Flickering video. Interlacing? Help please!

[bobspliff]

I recently capped a TV show (UK, Pal) from Digital TV to my AIW 9000 pro, using Huffy codec's default settings in IUVCR.

However, when I convert it to SVCD in TMPGEnc, using the default template and a few changes (2-pass VBR, quality set to highest), there seems to be a lot of flickering/jerkiness during scenes of movement, when played back on my stand-alone DVD player.

I think the original AVI is interlaced as there are interlacing artefacts, but I don't know how to set IUVCR to record non-interlaced/interlaced - I presume it defaults to interlaced.

Anyway, I've been telling TMPGEnc that the source is interlaced and to encode it interlaced - as far as I know I have been doing no deinterlacing. So why are the scenes with movement flickering/jerky?

Any help greatfully appreciated,

Bob

[fccHandler]

Try switching the field order in TMPGEnc's settings. (It's the box that says "Bottom field first" or "Top field first.")

[bobspliff]

Thanks for this. Should I use upper field first or lower field first?

Could the problem be anything to do with the fact that I'm resizing from PAL DVD (720 x 576) resolution to PAL SVCD (480 x 576)?

[fccHandler]

Originally posted by bobspliff
Thanks for this. Should I use upper field first or lower field first?
Top field first. (But there's a 50/50 chance I'm wrong.) :p

How about encoding two high motion clips, one with "bottom field first" and the other with "top field first," then burn them both to a test SVCD and see which looks better on TV. I guess you could burn to a CD-RW to avoid wasting a disk.

Could the problem be anything to do with the fact that I'm resizing from PAL DVD (720 x 576) resolution to PAL SVCD (480 x 576)?
Since the height is the same, I don't think that's a problem.