Encode in Interlaced or Deinterlaced w/Pulldown?

[CubDukat]

I've been encoding TV shows for DVD and now Blu-Ray for ages, but lately I have been wondering if I have been using the right technique all this time.

What I have been doing with 1080i shows is running it through DGIndex, then taking the .d2v file through MeGUI's AVS Script Creator to generate a script for IVTC, then plugging that into MeGUI and/or TMPGEnc to get a 23.976 progressive stream.

Needless to say, this takes a great deal of time, especially with MeGUI. A normal 45 minute episode of a show takes almost 12 hours in MeGUI. And it also renders the computer more or less incapable of doing anything else because the CPU's maxed out all the time, even with a triple-core processor.

My question is this: Since most Blu-Ray players and TV's have facilities to do pulldown internally, wouldn't I still get the same quality if I just encoded at 1080i and let the hardware handle the deinterlace and pulldown duties at playback?

This, of course would apply only to 1080i material; I assume that getting 720p film-based material would not be handled in hardware, since that's not a standard delivery method on Blu-Ray, so I would still have to do that in MeGUI.

[poisondeathray]

Needless to say, this takes a great deal of time, especially with MeGUI. A normal 45 minute episode of a show takes almost 12 hours in MeGUI. And it also renders the computer more or less incapable of doing anything else because the CPU's maxed out all the time, even with a triple-core processor.

Use faster settings and/or 1pass CRF mode with VBV - you should be able to cut the time significantly, probably by about 1/2 . But if you need a specific file size, you still need 2 passes.

If this is 100% film content, using "force film" in DGIndex instead of IVTCing in avisynth will be slightly faster too

There may be other speed tweaks, but you have to post the details of your current method including settings used, avs script, any filters etc..

My question is this: Since most Blu-Ray players and TV's have facilities to do pulldown internally, wouldn't I still get the same quality if I just encoded at 1080i and let the hardware handle the deinterlace and pulldown duties at playback?

No, because progressive encoding is more efficient than encoding interlaced (hard telecine)

You actually have a 3rd option of encoding progressive and adding pulldown, but this is stupid, because native progressive 1920x1080p23.976 is the best option and most compatible for blu-ray

If you're worried about speed and quality, use the original and don't bother encoding at all. Way faster, no generation loss.

This, of course would apply only to 1080i material; I assume that getting 720p film-based material would not be handled in hardware, since that's not a standard delivery method on Blu-Ray, so I would still have to do that in MeGUI.

Nope, 1280x720p23.976 is perfectly valid blu-ray format

[jagabo]

it also renders the computer more or less incapable of doing anything else because the CPU's maxed out all the time, even with a triple-core processor.

Turn the process priority down to Low or Idle. You'll hardly notice it running in the background.

[deadrats]

@CubDukat

i'm a bit confused, i'm assuming that you are capturing tv shows in 1080i, presumably at some relatively decent bit rate (perhaps in the 15 mb/s range), in either mpeg-2 or h264 with ac3 or lcpm audio, am i right? if so then why are you processing the videos at all? they are already in a blu-ray compatible format, just edit out the commercials and burn to disk.

[CubDukat]

I've tried that, but even if I take the commercials out without any additional processing, the authoring program decides to re-render the entire file.

I have since modified my rendering habits. I use the pulldown and deinterlace functions in TMPGEnc Video Mastering Works for 1080i material, and I run 720p film-based material through MeGUI's AVS script creator. 720p live material (Indycar races) I just leave as-is.