Interlacing Question

[proxyx99]

I didn't say to start from removing. Please read my suggestions again. I suggested first uninstall... (!) and then remove what is left, It is not about how much possibilities we discuss but what steps have you actually done and completed in order to solve your issue. Mick, your first post is dated over 7 mths ago. Within that time frame you could have done that 1000 times. In worst case scenario you would need to reinstall 3-4 programs (or codec packs). What is stopping you? Btw. do not install any codec packs after cleanup, until you get your thing cleared.
Can you play friends DV AVI correctly or you cannot?
If you have Hispeed internet get this:
http://www.tecoltd.com/enctest/enctest.htm and click on the test.avi. Download and try playback. If bad you know what to do.

[MickB]

Yes, my friends capture plays fine on my computer. I have already unistalled most of the software programs. I'll do the rest and see how it goes from there.

[proxyx99]

As I indicated your FW cannot be excluded as well so you should make some steps to have it temp. replaced with another one. What is your MOBO/hardware setup? I capture via MB FW (Gigabyte VIA) port. What I know is that some flavors of 1394 do have issues. What entry do you have under IEEE 1394 (Dev. Manager)?
Best, borrow what works (FW) from your friend and FW cable(!), try using his stuff in your PC. Your FW/cable may be the culprit and sice you say playback is OK it is more probale now that it is. I think there is no need to say that your MOBO drivers have to be OK as well. Do not leave anything to assumptions, none applies here.

There is also info that same happens when you capture via ATI card. Can you desribe your setup?

[MickB]

proxyx99,

I have already tried using all my friends hardware and cables to capture. I get the same exact results as my AIW. My MOBO is an ABIT IC7-G.

My 1394 says:
IEE 1394 Bus host controllers
Texas Instrument OHCI Complient IEEE

I'm not sure if this is exactly what you were after.

[junkmalle]

MickB, I suspect there's nothing at all wrong with your captures. Looking at the image you posted it's obviously a ~2x enlargement of an interlaced video. The camera was in motion -- you can tell because the lines on the ground show interlace comb lines. There is a yellow cast on the image which likely indicates low lighting conditions. Given camera motion and low light you would expect the video to be blurry.

Regarding the interlace comb lines -- they should be there. That's the way interlaced video looks on a computer. If you burn this to a DVD properly (keep the proper field order, don't crop or resize) the comb lines will go away when you watch it on TV.

Just for fun I took your image, scaled it back down to 1x with a nearest neighbor filter in VirtualDub. I used a drop field deinterlace filter to remove one field. I then scaled height of the image by 2x to restore the aspect ratio. Since the image you posted was JPG there was some bleeding of one field into the other but here is the result:



Aside from the "shadow" of the second field, is this more like what you expected?

[MickB]

junkmalle,

Thanks for the input. Last year someone suggested this also but I never did understand the field order. I messed with it but never could make a differnce. This part of the video was inside a school gym. Other video outside may not have the lines but the video is still very degraded when shown on TV. Possibly I did not have some settings correct when converting to DVD. Also, as you mentioned, it looks worse when there is movement.

[junkmalle]

When NTSC video was being designed they wanted it to use 60 pictures a second to give nice fluid motion. Also, the phosphers that were used in those days only glowed for about 1/60 of a second. So to keep the picture from flickering they needed to be refreshed 60 times a second.

But there was limited bandwidth for broadcast. They couldn't send 60 full pictures per second. So they decided to send only half the picture every 1/60 of a second. Not the top half then the bottom half. Not the left half and then the right half. But in one pass they would send all the even scanlines, in the next pass all the odd scanlines. Each of these is called a field. At a normal viewing distance your eyes don't really notice this -- except for a little flickering on some scenes.

So when you watch TV you never see a full picture. You see 60 half-pictures every second. When a computer captures this video it weaves the two fields together into a full frame. For static images this works quite well -- the second field simply fills in the parts of the picture that were missing from the first field. But when things are moving (and the camera panning is the same as everything in the picture moving) parts of the two pictures don't line up -- you get interlace comb lines.

Unfortunately, there's no global specification for which of the two fields is recorded first in digital video. Some devices start with a top field (ie scanlines 0, 2, 4... 478) then, 1/60'th of a second later, add the bottom field (scanlines 1, 3, 5... 479). Other devices do the opposite: they start with a bottom field then, 1/60 of a second later, weave in a top field.

