Quick Question: Deinterlacing video from a Sony Handycam Hi8

[DigitalMocking]

Quick noob question;

I've been reading all the various FAQs and great posts here as well as the various filters about deinterlacing video.

Basicly, I've got about 6 dozen tapes done on Sony Handycam Hi8 camera model CCD-TRV65.

What I'm not entirely sure about is the type of interlacing its doing and if there's a preferred method or filter for deinterlacing the video.

I'd appreciate any thoughts or experiences with the Sony or even just Hi8 deinterlacing in general.

Thanks.

[jggimi]

Welcome to the forum!

I don't capture from 8mm tape -- my 8mm camcorder died years ago. But as far as I know, it is exactly the same as any other analog tape signal, and you should feel comfortable following discussions about any analog video tape format.

I'm not sure what you mean by "type of interlacing" -- analog video in PAL format will have 50 fields per second, or in NTSC format will have 59.95 fields per second.

Is it possible that question arose from confusion about Telecined content? Telecining is taking 35mm film at 24 frames per second, and converting it to NTSC video at 59.94 fields per second. Telecining does not apply to content shot with a video camera. If you used the camcorder as a VCR to tape broadcast content ... that's another story.

Assuming you were using your camera ... all of your recordings will be either 50 or 59.94 fields per second, and, when looked at as frames after capture, will appear to have interlaced artifacts.

Depending on your intended output format and intended display device, deinterlacing may not be needed, and might not be desirable. In instances where you have a choice to leave your content interlaced, there are tradeoffs between bitrate consumption and image quality, and you should decide one way or the other based on tests with your content.

When deinterlacing, the "preferred" method will depend upon your editing, encoding and video management software tools. In my case, I usually prefer to deinterlace with neuron2's DeComb filter set in an AviSynth frameserver script. But that's just me. :-)

If you provide a little more information, we may be able to provide better guidance.

[DigitalMocking]

Originally posted by jggimi

Is it possible that question arose from confusion about Telecined content?


That's exactly what happened, thanks, I understand much better now.

Originally posted by jggimi

Depending on your intended output format and intended display device, deinterlacing may not be needed, and might not be desirable.


Basicly, I'd like to capture all the tapes we have, and burn them to DVD for archiving and replication for family members.

I have managed thanks to the wonderful help and faq's here to capture one particular tape, and other than a small audio hiccup in the beginning of it, I've encoded it to a manageable DiVX file to send to family members, everyone has been thrilled.

I'm just a perfectionist, I want to clean up this somewhat crappy tape as best I can.

Originally posted by jggimi

I usually prefer to deinterlace with neuron2's DeComb filter set in an AviSynth frameserver script. But that's just me. :-)


That's exactly what I used to deinterlace to eventually turn the file into a DiVX encoded AVI, seemed much better looking than the default filter built into VDub.

Thanks for the help and welcome, means a lot to me.

[jggimi]

...Basicly, I'd like to capture all the tapes we have, and burn them to DVD for archiving and replication for family members.... I did much the same thing; I converted my family's home movies to SVCD. SVCD, like DVD, is MPEG-2, which can be encoded interlaced if desired. In my case, I decided to encode as interlaced fields, as the output was for television display from set top boxes, and I was creating SVCDs at the maximum bitrate.

My content had originally been on an old, silent home movie format called "Regular 8mm" film. It had been transferred to VHS before I got to it. When transferred to VHS, luckily, the transfer company had used the proper equipment, and each frame of film had been transferred to 3 NTSC fields. Very much like a Telecine, if you will. The 8mm film was sped up from 18fps to 19.98 fps for the transfer.

I tested both de-interlaced and interlaced before making the final decision, and preferred the playback of the interlaced format.

There are two links in the Capture FAQ, Question 28, for processes to get you from tape to DVD.

In addition, the DV forum has a nice guide for going from DV to DVD that might be helpful to you. Here's the link: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=60392

(DV is not an anlog capture, but ends up with an AVI file in similar fashion. DV is "copied" over a data connection, FireWire or USB, and is stored as an AVI file with a "DV codec" on hard disk. So the guide may be applicable to your needs.)