Do DVD's store video as interlaced or progressive?

[lchiu7]

This is probably a simple question but I recently had a problem with my own burnt DVD's that caused me to wonder. I record shows off TV either via a Hauppauge WinTV PCI card (using IUVCR) or a Pinnalce DC10+ card from a cable box. I convert to MPEG2 using the Mainconcept MPEG2 encoder and burn to DVD using DVD MF. The DVD's play fine on my TV but when I play them on my Skyworth 1050P progressive scan DVD player going to a Sanyo projector I can see combing effects. The source video is PAL and the Skyworth can output 575p and the Sanyo can display that. I thought the Skyworth had the Sage/Faroudja chipset which does excellent de-interlacing? Strangely for all my commerical DVD's either PAL or NTSC no such combing artifacts exists

If I de-interlace the image during MPEG2 encoding the artifacts disappear but I thought DVD was an interlaced medium

Any ideas?

Thanks

[MOVIEGEEK]

"but I thought DVD was an interlaced medium "

You are correct.
The problem may lie with Ulead MF,have you selected "Do not convert compliant files"?When I capture or encode I always select progressive(de-interlaced),the only time you do not want to de-interlace is when you are working with DV.
You might try another authoring/burning program such as TMPGEnc DVD Author or DVDLab.Go to lordsmurf's website,he has good guides: www.lordsmurf.com

[lchiu7]

"but I thought DVD was an interlaced medium "

You are correct.
The problem may lie with Ulead MF,have you selected "Do not convert compliant files"?When I capture or encode I always select progressive(de-interlaced),the only time you do not want to de-interlace is when you are working with DV.
You might try another authoring/burning program such as TMPGEnc DVD Author or DVDLab.Go to lordsmurf's website,he has good guides: www.lordsmurf.com

Out of interest I tried DVDLab. Rather complicated looking program and when I inserted one of the mpg files I want to burn, the program died! I can't see an option in Ulead MF for do not convert compliant files but I can take another look

I think as you say I will now make all my files destined for DVD progressive.

Larry

[Milo]

I'm wondering why do you want to play an interlace video with a progressive-scan DVD player ?

You are going to loose fast motion provided by 50 or 60 fps TV video.

And maybe your progressive-scan DVD player doesn't do smart de-interlacing but simply blend 2 fields per frame.
This is OK for movies because they're not interlaced anyway, but may result in combining effects for interlaced video source (like TV shows)

So if you really want to deinterlace your video (that is, going from 60/50fps to 30/25fps and loosing fast motion) you should do it with a smart software filter (like smart deinterlace in VirtualDub) but not by your standalone DVD player.

BTW, DV is not the only interlaced video source, all TV shows are interlaced. Only movies broadcast on TV are progressive (most of them)

[JamesB69]

all normal TV shows air interlaced, but doing an IVTC to deinterlace will do on a lot of shows now with no negative side effects.

This is because many shows now are actually filmed progressive, widescreen (for HDTV or DVD releases), and all you would be doing on these shows is taking out the duplicated material... one example of this is 24....

[lchiu7]

I'm wondering why do you want to play an interlace video with a progressive-scan DVD player ?

You are going to loose fast motion provided by 50 or 60 fps TV video.

And maybe your progressive-scan DVD player doesn't do smart de-interlacing but simply blend 2 fields per frame.
This is OK for movies because they're not interlaced anyway, but may result in combining effects for interlaced video source (like TV shows)

So if you really want to deinterlace your video (that is, going from 60/50fps to 30/25fps and loosing fast motion) you should do it with a smart software filter (like smart deinterlace in VirtualDub) but not by your standalone DVD player.

BTW, DV is not the only interlaced video source, all TV shows are interlaced. Only movies broadcast on TV are progressive (most of them)

I am using a Skyworth 1050P DVD player which is supposed to be very good at de-interlacing video (it has the Faroudja/Sage chipset). So without thinking too much about it, I created my MPEG2 as interlaced (that is didn't bother asking the MPEG2 encoder to de-interlace the video) thinking that the player would be able to de-interlace well. Apparently not. BTW the shows I noticed the combing effects on were a B5 movie (might have been shot on film initially) and Soldier of Fortune INC (which I guess is film origin)