So when you play an interlaced video on an interlaced TV the playback device needs to know which of the two fields to display first. A top-field-first video should display the top field, then 1/60 of a second later show the bottom field. If the two fields are displayed in the wrong order you will get motions that jerk back and forth 30 times a second. It would be like taking film and reversing every pair of frames.

You also need to be careful when editing or converting interlaced video. Since some files will be top-field-first, others bottom-field-first. Some operations (resizing, cropping, deinterlacing) can mix up the two fields, making proper playback impossible.

DV AVI files are bottom-field-first (BFF). DVD MPEG2 is top-field-first (TFF). Caputure cards vary, some are TFF others BFF. When you convert from DV to DVD compatible MPEG the software must convert from BFF to TFF.

MPEG2 files include flags which indicate the field order (TFF or BFF). But AVI files were originally designed for progressive video. There is no field order flag within them. Software may not realize the AVI video is interlaced. Or it may guess the field order wrong. In these cases there is usually a way to tell the software the video is interlaced and which field order it is.

[MickB]

Thanks everyone. I'm going to take some time off and reformat. I noticed that I can use ATI MMC 9.0 and get great MPEG captures but lots of dropped frames. I'll start all over and go from there. My computer is starting crash anyway.

[MickB]

junkmalle,

I have reformatted and the only capture software loaded is ATI's MMC 9.0. I have captured a small AVI file and now want to convert to DVD to see the results. Do you have a suggestion as to which free or trial software is best for this? Thanks.

[FulciLives]

junkmalle,

I have reformatted and the only capture software loaded is ATI's MMC 9.0. I have captured a small AVI file and now want to convert to DVD to see the results. Do you have a suggestion as to which free or trial software is best for this? Thanks.

TMPGEnc has a full featured trail period before it locks up ... and then must be purchased on-line to get an un-lock code.

I think the trail period is 2 weeks ... maybe 4 weeks.

Since you have a fresh clean install you will get the trail period even if you used it before.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[MickB]

Thanks. I thought this might be the one but could not remember.

[proxyx99]

Mainconcept Encoder, easy to install and use. Try it.

[MickB]

proxyx99,

Okay, so I now have ATI MMC 9, TMPGEnc, and MainConcept loaded. Without playing with settings, they all capture about the same quality. I won't really know how well until I burn a DVD and watch on a TV. But I do believe it's better than before my reformat, fingers crossed.

So far, the only codec's added to the list since a fresh install of XP pro is one AVI codec.

If my captures are okay, I now have to deal with many dropped frames. All three software’s give dropped frames and I will have to do some research as I don't know what's causing it. I assumed it's dropped, as it's a jerky video motion. I did not have this problem before reformat.

Here is another question. I have two IDE ports. One has a floppy cable connecting two DVD burners drives (piggybacked). The other IDE port cable connects my two hard drives (piggybacked). Will this cause too much of slowdown? Someone mentioned I should buy a card and connect my capture drive to the card so it’s free of the other hard drive. Any suggestions?

[junkmalle]

You can try putting one DVD and one hard drive on each cable. That way the two hard drives won't be competing for bandwidth on the same cable (OS and swap file on one drive, capture to the other).

Be sure you have 80 wire ribbon cables for both. The wires are obviously thinner than the wires of a floppy cable.

[proxyx99]

The suggestion above is correct. Split 2 DVD's between and because of different usage patterns there will be less likelyhood for overladed IDE bus. Put DVDRW as second master and the rest will sort itself out. Now, I've never seen a dropped frame on my PC's mainly due to careful hardware setup plus proper software config. Can't speak for you but use Sandra to test your PC for bottlenecks (CPU, memory subsystem, HD and video benchmarks). Comapare to Sandra (supplied) benchmark values. The cable suggestion above is absolutely valid. Try to start with this: how different is your PC setup comparing to your friend's PC that apparently has no issues. Proper MB drivers: a must. No "unknown" devices in device manager: a must. New video drivers as well. Specify your hardware in detail. Btw, you don't need to burn a DVD to know hoiw it works. Use PowerDVD and play it from HD DVD folder.
I can't speak for ATI (don't have it) card, mine is ATI Radeon "regular video card" I have no capture option. Read forums, Google for dropped frames issue on ATI.
Since you have reformatted software issue is less likely. This must be coming from your hardware/drivers config. Inspect it carefully, every device detected has to be installed and configured (if needed) properly.