DVD Source - Merely 'Combed' or improperly encoded...

[Lathe]

I have a full DVD, but it has several Russian audio tracks which I have removed. I've used MakeMKV to create an MKV file. But, I'm thinking that maybe whomever created the DVD may not have encoded it properly since I've seen something that looks like this before.

OR, I guess it simply needs to be decombed, IDK...

I'll post a 30 second snippet here because I know you WAY more experienced people will be able to recognize what needs to be done, I'm assuming with AVS, to improve it.

Thanks!

I THINK I remember that if you try to attach a file, it takes a while to be approved, right? So, I'm going to post a link to my site so you can download the small snippet.

http://lathe-of-heaven.com/Demons 3 The Ogre_1988-001.mkv

***EDIT

Okay, I just tried the simple FieldDeinterlace() and previewed it, and it SEEMED to remove the combing effects. Is that all I have to do? If so, any other suggestions for this movie? Thanks!

***EDIT 2

Heh, Okay I just threw some code at it (this crap was leftover from whatever the hell I was doing last time )

FieldDeinterlace()
LimitedSharpenFaster(ss_x=1.5,ss_y=1.5,Smode=3,str ength=150,Lmode=1,wide=false,overshoot=1,undershoo t=1,soft=140,edgemode=0)
tweak(cont=1.3, sat=1.25, bright=-8)
ConvertToYV12()

Here is the result:

http://lathe-of-heaven.com/Encode.mkv

Any thoughts, input, and suggestions would be great!

[hello_hello]

It's telecine or pulldown, rather than being interlaced as such.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecine#2:3_pulldown

You'd normally use TFM and TDecimate from the TIVTC plugin for pulldown removal (to field match, remove duplicates and change the frame rate to 23.976 fps).

I usually let QTGMC have a go at cleaning up DVD video. It's running in progressive mode in the script below so it's not de-interlacing.
Cropping and resizing is of course optional. As is Gradfun3 (it's from the DitherTools plugin and can help with color banding). I wouldn't mess with the contrast, saturation and brightness as they seem okay to me, but that's personal taste, I guess.

I remuxed your MKV as a TS file so I could open it with DGIndex/DGDecode.

DGDecode_mpeg2source("Demons 3 The Ogre_1988-001.d2v")
TFM()
TDecimate()
QTGMC(InputType=1, Preset="Medium", EzDenoise=1)
CropResize(0,468, 12,12,-10,-12, InDAR=20.0/11.0)
GradFun3()

[Lathe]

It's telecine or pulldown, rather than being interlaced as such.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecine#2:3_pulldown

You'd normally use TFM and TDecimate from the TIVTC plugin for pulldown removal (to field match, remove duplicates and change the frame rate to 23.976 fps).

I usually let QTGMC have a go at cleaning up DVD video. It's running in progressive mode in the script below so it's not de-interlacing.
Cropping and resizing is of course optional. As is Gradfun3 (it's from the DitherTools plugin and can help with color banding). I wouldn't mess with the contrast, saturation and brightness as they seem okay to me, but that's personal taste, I guess.

I remuxed your MKV as a TS file so I could open it with DGIndex/DGDecode.

DGDecode_mpeg2source("Demons 3 The Ogre_1988-001.d2v")
TFM()
TDecimate()
QTGMC(InputType=1, Preset="Medium", EzDenoise=1)
CropResize(0,468, 12,12,-10,-12, InDAR=20.0/11.0)
GradFun3()

Hey, thanks kindly for the very helpful information, the link, AND the code!

Man, I sure don't know the difference, it's hard to understand exactly what is happening with that Telecine/Pulldown stuff. I wonder why when I used the FieldDeinterlace() it looked so much better? I really wish I understood this stuff better, I really do try to read everything, but it is still sometimes confusing.

So, at a GUESS... Are you saying that I need to use Inverse Telecine as opposed to deinterlace? I wonder what the difference is between what they both do since it SEEMED to look a lot better when I used the process above. Let me take another guess... So, if it IS Inverse Telecine that needs to be used, am I to understand that the frame rate is then changed from the 29.xx to 23.xx and then becomes 'Progressive'? I know that BDRB has a setting for that or automatically detects that, but I don't really understand it.

I figure if I ask (and read) I'll get this eventually. I don't know how to use the DGDecode or the QTGMC, I've never worked with it before, but I see that many others use it. I guess I'd better do some more reading... Thank you very much!

***EDIT

Okay, because I don't know how to use the DGDecode or the QTGMC, I just went ahead and left everything else the same and substituted the

TFM()
TDecimate()

instead of the FieldDeinterlace(), and that DID look very good, so at least I THINK I'm on the right track there! But, I need to figure out all the other stuff too.

