Is VHS VCR output progressive or interlaced?

[iant]

First, a little background. I just did a capture and convert of a commercial film from a VHS original at full PAL resolution(704x576). Using VirtualDub I split it and reduced it using the 2-1 Reduction(high quality) filter. The end result appears to be progressive and has no apparent interlace artefacts and yet no de-interlace has been applied.

This has left me a little perplexed so I thought I'd ask the experts.

So, 1: Is a VHS VCR video output progressive or interlaced?

2: if it's interlaced, does the 2-1 Reduction filter in VirtuaDub act as a defacto de-interlace filter?

3: If it's interlaced and the filter does not de-interlace, why the heck does this technique appear to have worked?

Thanks in advance for any info.
Ian

[Stansell]

The VCR output is interlaced.

By reducing the image, you effectively de-interlaced it. It likely combined the two fields into one. You may notice some motion appearing as a blur instead of the jagged lines you usually see in interlaced video on a computer.

[Stansell]

Actually, something I just thought about after my last post.

You are talking PAL, so if I am not mistaken, film converted to PAL is just sped up a little and there is a one to one frame conversion. If this is the case, then I guess the video from VCR could be considered progressive since your source is a film.

Still, reducing the image by 1/2 does also sort of filter out the interlacing, but can cause some motion blurring. This is most noticable on film to NTSC because every occasional frame is interlaced. But film to PAL may not suffer this problem.

Anyone else know a little about Film to PAL conversion who can enlighten us? Am I off on this?

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Stansell on 2001-07-15 18:19:08 ]</font>