. I think this worked reasonably well, but I haven't seen it for myself yet. If this does work, it's the best solution (but I haven't confirmed it does, as I don't have the discs).

The other (more trusted solution) is to FieldDeinterlace(blend=false), which (I know) tosses out one entire field on motion areas...but it gets the job done.


This material is horrible, and has cuts where they should be for any reasonably-well mastered DVD. The source isn't even that great, as if the whole DVD thing was an afterthought...increase the contrast a bit and look at any part of the frame. There's noise, and lots of it.

Krajensky

[dvd2svcd]

Weird, dvd2svcd doesn't use Decimate when Telecide for PAL is selected. If it is 20 fps something else has gone wrong. Luckily I have received the vob and ifo of the TNG in question and I will see if I somehow can make dvd2svcd automatically determine what to do, or in worst case figure out how to fix it manually.

[craigweb2k]

heres hoping :)

[droneboy]

I tried decomb using just Telecide as suggested above - works over most of the episode with the exception of a few scenes here in there suffering from the choppiness - result was the exact same as the clip craig posted -- continueing to experiment...!

[craigweb2k]

the creator of DVD2SVCD himself said the material was shit.... I think the best thing *anyone* could do is to encode the material twice, once with telecide/decomb and once with another method (or the field orders changed throughout and then use an mpeg cutter to mix the best bits from the two, long winded I know but it's probably the best way i think, me being a n00bie :P

[droneboy]

I thought about doing that as well craig - but what a mammoth task over the 25 eps, and that's only one season...! Almost not worth the trouble.

Paramount suck dead donkey's balls -- in fact the general media hype about how great dvd is as a format actually makes me queasy -- potentially it is great yes, but the big company's selling the format fail to add on that the quality will only be as good as the amount of time and effort put into the finished product.

not that it has anything to do with anything... sorry if this is considered "spam"

db

[hakko504]

I know Decomb's telecide is the thing to use most of the time, but has anyone tried Greedy on this material? I have found it to work quite well on some stuff that Decomb can't handle (and vice versa!).