DV Non-Interlace or Interlace?

[han891]

Is Dv from my digital camcorder Non-Interlace or Interlace? I'm using the latest tmpgenc to convert it to dvd. When I import the video into tmpgenc, the video source says it is Interlace. I have a progressive scan dvd player so I want it to look good on it. Thanks for any help in advance.

[Xesdeeni]

That depends on your camcorder. Some digital camcorders have a progressive option. They go by different names, my Canon Optura Pi calls it "Pro-Scan."

Without this option, your digital footage is 50/60 fields of interlaced video per second. With this option, your footage is 25/30 frames of non-interlaced (progressive) video.

If your video is non-interlaced (progressive), then make sure that TMPGEnc encodes it as non-interlaced. It can encode the video as interlaced, but the quality will suffer, because it has to encode 50/60 fields as opposed to 25/30 frames of information.

If your video is interlaced, you have several choices:

1. Encode it as interlaced, and allow your DVD player (or monitor) to work out the deinterlacing. In some cases, this will actually look better than a non-interlaced DVD, because you will get 50/60 frames, which will make fast movement smoother. However, these "frames" are actually being constructed by guesses during playback, so there may also be some unwanted artifacts.

2. Deinterlace the video yourself, before encoding. TMPGEnc has built in deinterlacing:
a. If your footage is mostly hand-held, then it likely is never quite steady. In this case, use "Double" to blend adjacent fields.
b. If your footage is mostly steady (like on a tripod), then you can use the "Even field (adaptation)," "Odd field (adaptation)," or ("Even-Odd field (field, adaptation)" settings, so that you get full vertical resolution when things aren't moving, but minimal "combing" when things move. [You can also accomplish the same thing (and it may be a bit faster) by frameserving from VirtualDub and using Gunnar Thalin's Area-Based Deinterlacer plugin.]

Xesdeeni