So, just to ask... If you take a DVDrip, will it ALWAYS have that 'combing' look, or need to be Inverse Telecined? Is that a general rule/expectation? So, if you have a DVD source, does one usually have to go through these steps, even if it APPEARS to play fine say with VLC player? Because this file, whether playing the actual DVD folder or the MKV file, you could see all the 'combing' type effects. Is that always the case with DVD sources? Or, does that mean that whomever created the DVD or did the DVDrip did not encode it properly? Thanks!

***EDIT 2

Also, I do see that the resulting encode is indeed at a 23.xx frame rate. But, won't my audio from the original MKV file not match up now and be way out of sync, or does it magically stay the same? What do I do if when I mux in the audio from the original source in with the reencoded .264 file if the audio is out of sync with the newly encoded video?

[Sharc]

Telecine is a method to convert progressive film (24p) to NTSC or PAL compliant DVDs. Typically used for NTSC, sometimes used for PAL.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecine

As the video duration remains unaffected there is no need to adjust the audio. It will stay in sync.

[Lathe]

Telecine is a method to convert progressive film (24p) to NTSC or PAL compliant DVDs. Typically used for NTSC, sometimes used for PAL.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecine

As the video duration remains unaffected there is no need to adjust the audio. It will stay in sync.

I will look that up. And yes, I muxed in the original audio (after checking the duration of both files and seeing they matched) and it came out fine.

I will read that article, but what I am getting from this is that Telecine is used when making DVDs apparently. I wonder why when you play back some DVDs you don't notice the 'combing' effects, and then sometimes like in this case you do...? Thanks Mr. Sharc!

***EDIT

Hmmm... What I am getting from the article is that perhaps what I am noticing here is the difference between 'Soft' and 'Hard' Telecining. It said that most NTSC DVDs are soft telecined, but some 'lower quality' DVDs are hard telecined. Maybe that is the difference I am seeing...

[Sharc]

What you see depends on your player / playback scenario
- Soft telecine: The player just has to ignore the pulldown flags to play the original 24fps progressive film frames
- Hard telecine (for NTSC DVDs):
-> If played as progressive frames one gets a repetitive cadence of 3 clean frames and 2 combed frames. Select a scene with motion.
-> if bobbed you will get progressive frames with judder caused by frame repetitions (2-3 pattern)
-> if properly IVTCed you will get the original 24fps progressive film frames.

[hello_hello]

Man, I sure don't know the difference, it's hard to understand exactly what is happening with that Telecine/Pulldown stuff. I wonder why when I used the FieldDeinterlace() it looked so much better? I really wish I understood this stuff better, I really do try to read everything, but it is still sometimes confusing.

For interlaced content each field is a different moment in time. Anything originally shot on video will very likely be interlaced. When you step through frames where there's movement, you'll see the combing effect on each frame (assuming it's not being de-interlaced). There's no way to simply combine the interlaced fields into progressive frames though, so it needs to be de-interlaced to remove the combing and output progressive frames. There's various ways of doing it (using different plugins or functions to de-interlace in Avisynth), which is really a whole topic on it's own.

For telecined content, stepping through frames where there's movement usually results in some frames with combing and some without, usually in a repeating 2:3 pattern, because some fields are still matched up to output the original progressive frames while others are not. When the source is converted from 23.976 fps to 29.97 fps with telecine, some fields are repeated, which is why the combing effect also repeats in a pattern. In theory, reversing the process should give you back the original 23.976 fps source. The field matching process tries to match the fields back up to output the original progressive frames. For standard 2:3 pulldown removal that should result in one progressive frame out of five being a duplicate. TFM does the field matching and TDecimate then removes the duplicate frames TFM created. TFM can also de-interlace, so if there's still any residual combing after it's matched the fields (for various reasons that can sometimes happen) after the field matching it de-interlaces where necessary to fix any combing that remains.

So, if it IS Inverse Telecine that needs to be used, am I to understand that the frame rate is then changed from the 29.xx to 23.xx and then becomes 'Progressive'?

Correct.

So, just to ask... If you take a DVDrip, will it ALWAYS have that 'combing' look, or need to be Inverse Telecined? Is that a general rule/expectation? So, if you have a DVD source, does one usually have to go through these steps, even if it APPEARS to play fine say with VLC player? Because this file, whether playing the actual DVD folder or the MKV file, you could see all the 'combing' type effects. Is that always the case with DVD sources? Or, does that mean that whomever created the DVD or did the DVDrip did not encode it properly? Thanks!

