Media Player 'Field/Interlace' Test - Your help required please!

[SeeMoreDigital]

Calling all Doom9 members,

I'm interested to find out how many media players can automatically detect whether or not a video stream is interlaced or de-interlaced.

Given that the majority of PC media players display video streams as progressive you may not see a difference. However the purpose of the test is to find the media players that can!

Those of you who have DVD/Mpeg4 stand-alone players are welcome to get involved too. And if you also have a CRT TV you should clearly be able to detect which file is interlaced and which one is de-interlaced.

The Test Files
In order to test your player I've generated a total of 4No encodes in the XviD Mpeg4 format: -
2No are in PAL (720x576): One interlaced and the other de-interlaced.
And 2No are in NTSC (720x480): One interlaced and the other de-interlaced.

All the encodes display the figure '1' and figure '2' against a white background, and each number exists in its own field. If your media player is able to display the interlaced encodes correctly you should clearly be able to see the numbers flicker. If not the numbers should appear merged (or as near as damn). All the de-interlaced encodes should appear to be merged.

All the 'Test Files' can be found here (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/seemoredigital/XviD_Field_Test.zip).

Your Results
Anyways, I would be most grateful if you could state which player you used (software or hardware) and if a difference could be detected.

Many thanks and I hope you find it interesting... well almost!


Cheers


EDIT: Title change

[avih]

hmm. good question.

as far as software players go, we're pretty close imho.
dscaler is unbeatable in it's real-time detection methods (various pull-downs, interlaced, etc), so the code IS there.

although usually a test for height>288 (or something slightly higher) would give a good enough answer (i'd say at least 95% of these scenarios are interlaced clips, or at least not fully-progressive).

so all that's needed is that ffdshow will switch on it's deinterlace option depending upon the height of the video. and ffdshow's deinterlacing is great, esp when using a dscaler plugin. it already has a resize that's dependant upon the clip height, so it's only an issue of very little code addition imho.

good subject though.


although a >288 test might not be good enough for DV footage. i haven't played much with DV, but i think some can output large frames progressive. so maybe ffdshow should add an option for dscaler's detections as well.

another case where >288 won't be good enough is with good digital settop boxed. they output very good non-swapped frames when playing films, so it's possible to cap full frame, and it's purely progressive.

but regardless, enabling ffdshow with a good deinterlacer (i.e. tom's mocomp 2) have little effect over progressive material (not a zero effect though), so u may just keep it enabled.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Thanks avih,

But my interest is in finding players that can play back interlaced encodes correctly 'automatically'.

At the present moment, I've tried the following software media players: -

WinMedia Player 9
Media Player Classic

And both were unable to display the interlaced content correctly - ie: no obvious flicking between the fields.

Obviously it would not be practical for me to install every software media player on my little PC which is why I would like help from other forum members

Cheers

[SeeMoreDigital]

Well I'm disappointed I did not get any positive help with my request but I'm happy to share with you that I've found a software player that can accurately play interlaced video!

It's not perfect as it does not 'wave a little flag' and say "hey, this video stream is interlaced"! It also only seems to work with Mpeg4 and VP6 (to a degree) streams. But it works none the less!

Anyways, would you believe it's Nero's ShowTime Player. And if you don't beleive me give it a try!

Cheers

[mf]

Any player :p (http://mf.onthanet.com/forum/thread.php?threadid=30&boardid=10).

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by mf
Any player :p (http://mf.onthanet.com/forum/thread.php?threadid=30&boardid=10). Nice one!

Shame it's for ATI video cards only and a bit of an fart to configure. I wonder if gabest would be interested in adding 'interlaced' video detection and faithful playback in MPC?

Cheers