Progressive AVI encoding to DVD in TMPEnc - interlaced?

[Xoanon]

I have a progressively encoded AVI file which I am converting to MPEG-2 in TMPGEnc. Do you recommend I encoded it as interlaced, even though the source is progressive?

Its a VHS I captured to miniDV, cleaned up, then encoded to MPEG-2 but it was jumpy, like something was wrong with the fields. So Im having to redo it. I left it interlaced last time and encoded it as interlaced, but now I want to deinterlace it to stop any field problems but I do not know what format to encode it in. I am leaving the "source settings" as progressive.

Thank you.

[jagabo]

VHS I captured to miniDV

That would be interlaced. Keep it that way and get your field order settings correct. DV is bottom field first.

[Xoanon]

I know, I left those settings as it in the encoder. I still had jumps that I could only attribute to field errors. I got a jump every few seconds, almost like the video was playing in reverse for half a second then playing fine, then skipping back, the fine again.

But even if I didnt have this error, my original question stands: if I have progressive video, do I set TMPGEnc's encoder to interlaced?

[jagabo]

I know, I left those settings as it in the encoder. I still had jumps that I could only attribute to field errors. I got a jump every few seconds, almost like the video was playing in reverse for half a second then playing fine, then skipping back, the fine again.

That's not a field order problem. Reversed field order would result in 25 two-steps-forward-one-step-back jumps per second. Most people describe this as shaking or strobing.

But even if I didnt have this error, my original question stands: if I have progressive video, do I set TMPGEnc's encoder to interlaced?

No encode as progressive. You can specify interlaced encoding but colors will be a little more blurred on playback.

[Xoanon]

Thanks for your reply, but this site suggests otherwise:

http://dvd-hq.info/dvd_compression.php

What do you think is causing my jery motion, any ideas?

[jagabo]

PAL DVD can be interlaced or progressive MPEG2. I have no idea what's going wrong with your original conversion from DV AVI to MPEG. Did you just open it in TMPGEnc and encode? Did you perform some filtering or editing? Are you talking about TMPGEnc Plus or their DVD authoring software?

[Xoanon]

I know PAL can be both, Im just wanting to know if the source is progressive, can I encode that as interlaced?

I opened the original raw DV file in VirtualDub, unfolded the fields, denoised it, folded the fields back together, exported as a lossless AVI and encoded in TMPGEnc Plus 2.5

[jagabo]

I know PAL can be both, Im just wanting to know if the source is progressive, can I encode that as interlaced?

Yes you can. But colors will be slightly more smeared on the vertical axis. Tell the encoder your source is progressive but you want interlaced encoding.

I opened the original raw DV file in VirtualDub, unfolded the fields, denoised it, folded the fields back together, exported as a lossless AVI and encoded in TMPGEnc Plus 2.5

I don't see anything obvious that would cause the problem you described. Does your intermediate AVI file show the jerkiness that appeared in your MPEG file? Is the MPEG file jerky when played on the computer? On the TV with a DVD player?

[Xoanon]

Is the MPEG file jerky when played on the computer? On the TV with a DVD player?

It looked fine on my PC but then again PC displays are progressive anyway. But when I tested it on a DVD player I noticed it.

[tomlee59]

Short answer is yes, you may encode progressive source material as interlaced. In fact, interlaced output is ultimately mandatory for display on analog TV equipment (for which the DVD standard was designed).

[Xoanon]

Thank you.

Ive stopped encoding progressive PAL DVDs because my Blu-ray player zooms it to fill my 16x9 and cuts the top and bottom off, no matter what setting on my player I use. So Ive had to go back to encoding interlaced stuff.

[jagabo]

HomeTheaterHifi.com has an article about the DVD chroma upsampling error which discusses the color smearing you will get with interlaced encoding.

http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volume_8_2/dvd-benchmark-special-report-chroma-bug-4-2001.html

4:2:0 Interlaced: Fundamentally Broken

When we wrote the first chroma article, an issue we noticed but didn't write about is that even when the content is correctly marked interlaced, using the interlaced upsampling algorithm always looked wrong. We assumed that this was implementation-dependent at the time, but we now realize that no player can produce a good looking chroma channel on interlaced content. It's fundamentally a bad design.

Note that analog PAL and NTSC signals (composite, s-video, analog broadcast) are always broadcast interlaced. A progressive source simply has the two fields separated then transmitted sequentially.

[Xoanon]

I couldnt get the link to work.

But at the end of the day, Im OK encoding progressive stuff as interlaced, just so my BD player can decode it properly?

[manono]

I seriously doubt your Blu-Ray player is zooming in just because you encoded it as Progressive. Makes no sense whatsoever.

The link works fine for me.

[Xoanon]

Thats what its doing. All my interlaced 4x3 DVDs play fine on my two LCD TVs, but my recent progressive DVDs plays fine on one LCD (on a DVD player) but the same disc plays zoomed in and cropped on my second LCD via my Sony BD player.

[jagabo]

Regarding you jumpy video problem... Was the source 720x576 25 fps? The intermediate AVI file the same? And the final MPG file? Did you crop or resize the frame while processing? Is the jumpiness throughout the video or only near the end? Is the bitrate of the MPG file within spec for DVD?

[Xoanon]

Yes to all those questions. Ive been encoding MPEG-2 DVDs for years and never had this problem.