Interlace lines problem (and choppy video) *Long!*

[retroshaun]

Hi guys,
OK I have captured a load of footage from DV camcorder. So far so good. All looks very nice when viewed on the PC. Then I used After Effects to remove the few lines of junk at the top and bottom of the video (it came from VHS originally - I simply added small black bars, didnt resize or chop the video at all) and saved back out using Microsoft DV codec. OK - this too looks fine (and is a lot smaller than the original captured footage).

I then used TMPGEnc to get this into DVD format and this is where the problems started. I see really obvious combing of the interlace lines all over the place in the preview window - especially with high speed camera movement (relatively still images look OK). I figured this was gonna be OK when viewed on TV so I put up with it.

Finally I burned an extended DVD-R (about 2.5 hours onto the disc) through NeroVision and looked at it on my stand alone player / widescreen TV. YUK! Not only is the video a little choppy but the interlace problem looks really horrible.

So where did I go wrong? I have captured footage direct from the camcorder (non VHS - actual camcorder footage) and used the same process pretty much (I dont think AfterFX and / or TMPGEnc were used) and the burned DVDs look fine.

Is it a problem with the codec? Or with TMPGEnc? Or something else? The only reason I didnt use the original footage, and went through TMPGEnc, was that for some reason NeroVision decided to crash during conversion of the video files prior to actual writing but the output from TMPGEnc seemed to go onto the disc OK.

If anyone can offer any help I would very much appreciate it. Its driving me mad!

Thanks,
Shaun

[ryanreko]

I think the problem is in tmpeg when you run through it make sure to pick the field order, i'm not sure which one its suppost to be but do little segments of each, one should look good and the other one, like you said should look really choppy... good luck

ryan

[bottle-necked]

(and is a lot smaller than the original captured footage).

Are you sure the program didn't resized your video making the filesize smaller?

Good luck.

[retroshaun]

The video is the same size - I think its just the compression to MPEG thats made it a lot smaller (as I would expect).

I also tried the field order but it was still horrible (basically, just the same).

HOWEVER! I now tried encoding (transcoding that is) through Adobe Encore and it worked perfectly! Actually very good quality considering its 2.5 hrs on 4.7 Gig.

I guess TMPGEnc doesnt do too clever a job sometimes... or perhaps its just too complicated for people who just want to "convert and go".

[bugster]

Then I used After Effects to remove the few lines of junk at the top and bottom of the video (it came from VHS originally - I simply added small black bars, didnt resize or chop the video at all) and saved back out using Microsoft DV codec. OK - this too looks fine (and is a lot smaller than the original captured footage).

There is something not right there. If your source is DV, and you output DV, the file size should be the same. DV is constant bitrate, so for a particular playing time you will always get the same filesize (~13Gb/hour).

I then used TMPGEnc to get this into DVD format and this is where the problems started. I see really obvious combing of the interlace lines all over the place in the preview window - especially with high speed camera movement (relatively still images look OK). I figured this was gonna be OK when viewed on TV so I put up with it.

I think you may well have output to a different MS codec than DV, by mistake, and so quite possibly de-interlaced (badly) when doing so, or set the field order incorrectly at this stage. You don't say what this intermediate avi file looked like when playing?

BTW, you don't really need to remove the 'noise' from the top and bottom as these lines should not be seen on a TV (overscan). Though getting rid of them can be advisable in situations where bitrate is at a premium.

[retroshaun]

The file, once converted to PAL DVD with TMPGEnc looked terrible. At this point I used whatever codec TMPGEnc uses through its default DVD Pal settings, which is why a) it was smaller and b) it started getting this horrible interlace issue. When I edited in AfterFX and output to DV again the file looked fine, and burned really nicely through Encore.