Deinterlacing PAL HD video that's been converted to NTSC.

[xenodj]

I have a few Blu-ray videos which I've ripped, and normally I'd run the mt2s files through handbrake to make them suitable for use on my home media system, but the problem is they're interlaced. Again, normally I'd run them through handbrake's deinterlacer but this seems to mess up the videos. I did a frame by frame inspection of the first set of videos and they all seem to be five interlaced frames and one progressive running at 29.97fps (I've included an example mp4 that I made with handbrake without any filters or anything on, no audio just the video).

Searching around I found a thread where someone had a video with the same fps and interlacing pattern and was told it's probably a PAL video that's been converted to NTSC with a field pulldown. This makes sense as the shows a british tv show, that was shot on super 16mm film. They released this tv show on blu ray in America but not here in the UK for some reason, so I imported them and came across this interlaced mess.

Can anyone give me some pointers here please? The recommendation in the thread I found was to use AVisynth with the script to run "TFM()" and "TDecimate(cycle=6,cycleR=1)" to see what came out and to use bob and srestore as well if it wasn't satisfactory. The problem I'm having is I've never used Avisynth before today and it's all rather confusing to me, added to which the original files being m2ts seemed to complicate matters as I couldn't apparently simply just install Avisynth and go from there, I had to also install ffmpegsource2, which I did seem to manage to do only for it not to work (I ran the script to use ffms2 with windows media player which appeared to be working, then it just ended and the result was a file 500-something kb in size and no errors).

Thanks.

[manono]

The TFM/TDecimate advice was incorrect. As it was never telecined, it can't be properly inverse telecined. It's field blended and to fix that you need an unblender. You bob it followed by Srestore. AviSynth is the only way to do what's necessary to 'fix' it.

...added to which the original files being m2ts...

Then why an MP4 and HEVC and not the untouched M2TS?

I used MeGUI to open it with the LSmashSource.dll. If you install MeGUI it'll iprovide the tools you need to get working AviSynth scripts at which point you can also use whatever bobber you like and SRestore (if you also install them).

LoadPlugin("H:\Encoders\MeGUI\tools\lsmash\LSMASHS ource.dll")
LWLibavVideoSource("H:\Test\mmtest.mp4")
AssumeTFF()
Yadif(Mode=1)#or QTGMC or whatever bobber you like
Srestore()

Note there's no space between the S and the o of LSmashSource

[xenodj]

Thanks for the advice I'll give it a shot and see what I get.

...added to which the original files being m2ts...

Then why an MP4 and HEVC and not the untouched M2TS?

If I understand your question, mostly because of filesizes and compatibility.

[xenodj]

OK so I got some time to fiddle around with this but I'm not having any luck here. I'm running the script with Windows Media Player, it opens, a file is created alongside the m2ts with the extension .lwi, nothing seems to happen for a few seconds, the new file jumps in size to over 14mb then WMP chucks out an error stating "Windows Media Player cannot play the file." If I open the original m2ts with WMP it plays it fine so, not sure what's going on here.

Configuring AVISynth has been a bloody nightmare. In the end I gave up using the original 2.60 version and switched to AVISynth+ which I seemed to have more luck getting to work but then of course I'm getting this issue.

Perhaps someone could help me out here and tell me what I've done wrong;

Installed 32bit AViSynth+ 3.5.0 with vcredist (I tried the 64bit version and also the one without the redistributable and couldn't get it to work at all).
Installed Srestore.avsi, which in turn needed GRunT101 and something called ZS AVS Shared Functions otherwise it kept kicking out errors.
Installed L-SMASH-Works_20200207, I didn't install the redistributables it requires because I apparently already have them.
Installed QTGMC 3.358s
Also installed mvtools-2.7.41, NNEDI3_v0_9_4_53, RgTools-0.98, masktools2-v2.2.20 because they're all needed for QTGMC
...Also installed FFTW3 library 32bit dll's in SysWOW64 as they're required by mvtools2.

And then I've put the following in an avs script and run it with WMP:

LWLibavVideoSource("D:\00009.m2ts")
AssumeTFF()
QTGMC()
Srestore()

As I say all that happens is a "00009.m2ts.lwi" file is created as WMP runs then after a few seconds I get the above error about it not being able to play the file.

[jagabo]

WMP doesn't play AVS scripts. Even if it did, that script will likely be way to slow to play in real time. Use an editor like VirtualDub2 to view the results of your script.

[xenodj]

I mean, I can't be blamed for not knowing that explicitly, not least of all because most if not all forum posts I've come across when googling for solutions have all mentioned WMP being the player people were using and one of the first pages I read when I downloaded AVISynth actually says that "You now have a script that can be opened by most AVI players in your machine: Windows Media Player 6.4 (or higher) will play it". The "or higher" should be removed from that document, clearly.

But anyway my frustration aside, I'm now running it on a different media player that's actually supported and it appears to be working. I say appears to be, the video is playing at a ridiculously low frame rate and I haven't had any errors of any kind so, I'm assuming it's doing its thing.

