Playback of interlaced DVD on Tv and PC both

[digitalethiopia]

Anyone who give me an answer on this I will sing your praises all year, as I cannot figure this one out:

I have made a video in Edius 4.5 that was shot on a Panasonic P2 camera in 1080 50i. I authored the finished video into a PAL DVD 16:9 and played it back on a DVD player and PAL television set...perfect. When I however play the same DVD on a PC, in windows media, Power DVD 5 or WinDVD (not sure which version) all the scenes that are pans, have abboration and flicker associated with interlacing (I can see the comb lines if I freeze a frame). Now I know that this is most probably caused by the progressive playback of the PC DVD player, and that some new software based players can be set up to de-interlace on the fly, however I will be making 500 copies of the DVD and have no control over what software people will use to play the DVD (in most cases it would end up being Windows Media Player).
Is there a script I can add to the DVD authoring process or DVD folder that will always tell the player to de-interlace? Is there any solution to play the DVD on either a TV set or a PC, after all, Movies I watch on DVD can do both.

[jagabo]

My guess is Power DVD is getting the field order backwards. When watching does the motion seem to jump back and forth very fast? 2 steps forward 1 step back, 2 steps forward, 1 step back...

[digitalethiopia]

kinda...but its only doing it during the pans. any locked off shots or zooms are fine...and as I said, it does it in any player I use. The field order in Edius was upper first or top first. But that doesn't answer the question wether one can author a DVD to play back on an interlaced TV set or progressive PC equally smooth?

[edDV]

Or maybe it was rendered with reverse field order?
The problem is either with the MPeg2 or player settings. If you see the motion jump backwards, try the same thing with the DVD player set to normal PAL to a normal PAL TV. If step field reverses, the problem is the MPeg file.

[digitalethiopia]

but I have no problem playing to a normal PAL TV, only on a PC

[edDV]

...
But that doesn't answer the question wether one can author a DVD to play back on an interlaced TV set or progressive PC equally smooth?

Yes one can as regards pans.

Pans display motion over the full frame so any motion problems (i.g. field order or telecine) will be most obvious but the issues apply to all frames.

DV format camcorders are always bottom field first. If the source was a DV camcorder, the project and encoder settings should have been bottom field first.

[edDV]

but I have no problem playing to a normal PAL TV, only on a PC

Are you stepping through the pan one field at a time?

The DVD player could be correcting this if in progressive mode. It needs to be in analog interlace mode to an interlace TV.

Best you post a sample of the pan. 6 frames are enough


Or just render the MPeg2 sequence again with bottom field first and then see if the problem is resolved. The major issues come when source is a mix of BFF and TFF.

[digitalethiopia]

I will try to get 6 frames uploaded, but as I said it was shot on an HD P2 camera at 1080 50i (50 fields interlaced top field first). How should I export the 6 frames from Edius? Mpeg, HQ Avi, or should I make a SD file?

[edDV]

I will try to get 6 frames uploaded, but as I said it was shot on an HD P2 camera at 1080 50i (50 fields interlaced top field first). How should I export the 6 frames from Edius? Mpeg, HQ Avi, or should I make a SD file?

OK i forgot about the 1080i P2.

So is your Edius Project uncompressed 1080i or did you downscale on import to a 720x576i project? Interlace lines can appear during an improper downscale. Try to figure out which point in the process the problem started. Try playing the process file in the offending player before and after downscale and before and after encoding to MPeg2.

As said above, field order reversal can occur in the Edius project settings, downscaler settings or MPeg2 encoder settings. I've never noticed field order settings in PowerDVD. It reads the file header.

Try asking in the Edius user forums at the Canopus site. I haven't used Edius since 2004.

[digitalethiopia]

I haven't downscaled and the fact that when I make the DVD and it plays perfectly on a PAL TV means that I haven't changed the interlace settings in any way to affect it. The problem is to my understanding, the progressive display on a PC

[jagabo]

I haven't used PowerDVD in quite a while but some media players don't read the field order flags. They just assume one field order or the other. If your video is the opposite of that assumption you get jerky playback.