Problem With Interlaced Content

[satellite15]

I have some Blu-ray content which is 1080i MPEG4-AVC that plays perfectly on my blu-ray player and ps3. Very, very smooth frame rate, no artifacts or horizontal lines. When I play it in VLC after AnyDVD HD I get a lesser frame rate (more-film look as opposed to the super-smooth video look) and small but noticeable interlacing lines. I'm trying to backup this content but I can't figure out any way to encode it and retain the super smooth fps and image quality I see when played in my ps3 or blu-ray player. Any advice? Progressive scan content works fine. I feel like I'm doing something wrong. I've tried all different combinations of deinterlacing/decombing/etc in handbrake and it removes the lines but the frame rate is still not right). also I don't know if that is introducing artifacts that are unnecessary.

[jagabo]

Turn on VLC's deinterlacer. Try Yadif2x or Bob.

[satellite15]

Thank you for the response. Yadif2x did work, but very choppy during playback. So when I want to encode this content into a mp4 or mkv using something like Handbrake for example, how can I do this so I don't have to run a deinterlacer in realtime? Deinterlacing or decombing in Handbrake doesn't produce desired results (Frame rate is poor and film-like). What is the preferred way to encode interlaced content for viewing on various computers/devices/tvs/etc.?

[davexnet]

For viewing on TV's, in general, leave it interlaced. The TV should be able to deal with it just fine.

For a computer copy, an interlaced version *may* be better, but even then not strictly necessary.
Many of the players interlace on the fly without issue. You can even try a dshow player (WMP for example)
and toggle on/off FFdshow interlacing to see how well it works in real time.

[satellite15]

Thanks for the info. I'd wish to only rip one copy with a single set of settings and my primary viewing devices will be mobile devices and HTPCs/roku-like devices into a projector. This is somewhat future-proofing so I can't test everything. I will try what you said, but my initial concern is that my sandybridge quad-core computer with modern gfx card couldn't play it back smooth in realtime with deinterlacing (yardif 2x). I'd also rather not adjust settings every time I want to watch the content. Thoughts? Again, I appreciate the feedback!

[poisondeathray]

You sandybridge should be more than enough . Certain versions of vlc are known to be buggy with studdery playback regardless of hardware. Try another player or at least another version of VLC . For other players you can try - e.g. splash, mpchc, smplayer, etc...

You can't "futureproof" really, because certain devices need specific settings or profiles . For example if you double rate deinterlace to 1080p59.94, your PS3 and most likely your blu-ray player won't play it (some newer sony models can, if you encode it to AVCHD 2.0 specs) . There won't be a single set of settings for encoding or processing thing that is completely compatible across the board. You will need different versions for different targets

[jagabo]

Yadif2x did work, but very choppy during playback.

In what way was it choppy? Very fast back and forth motion, almost flickering? That would indicate it was bobbing but was using the wrong field order. Unfortunately, when you force VLC to bob there is no way to specify the field order. It's odd that VLC didn't detect your source as interlaced in the first place though.

If it was a slower jerkiness the problem may be insufficient horsepower to perform a software deinterlace in realtime.

As far as I know, Handbrake doesn't support bob deinterlacing. It doesn't directly support interlaced encoding either. But you can force it to encode interlaced with the correct field order:

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/344902-Detelecine-decomb-issues?p=2151515&viewfull=1#post2151515

If you want a good software deinterlace before encoding you will need to use AviSynth. Yadif() is adequate for many sources. The best is QTGMC().

[satellite15]

...If it was a slower jerkiness the problem may be insufficient horsepower to perform a software deinterlace in realtime...

I would describe it more like this than a flicker. In fact when I try the same with 480i content it usually plays pretty well, indicating that maybe its the system that can't handle it but I'd hate to see what it would take to do it properly as my system is about a $1000 build. More importantly if this can't handle it then I'm thinking there's no hope for a raspberry pi, roku, or lesser htpc. So something I'm doing seems off.

Thanks for all the additional information, I'll parse through all of that. My main goal here again is to backup this 1080i content in a 1:1 fashion, retaining the butter-smooth video look for the content that has it. If that look is just a result of my ps3/bluray player/etc. rendering it that way and the lesser quality I'm seeing on my PC is just how it looks raw then I'm content. Hope that makes sense. This has to be a fairly common scenario, so I must just be missing something.

[poisondeathray]

Again, known issue with certain versions of VLC - use search it's a known issue and many people report it. Try another player

If your goal is 1:1 backup, you shouldn't do anything to it - you shouldn't deinterlace, you shouldn't re-encode, you should keep it as the original .m2ts video

[sanlyn]

IMO looks like bad deinterlace/discarded fields. Seen a lot of these lately.