Should cartoon video be interlaced?

[indijay]

Hello folks,

I am converting my 2 year old's cartoon DVDs to XviD.

In ffmpegX, if I choose XviD mencoder then in Options tab, I get options to choose if its cartoon content and interlaced Content. Usually I only choose, high quality and 2-pass encoding. I wonder if Interlaced content box should be checked along with cartoon content.

Many thanks

(P.S. - I misunderstood and posted wrong subject heading, apologies)

[jagabo]

Basically, Xvid should never be interlaced (players don't deal well with it). If your source is interlaced it should be deinterlaced before xvid encoding.

[indijay]

Actually the box asks if the content that I am feeding is interlaced and honestly I don't know. Its DVD. Is it interlaced in nature? What do you recommend? Should I check this box? I have to encode about 50 DVDs so I can not afford to make a mistake.

[Case]

Actually the box asks if the content that I am feeding is interlaced

Actually, the mencoder "Interlaced content" checkbox enables support for interlaced encoding, thus giving interlaced output from interlaced source files.

... and honestly I don't know. Its DVD. Is it interlaced in nature?

Several ways to check:
1/ Play the source in VLC. Set Menu>Video>Deinterlace to Disable. Find a moment where there is fast horizontal movement. Pause the movie. Look for combing effects. If you see it, the source is interlaced. If you don't see it, it is not interlaced.
(2x enlarged)
2/ Check your source file with MediaInfo Mac. It will tell if the video is interlaced.
3/ Check your source file with VideoSpec. It will tell if the video is interlaced.

[jagabo]

Software that reports whether a video is interlaced is often wrong. Look at the video with a non-deinterlacing player and look for comb artifacts.

[lordsmurf]

Software that reports whether a video is interlaced is often wrong. Look at the video with a non-deinterlacing player and look for comb artifacts.

I find Gspot to be quite accurate.

[jagabo]

GSpot will tell you if a PAL MPG/VOB video is encoded in interlaced mode. It will not tell you if the frames contain interlaced video or not.

[Cornucopia]

MOST cartoons pre-1980s originated as cells captured on film at 24fps, non-interlaced. The BETTER cartoons since then still do this. They probably got transferred to video at some point using 3:2 pulldown telecine, which may or may not have introduced interlacing.

If they've been released on DVD, there's a good chance that ITVC was used in the encoding, which would maintain the original 24fps (23.976 actually), non-interlaced quality. In that case, the best thing is to convert to XVID keeping 24fps, non-interlaced.

If, otoh, they have been interlaced somewhere along the way, you'll have to decide which looks best and works best for you...

Scott

[jagabo]

The OP is in Sweden so he's likely to be working with PAL DVDs. If he's lucky they simply sped the frame rate up to 25 fps and encoded progressive. Of course, with 50 DVDs he's likely to find a mix of progressive, progressive encoded as interlaced, progressive encoded as interlace but with fields out of phase, interlaced with field blending artifacts, full interlaced, and even worse things.

[Cornucopia]

Yeah, didn't catch that. You're right about the mix.

[indijay]

The OP is in Sweden so he's likely to be working with PAL DVDs.

Sorry, Should have mentioned this. Even though I am in Sweden, we buy DVDs at freaking high prices so we usually buy loads when we travel across the ocean. So these are actually US DVDs.

[jagabo]

Even though I am in Sweden, we buy DVDs at freaking high prices so we usually buy loads when we travel across the ocean. So these are actually US DVDs.

Some of the DVDs will be encoded 23.976 fps progressive with 3:2 pulldown flags. Some may be hard telecined (interlaced). And some may have some of the other problems I mentioned. Even with soft telecine (pulldown flags) some converters will perform the pulldown and give you 29.97 fps interlaced frames.