[davexnet]

I mean, I can't be blamed for not knowing that explicitly, not least of all because most if not all forum posts I've come across when googling for solutions have all mentioned WMP being the player people were using and one of the first pages I read when I downloaded AVISynth actually says that "You now have a script that can be opened by most AVI players in your machine: Windows Media Player 6.4 (or higher) will play it". The "or higher" should be removed from that document, clearly.

But anyway my frustration aside, I'm now running it on a different media player that's actually supported and it appears to be working. I say appears to be, the video is playing at a ridiculously low frame rate and I haven't had any errors of any kind so, I'm assuming it's doing its thing.

Don't worry there are all sorts in this forum, hobbyist, beginners, enthusiasts, one time posters, disposable user names,
people in/from related careers, etc,etc. When you say "it's doing it's thing" the fact that you have your script playing just
shows the script doesn't have a syntax or similar error; to look at it with a critical eye, use Virtualdub2 or similar.
There you can advance frame by frame and check for combing, blends, duplicate fields and other problems

[manono]

When you say "it's doing it's thing" the fact that you have your script playing just
shows the script doesn't have a syntax or similar error; to look at it with a critical eye, use Virtualdub2 or similar.
There you can advance frame by frame and check for combing, blends, duplicate fields and other problems

Ditto. I use Virtual Dub for almost everything AviSynth-related. And never ever use Windows Media Player for anything. I uninstalled it from my computer. I use Media Player Classic-Home Cinema although there are other equally good players.

Also, when encoding with VDub or VDub2, be sure to set Video to Fast Recompress. You'll get a bit of a speed bump that way. Test your scripts in one or the other before sending them to your encoder, although you can often do the encoding within VDub2. I use VDub to encode intermediate lossless AVIs, often 10 or more times during the same project.

And congratulations on your progress. No one ever said it would be easy, but the rewards will be worth all the frustration.

[LMotlow]

I have a few Blu-ray videos which I've ripped, and normally I'd run the mt2s files through handbrake to make them suitable for use on my home media system, but the problem is they're interlaced.

That must be one heckuva poor media system. Wouldn't it make more sense to use something that knows how to play commercial video?

[xenodj]

More sense? No, not unless you fancy buying me a few hundred bucks worth of hard drives to put them all on? It's not really the capabilities of the various devices I use that's the issue, it's the problem of storage of the files that I resolved to convert them to HEVC - the quality might not be as great as the originals but it doesn't bother me as long as they all fit snugly onto one or two NAS drives.

Anyway thanks davexnet and manono and also jagabo for the help and pointers. I'll use Virtual Dub in future. The video is still running a day later but it's nearly done now apparently. I'll report back with the results when it finishes.

[xenodj]

Ah so it finished. And nothing happened. It didn't create any new video files? In fact as far as I can tell all it's done is spend 36 hours playing the video at 1 frame every 5 seconds.

[jagabo]

Ah so it finished. And nothing happened. It didn't create any new video files? In fact as far as I can tell all it's done is spend 36 hours playing the video at 1 frame every 5 seconds.

In VirtualDub you save a video with File -> Save as AVI. In VirtualDub2 its File -> Save Video. But be sure to choose your compression codecs and configure them first, Video -> Compression...

[badyu17]

Of course it didn't create new files LOL.

Now, go back to post #5 and read it again. This time think about it after reading it. You should use editor to preview the video; if you are satisfied with the output it creates, feed your script to encoding application/encoder that support avisynth scripts as input to encode new video and NOT to the video player that only PLAYS the video.

[xenodj]

Ah so it finished. And nothing happened. It didn't create any new video files? In fact as far as I can tell all it's done is spend 36 hours playing the video at 1 frame every 5 seconds.

In VirtualDub you save a video with File -> Save as AVI. In VirtualDub2 its File -> Save Video. But be sure to choose your compression codecs and configure them first, Video -> Compression...

And once again my decision to use something I already had installed on the system backfires. I should have just used Virtualdub from the get go. Thanks.

Of course it didn't create new files LOL.

Now, go back to post #5 and read it again. This time think about it after reading it. You should use editor to preview the video; if you are satisfied with the output it creates, feed your script to encoding application/encoder that support avisynth scripts as input to encode new video and NOT to the video player that only PLAYS the video.

No need to be rude. I've stated in my first post this is the first time I'm using avisynth and related software, I'm a beginner, and you're not helping me by being a condescending prick.

[jagabo]

Ah so it finished. And nothing happened. It didn't create any new video files? In fact as far as I can tell all it's done is spend 36 hours playing the video at 1 frame every 5 seconds.

In VirtualDub you save a video with File -> Save as AVI. In VirtualDub2 its File -> Save Video. But be sure to choose your compression codecs and configure them first, Video -> Compression...

And once again my decision to use something I already had installed on the system backfires. I should have just used Virtualdub from the get go. Thanks.

You don't have to use VirtualDub to encode your videos. You can use another encoder. I like to use the x264 CLI encoder or ffmpeg CLI. But VirtualDub is fairly easy to use and doesn't require you learn a lot of command line syntax.

And you probably want to use VirtualDub2 (a newer fork of the original VirtualDub) because it has lots of codecs (for decoding and encoding) built in. With the original VirtualDub you had to hunt down the codecs you need and install them separately.

[xenodj]

Good to know, thanks. I think that wraps this up nicely so thanks for all that helped.