Making 16:9 DVD from 4:3 Letterbox LD

[Dr_Layne]

I have the basics down. Captured video. Cropped 60 lines from the top and bottom. Resized to 720x480 (source is NTSC). I'm using Virtualdub to do the crop and resize. However the output looks like crap. Combing and lines all over.

Heres what I did:
When I resize in Virtualdub there's an option to Interlace or not. The recommended settings says not to interlace on enlarge. There's a drop down box also who's default is Nearest Neighbor. I'm not sure what settings to use so I used the defaults.

I then frameserved to CCE basic. Under Advance video options, I unchecked the "top fiedl first" option. I also left the "deinterlace" option unchecked on the main settings screen.

I need to know what the correct settings should be to make an interlaced 16:9 DVD from interlaced 4:3 laserdisc.

Steve

[anzimike]

I had a similar problem using nearest neighbor. Instead of nearest neighbor you might try reencoding a portion of the video using the lanczos resize filter. It is one of the better resizing filters. If that doesn't help, wait for one of the filter gurus to chime in. Best if luck

[jagabo]

If you are not performing an inverse telecine your NTSC video is probably interlaced so you should enable the interlace option in the resize dialog. You should use Bicubic or Lanczos3 as the resizing filter. And yes, upsizing interlaced video won't look great, but resizing without enabling the interlaced option will look even worse.

If your source is telecined film you should try to inverse telecine back to 23.976 progressive frames. Then you can resize without the interlace option. This will look better.

If you IVTC field order doesn't matter. If you leave your video interlaced you will need to know whether the source is TFF or BFF and encode accordingly.

[manono]

As jagabo says, if it's telecined film (if it's a movie), you'll want to IVTC it. And since the IVTC in VDub is crummy, you'll be better off doing both the IVTC (and the resizing, as well as any other filtering) in AviSynth, thus making it progressive again. You've done just about everything wrong so far.

If it was shot on video (pure 29.97fps interlaced), you have to resize it very carefully. AviSynth is also better for this.

[Dr_Layne]

The source is the widescreen laserdisc of Zabriskie Point. So it is from film. The problem is, I have to make an edit where the laserdisc ends on side A and starts on side B. Will this effect the results when I do the IVTC? I have never used AviSynth before, but I will give it a try. Thanks.

[manono]

Hi-

Zabriskie Point, eh? One of those not yet out for NTSC DVD.

Will this effect the results when I do the IVTC?

Probably not. I assume there are some black frames at the end of part 1 and the beginning of part 2. Even if there aren't, at the worst a frame or 2 will be deinterlaced. The script can be as simple as:

LoadPlugin("C:\Path\To\DGDecode.dll")
LoadPlugin("("C:\Path\To\TIVTC.dll")
MPEG2Source("C:\Path\To\Movie.d2v")
TFM()
TDecimate()
Crop(0,60,0,-60)
Lanczos4Resize(720,480)#use the resizer of your choice
ConvertToYUY2()#for CCE

You can get TIVTC here:

http://avisynth.org/warpenterprises/

The DGMPGDec package (containing DGDecode.dll, DGIndex, and good docs) can be found here:

http://www.neuron2.net/dgmpgdec/dgmpgdec.html

Be sure to read the QuickStart guide and the other 2 included docs. You can read more about AviSynth here:

http://www.avisynth.org.ru/docs/english/

[jagabo]

A good laserdisc capture may have no telecine pattern breaks (except at the disc change). You may be able to use VirtualDub's manual IVTC.