DV interlacing on home movie

[IceManTX]

I've come close to posting in here for the last month but I kept reading and trying to figure out this whole thing on my own. I've come to the conclusion that I'm gonna have to hang my head and ask for some help.

I've been making home movies of my kid to send to my parents for a few years now using my Sony Digital 8 camcorder. I always used simple programs like Ulead Video Studio and what not and exported to VCD to keep the file sizes down and make it an easy format for them to be able to view without all the codec mess, etc.. I just accepted that quality was gonna be mushy and I lived with it. But now my parents are more saavy computer users with DVD burners and I wanted to start encoding these movies to either SVCD or DVD so that I could get the quality to look much closer to the pristine DV quality that I am starting with. I have also switched over to using the latest Adobe Premiere.

The problem I am coming up with is of course the interlacing which was never an issue for me before. I don't know if Video Studio automatically took care of this for me or what. Anyway, I have tried everything to deinterlace but the quality goes right down the crapper. I've set the bitrate as high as it would go and I've experimented with several methods of encoding as well as several ways to deinterlace but nothing yields anything near DV quality. Everything looks just as crappy as it looked when I was encoding to VCD MPEG-1.

The methods I have tried are exporting from Premiere in a DV format. Then using TMPGEnc or ProCoder to encode to SVCD or DVD with them doing the deinterlacing. I've even tried exporting from Premiere in a DV format with the 'Deinterlacing' checkbox checked to let Premiere do the deinterlacing. I've studied every setting and read and read and read and as I said, nothing seems to work.

Now...*whew*...to my questions:

1) Is there any way possible for me to encode DV footage to one of these formats and retain the quality (or even come close)?

2) If I don't deinterlace will the interlacing "mice teeth" only be viewable when watching these movies on a PC? In other words, if I was to burn to a DVD and watch it on the TV would it be clear then?

I am doing NTSC encoding. I can't think of anything else that I could include to give you more info on my situation. If you need more info please ask and I'll include it.

THANKS!!!

-ice

[jggimi]

Welcome to the forum.

...the interlacing which was never an issue for me before....

That's because VCD is 1/2 the height resolution of DV -- so interlacing artifacts are not a factor.

1) Is there any way possible for me to encode DV footage to one of these formats and retain the quality (or even come close)?

Don't deinterlace. Encode as interlaced MPEG-2. See bb's DV to DVD Guide (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=60392).

2) If I don't deinterlace will the interlacing "mice teeth" only be viewable when watching these movies on a PC? In other words, if I was to burn to a DVD and watch it on the TV would it be clear then?

Interlacing artifacts should not appear when playing back on a PC with a software DVD player, since these will deinterlace during playback. Obviously, they should not appear when using a standalone player with an interlaced TV.

For PC playback, I don't recommend SVCDs. Not every software DVD player can play them back. Most (but not all) standalones can.

[The Geek]

1) Yes. And it's pretty easy. All you have to do is to stop trying to deinterlace. All you do is ruining your footage.

2) On the TV it will be perfect. Everything that you see on TV is interlaced. Have you ever seen the lines ? Nope, you haven't coz the TV displays it correctly, with a time displacement, not both at the same time. Hence, no lines.
On the PC there are also possibilities to deinterlace during playback, then you won't see the lines either, and your footage remains high quality.

Just pay attention to the field order. The correct field order for DV is bottom field first.
If you encode with the wrong field order, the mpeg file will be very jumpy.

The Geek

[IceManTX]

Thanks for the information! I never thought to ignore the deinterlacing since the source AVI had the mice teeth I figured that would transfer to the MPEG as well.

Unfortunately, after trying this last night I have good and bad news. The good news is that the interlacing is not a problem in my encoded MPEG but the bad news is the video is very jumpy where there is motion. Almost resembling a strobe like effect. I have selected bottom field first just as you said.

Any more tips? Much appreciated!

ice

[The Geek]

Thanks for the information! I never thought to ignore the deinterlacing since the source AVI had the mice teeth I figured that would transfer to the MPEG as well.

Yes, it sure does.

I have selected bottom field first just as you said.

Any more tips? Much appreciated!

Select Top field first. Though I have never encountered DV with top field first, it looks like your field order is wrong. So, try it with top field first. It's gotta be the one or the other.

The Geek

[IceManTX]

If I select top field first then it really messes things up bad so that has to be incorrect. Bottom field first must be right but I cannot seem to get rid of the strobe effect during motion scenes. I have followed the guides and checked all the settings multiple times.

Ever have a similar problem like this?

[The Geek]

Mmh, can you maybe describe the strobing effects ? It sounded like a wrong field order to me, but since you tried both, it's gotta be something else. Does the original AVI have that strobing effect, too, or does only the MPEG file have it ?

The Geek

[HardyG6]

I'd say, a strobing effect ist flickering, changing between a picture frame and a black frame.

[IceManTX]

OK. I finally got a few minutes last night to sit back down and mess with this again.

The source doesn't contain the strobing but does contain the interlacing (mice teeth). Only the resulting mpg has this problem.

An example of the "strobing" is let's say you have an arm doing a karate chop motion up and down. You will see a slight flickering or blurring of the previous position of the arm all the way down and up. Instead of it being a clean sweeping motion.

thanks!

[mustardman]

I have seen this problem with one MPEG-2 encoder - problem is, I don't remember which one. Although the bitrate was high, the results looked absolutely shocking.

Try encoding with another MPEG-2 encoder.

MM

[auroauro]

Hi;

I have had the same problem and it was the field order in my case, no matter how I exported from Adobe, the result was the same. Try exporting it from Adobe BFF and ther use the following Avisynth script to frameserve to the encoder (CCE or wathever you are using):

AviSource("C:\MyFiles\Your avi.avi")
DoubleWeave.SelectOdd()

Encode and author, that should solve the problem.

Regards;

Rafael

PD: I found this thread very interesting:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=86394
It is not about changing the field order but I learned a lot about DV and filtering and finally understood what the recommended scripts do.