Really confused about interlacing.

[SatoriGFX]

I must be getting old because I can't quite get my head around interlacing. I understand the difference between an interlaced source and a non-interlaced source. But I am never quite sure what I should do as far as settings in TMPGENC. When I am converting a 23.976 source, I have no problems. But I have a DivX which was encoded at 29.97. As far as I know, DivX's are always non-interlaced. So, assuming I want to create an SVCD, what settings should I use? Should I leave the video at 29.97? Do I ever want to set the encode mode to "Interlace" when converting from DivX? What happens if you convert a 29.976 DivX to interlaced SVCD as opposed to non-interlaced (a little searching on the forums suggests that interlaced mpeg2's look better on a TV)?

I guess what confuses me is the fact that 23.976 is associated with "progressive" whereas before I had ever actually noticed I had some 29.97 DivX's I , for some reason, associated that framerate with Interlaced material.

Thanks.

SatoriGFX.

[snowmoon]

It's easy to get confused. First off interlacing is only a problem for video that has more than 240/288 scanlines.

23.976 in terms of DVD players is progressive only. If you have ever tried to use interlaced with 23.976 it ends up looking like hell when played back since the DVD player will have to re-interlace it. You will never find a 23.976 interlaced video ( any worth converting at least )

29.97 is a mess. You can have 29.97 telecine, 29.97 interlaced, 29.97 progressive or any mix of those. The person encoding the materal the first time has to take this into account. Simply playing and .avi through MP should reveal if it's still interlaced ( xvid now supports it so you cannt assume all .avi's are progressive ). If it is use interlaced if not use progressive.

[SatoriGFX]

29.97 is a mess. You can have 29.97 telecine, 29.97 interlaced, 29.97 progressive or any mix of those. The person encoding the materal the first time has to take this into account. Simply playing and .avi through MP should reveal if it's still interlaced ( xvid now supports it so you cannt assume all .avi's are progressive ). If it is use interlaced if not use progressive.

I see. That's good. All of the DivX's I have generally look fine on my PC. I do sometimes see lines on the occasional DivX but it's never like half the image is missing like interlaced would look. But sometimes I can see some lines, really more like some "stepping" in my DivX's. I assume that is a function of how they were ripped/encoded.

Thanks for the help.

SatoriGFX.