Some DVDs have the repeated fields encoded to apply the telecine, but instead of them being physically repeated they can be flagged as such to tell the player to repeat them on playback. It's because DVDs were a thing when we were all watching CRT televisions that were interlaced displays requiring individual fields at a fixed rate, so for NTSC, a DVD player had to be able to output 29.97 fps (actually 59.94 fields per second). Once progressive displays became a thing, DVD players were also designed to output progressive video. For a 23.976 fps source with fields flagged to be repeated, rather than being repeated and encoded that way, the player can simply ignore the repeat flags and output the original 23.976 fps progressive video. For encoded telecine, either the player or the TV should be able to perform reverse telecine "on the fly" pretty well these days, but if you're re-encoding the DVD, it's better to apply reverse telecine first if necessary.

So for some DVDs VLC may be simply ignoring the repeat flags. It does have options for de-interlacing and pulldown removal but I don't use VLC so I can't advise you there. Your PC's video card is probably capable of de-interlacing and pulldown removal on the fly too, but even so that may not work with VLC as it's not a DirectShow player.
How are you opening the video in Avisynth? If you view the output of the Avisynth script without any filtering you should see exactly what the output is and you can work out what type of source it is that way.

Also, I do see that the resulting encode is indeed at a 23.xx frame rate. But, won't my audio from the original MKV file not match up now and be way out of sync, or does it magically stay the same? What do I do if when I mux in the audio from the original source in with the reencoded .264 file if the audio is out of sync with the newly encoded video?

If it's out of sync something is wrong as it shouldn't happen. The telecined source was originally 23.976 fps. When it was telecined, fields were repeated and the frame rate increased, but the duration remained the same. When the pulldown process is reversed the repeated fields are discarded, but as there's fewer of them, the frame rate is reduced and the duration still remains unchanged.
If you imagine having a 24 fps source and repeating every frame, there'd be twice as many frames, but if you also double the frame rate to 48 fps so they display at twice the speed, the picture will effectively play at the same rate and have the same duration and the audio will still be in sync. It's kind of like that.

NTSC DVDs can be a bit of a nightmare when it comes to re-encoding them as they can contain combinations of film that was telecined with the repeated fields encoded, or telecined by using repeat field flags instead, and they can contain progressive video with a 29.97 fps frame rate, and of course interlaced video at 59.94 fields per second that needs to be de-interlaced, and all of it needing to be converted to a single progressive frame rate. TFM and TDecimate have various modes for handling "hybrid" content like that, but if you bump into a problem source you can always ask for help here.

[Lathe]

Wow! Thanks so much guys for all the excellent help and explanations, that was awesome!

If I can just get a grasp on the concepts of what is happening then that is most helpful. It looks like using the 2 lines of code for the inverse telecine made it come out where it looks fine. I am using VirtualDub to play the .avs file when I make changes to the code. I can see now why different DVDs can need different treatments to encode them 'properly' Also too, I believe my very old OPPO BDP83 has some kind of internal filters that detect these kinds of things sometimes. I think that is what they told me when I wrote them once about that. I'm guessing it is the 'mixed' type DVDs that likely can be the most challenging.

Thanks again very much for all the help!

[Sharc]

.... Also too, I believe my very old OPPO BDP83 has some kind of internal filters that detect these kinds of things sometimes. I think that is what they told me when I wrote them once about that. I'm guessing it is the 'mixed' type DVDs that likely can be the most challenging.

Most "progressive" DVD players are flag readers, means they treat and decode the stream as interlaced video or telecined film according to the flags. As the flags on the DVD may have been incorrectly set by the DVD authoring house, some high end DVD players like OPPOs or DENONs don't just trust the flags but analyze the stream by inspecting the cadence (e.g. 2-3) pattern, so they don't get fooled by wrong flags. The disadvantage is the adaptation time with mixed content like interlaced interviews followed by telecined film snippets and vice versa. So when the content changes it takes a few frames for the player to adapt to the new situation.
An excellent write-up on the subject if found here:
https://hometheaterhifi.com/volume_7_4/dvd-benchmark-part-5-progressive-10-2000.html

[Lathe]

.... Also too, I believe my very old OPPO BDP83 has some kind of internal filters that detect these kinds of things sometimes. I think that is what they told me when I wrote them once about that. I'm guessing it is the 'mixed' type DVDs that likely can be the most challenging.

Most "progressive" DVD players are flag readers, means they treat and decode the stream as interlaced video or telecined film according to the flags. As the flags on the DVD may have been incorrectly set by the DVD authoring house, some high end DVD players like OPPOs or DENONs don't just trust the flags but analyze the stream by inspecting the cadence (e.g. 2-3) pattern, so they don't get fooled by wrong flags. The disadvantage is the adaptation time with mixed content like interlaced interviews followed by telecined film snippets and vice versa. So when the content changes it takes a few frames for the player to adapt to the new situation.
An excellent write-up on the subject if found here:
https://hometheaterhifi.com/volume_7_4/dvd-benchmark-part-5-progressive-10-2000.html

Awesome, I'll check it out! The more I learn about this the better.