Music Videos = Fuzzy Video

[Red Hat]

Yeah I am using it. What should I use to do the 3:2 pulldown removal?

[Red Hat]

Take a look at this.
http://s64.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=26M2KXOWA7PGC3URU31O3QAZ0S

[junkmalle]

Stop using Blend Deinterlace. All it does is blur the two fields together. Try Smart Deinterlace with "edge directed interlpolate" or "cubic interpolate".

Use Xvid in single pass, quantization mode, with Target Quantizer set to 2. At least do it as a test to see what the best you can expect will look like. The bitrate will probably turn out much higher than you want so also try Q=3, 4, and 5.

[Red Hat]

http://s55.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=2YROE6QF4DKC918EI705UQM6K7 - How's that?

[junkmalle]

That one looks a little better. But it's a low action sequence so it compresses better. That show must be shot on video tape. I didn't see any duplicate or skipped frames.

[junkmalle]

Same clip:

http://s10.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=3KOS2CZE5OE761UY3DT0932LUE

SmartDeinterlace (edge directed interpolate)
Blur
TemporalSmoother (5)
Resize (512x384, Lanczos3)
Sharpen (15)
Xvid (single pass Qanutization mode Q=3)

It's about twice the bitrate of your clip though.

[Red Hat]

Did you capture that?

[junkmalle]

Yes, I noticed it was on TV tonight so I captured it with my Hauppauge WinTV PVR-250. I think my source (analog cable) was cleaner than yours (VHS?).

[Red Hat]

The TSL Theme Song Clips were VHS but not the TSR ones and I used those fliter settings you posted above and got great results on LWD Theme Song.

[junkmalle]

Raven is a pure interlaced video source, not telecined film, so Inverse Telecine won't work. Hence the usage of Smart Deinterlace.

I used the Blur filter to remove the light static noise (analog cable capture) from the picture. That, followed by Temporal Smoother (5 is higher than I like to go but it helps get the bitrate down) makes the picture much more compressible.

The final Sharpen is to restore a little of the sharpness lost by the earlier Blur.

[Red Hat]

So only do the 3:2 pulldown removal on cartoons/animations?

[junkmalle]

No, only do 3:2 pulldown on material that was shot on film then telecined. You can recognize this in VirtualDub by stepping through frames. You will see a pattern of three frames with no comb lines, followed by two frames with comb lines, repeated over and over.

[Red Hat]

Would I do a 3:2 pulldown removal on Fox shows like Family Guy. War At Home, Simpsons, or American Dad?

[junkmalle]

Since they were on TV last night I looked at a few minutes each of The Simpsons, War At Home, and American Dad. They are all telecined film so they can be inverse telecined -- in theory. I didn't check out Family Dad but you can use the method I mentioned earlier to check for yourself.

The best way to IVTC is to use the "Reconstruct from fields - manual" setting in VirtualDub. But ever time there's a break in the telecine pattern you have to change the offset value. So you have to break the video up into segments (a new segment at each break) and encode them separately. If there's one break in the middle of a two hour movie that's not too difficult. But when there's a break every few seconds it's not practical.

So you're left using the "Reconstruct from fields - adaptive" option which works pretty well but does result in occasional interleaved frames, duplicate frames, and skipped frames. I would follow up with a Smart Deinterlaced to clean up the interleaved frames. And you'll just have to live with the duplicate and skipped frames (which manifest themselves as jerky motions).