Color bands after deinterlacing

[bakonfreek]

I have some video that I recorded off my PS3 of gameplay. It was (of course) recorded in standard definition because I don't have a powerful computer and (less obviously) an expensive HDMI capture card is outside of my budget (I am a college student, everything above $10 is outside of my budget range right now). Anyway, I deinterlaced the video (pulled the fields from a 30i and made each field its own frame, effectively making 60p, I used yadif in VirtualDub). The problem I am facing right now is when I watch back the video, there are color bands where there used to be interlacing. I tried using two yadif filters (one for each field of these "leftovers") and it made the picture look like shit (soft and not detailed). Naturally, I tried Bob next...the picture looked better but curves were jagged and the crosshairs flickered (they did not flicker with the two yadif filters). I am wondering what else I can do. There are "leftovers" for the top and bottom field (the video is now progressive but there are red and green leftovers during motion areas). I want to keep detail but I want the picture to look as good as it does in the original when there is no motion. This is not isolated to gameplay footage either, this happens on camcorder footage as well. What can I do to eliminate this while keeping the highest quality picture possible?

First photo: example of the "leftovers"
Second photo: crappy image with two more yadif filters - This is shown as a thumbnail or something.
Third photo: jagged curves with two Bob filters
Video: crosshairs flickering (watch crosshairs surrounding the center, 1/16 speed...make your autism jokes here)

[jagabo]

The problem probably stems from VirtualDub handling interlaced YV12 as progressive YV12. You need to convert to YUY2 or RGB before importing into VirtualDub. If it's MPEG 2 you can use the MPEG 2 plugin for VirtualDub but set the Decompression Format to YUY2 (Video -> Color Depth...) -- the MPEG 2 plugin will do the conversion correctly. Otherwise you should learn to use AviSynth and use ConvertToYUY2(interlaced=true). Actually you should use QTGMC() in AviSynth to do the smart bob. It's much better than Yadif.

Also, upload a short un-reencoded sample of your source so I can verify the problems.

[bakonfreek]

Here is the short un-reencoded sample (cut with VirtualDub using the direct copy option for video and audio).

[bakonfreek]

As far as messing about with the MPEG-2 filter I have, I was wondering how I go about that? I had to convert the original to AVI first (because I had to add a separate audio track onto the video using MKVmerge and when I tried to import the MKV file and deinterlace, it looked like something got messed up with the fields and no matter if I used top field first or bottom field first, it looked like the frames were in the wrong order (jittering motion)). Artifacts were still there that time as well.

[jagabo]

That's some pretty sorry looking video. Interlaced frames were encoded with Xvid as progressive frames. That means there will always be some color ghosting and the horizontal color stripes in VirtualDub. At least enable Xvid's interlaced mode in future recordings. It's way over compressed and full of macroblock artifacts. I recommend you use a lossless encoder like Huffyuv instead in future recordings. The files will be much bigger though. If you insist on recording with Xvid use a higher bitrate.

For what it's worth, here's what QTGMC() in AviSynth gave (h.264 in mkv, no audio).

AviSource("original sample.avi") 
AssumeTFF()
QTGMC(preset="very slow")

[bakonfreek]

Oh, that was a re-encode. The recording was done in MPEG-2 because my capture card uses crappy proprietary software (and it will not work with anything else no matter how I re-wire it). That clip was encoded originally with FFMpeg (using a crappy little GUI). I am re-doing everything (using AVIsynth to convert the original to YUY2) and I will see where that goes. It gave me an error saying that the output wasn't going to be set to YV12 though.

[bakonfreek]

I could give you the original to try it on but that thing is a 2GB 39 minute file.

[LMotlow]

You cut several seconds from MPEG with no loss or-encoding using the free DGIndex utility to get an .m2v extracted video smple. A brief tutorial on how to use it is here: https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/359295-Record-without-interlacing?p=2272359&viewful...=1#post2272359

[jagabo]

Or you can use Mpg2cut2 to extract a short segment for upload.

[bakonfreek]

Fun stuff has happened since I last posted here...namely the hard drive with the video in question crashed. I will continue trying things with files off of a camcorder I picked up off eBay for cheap though (Panasonic HDC-TM10, got it for $20). It has the same issues, just at a higher resolution. I am still using the same capture card, however, so this will all come in handy (if I can get it to work that is).