How to tell if video is progressive or interlaced

[happycase]

Ok, stupid question, I know. I used search, however, and couldn't find any topics that address this question.

What programs do you all use to find out if your video files, like VOBs or ISOs or whatever, are progressive or interlaced?

[Sirber]

your eyes :)

if you see things like that:
http://www.sledgeham.com/3dfilm/interlaced.jpg
then it is, or else it's progressive.

[jggimi]

You can use any of the VirtualDub variants. This linear editor will let you scan forward and back frame by frame. In addition, you may want to also learn to use AviSynth; sometimes examining individual fields separately may be necessary to determine if the "combing" artifacts given in Sirber's example are in individual fields (bad) or in separate fields (good).

A resource that might be helpful is www.doom9.org/ivtc-tut.htm -- whether or not your sources are PAL or NTSC, or whether or not you'll ever need to inverse telecine, you may find it helpful.

[CWR03]

It also depends on what you're doing with the files - DGIndex pretty much tells you what it is, along with the instructions in Gordian Knot.

[jggimi]

DGIndex tells one what is in the MPEG-2 flags, it does not examine the data. From the tutorial link I provided, lets look at both NTSC and PAL situations where the flags will either mislead or not help at all. (Note: DVD2AVI is an older version of DGIndex.)

NTSC -- Telecined content:...Unfortunately for us, DVD2AVI can not distinguish between bad telecining and genuine interlace. They will both appear in the statistics window as NTSC....PAL -- NTSC to PAL conversions:...I’m afraid that the only thing that you can do is to closely examine the frames of the DVD. Usually you can very easily see if the major parts of the DVD are progressive, field shifted or rapidly switching...