is it possible to de-interlace MBAFF video?

[deadrats]

ok folks, i have some adult blu-rays and while testing out the latest tmpg variant i noticed that some of them are neither progressive nor interlaced, rather they are a hybrid i had never heard of before, MBAFF:

http://www.afterdawn.com/glossary/term.cfm/macroblock-adaptive_frame-field_coding

MBAFF, or Macroblock-Adaptive Frame/Field Coding, is a video encoding feature of MPEG-4 AVC that allows a single frame to be encoded partly progressive and partly interlaced.

now anyone that has ever read any of my posts knows i'm inclined to just keep the files as they are but just as an educational exercise i tried to transcode them realized that there doesn't seem to be an de-interlace filter designed to deal with these types of frames.

if i chose not to deinterlace but set the encoder to "progressive" the transcode process took forever and the resulting files looked like crap and played back all jerky. if i chose not to deinterlace and set the encoder to "interlace" the encode went fine and the resulting output played fine (and looked good). if i chose a deinterlacing method and set the encoder to "progressive" the resulting file likewise played fine, i'm just wondering what the correct way, if there is a correct way, is to deal with these files.

i downloaded demo's for all the major commerical apps, including tmpg, sony's vegas, magix, roxio, cyberlink, corel, pretty much anyone i could think of that had a demo and i also tried to xmedia recode, media coder and avi demux.

so, anyone have any experience with these type of files? what procedure would you use to take a 1920x1080 MBAFF and transcode it to something like 1024x576? would you choose interlaced or progressive? also is there enough data in said frames to go down to something like 720i/p60 or 576i/p60?

[jagabo]

All the smart deinterlacer try to deinterlace only the parts of the frame with comb artifacts. Maybe you had the wrong field order? Did you bob or simply deinterlace? Reducing the frame rate from 60 to 30 will make the video less smooth. Try Yadif in mode 1:

WhateverSource()
Yadif(mode=1, order=x) x=1 for BFF, x=0 for TFF
WhateverResize(width, height)

Of course, there's always QTMGC if you're a glutton for punishment.

[deadrats]

All the smart deinterlacer try to deinterlace only the parts of the frame with comb artifacts.

just wanted to make sure, i found a white paper on yadiff de-interlacing as well as source code and it did look to me like it went line by line and checked for interlacing before applying the algorithm but i wanted to make sure.

Reducing the frame rate from 60 to 30 will make the video less smooth.

actually the source is 29.97, i was wondering if there was enough data present in a 1920x1080 MBAFF to go to 720p60.

as for the field order i don't see any reference to field order in media info or in any of the media players i used to get some info about the files, does the concept of field order even apply to MBAFF?

lastly, what exactly is QTMGC and by your reference to "glutton for punishment" are you implying it's slow or difficult to use?

[jagabo]

actually the source is 29.97

It's 29.97 interlaced -- meaning there are 59.94 different pictures per second.

i was wondering if there was enough data present in a 1920x1080 MBAFF to go to 720p60.

Yes.

as for the field order i don't see any reference to field order in media info or in any of the media players i used to get some info about the files, does the concept of field order even apply to MBAFF?

Use a simple bob to determine field order:

WhateverSource()
AssumeBFF()
Bob()

Step through that frame by frame. If it's herky jerky the field order is TFF. Otherwise BFF.

lastly, what exactly is QTMGC and by your reference to "glutton for punishment" are you implying it's slow or difficult to use?

QTGMC is the "best" deinterlacer (the latest iteration of TempGaussMC). But it's very slow. About 1/50th the speed of Yadif. And it requires several other AviSynth packages.

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=156028

Check out the sample video in this post. It compares several different deinterlacers in AviSynth:

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/310556-Best-Way-to-De-Interlace-A-VHS-W-VirtualDub-...=1#post1916343

[intracube]

so, anyone have any experience with these type of files? what procedure would you use to take a 1920x1080 MBAFF and transcode it to something like 1024x576? would you choose interlaced or progressive? also is there enough data in said frames to go down to something like 720i/p60 or 576i/p60?

Some time ago I noticed the BBC 'HD' channels were using MBAFF (according to mediainfo). I've only seen it used on the BBC's channels, although I'm not a regular HD viewer so don't know how common it is.

I've just used mencoder with yadif to convert a raw .ts file to 1280x720 50p:

mencoder -demuxer lavf -vf yadif=1,scale=1280:720,dsize=16/9,harddup -mc 0 -noskip -ovc x264 -oac mp3lame -x264encopts frameref=2:bframes=1:me=umh:partitions=all:trellis=1:keyint=250:qp=20 -lameopts vbr=0:br=128 -of lavf -lavfopts format=mp4 2011-01-02_bbchd_test.ts -o test.mp4

which seems to work, except for a bad a/v sync offset issue.