Documentary with a mix of telecined and interlaced footage.

[LaserBones]

I have a TV show and some episodes have both telecined and interlaced footage. Do I just deinterlace or should I run TFM without decimation and then deinterlace?

Also could I use something like:
#D = QTGMC(Preset="medium", EdiThreads=3)
#TFM(slow=2, cthresh=4, mi=0, pp=7, clip2=D)

I'm trying to wrap my head around the best way to do this. A lot of people have suggested VFR in similar threads but that seems complicated to encode multiple episodes using the methods I've seen mentioned. Whats the next best/propper way to encode these episodes?

[Quint]

The best and most simple way: Encode interlaced. There is no way to get this really stutter-free, when you don't treat both kinds separately.
Even if you do so, you will have to use VFR (as others said already), or you could try to use motion-based conversion to get the 29.97i scenes to 23.976 (after deinterlacing, f. e. framereateconverter).
But the result will be always worse than what you have already.
Even more nice are scenes with overlayed parts of both kinds...
Again: Keep it interlaced.

[LaserBones]

I'm encoding these for my Plex library. So I'd prefer to at least deinterlace. Should I use TFM as well with QTGMC? if sho should I place it before or after TFM?

[Skiller]

If you must deinterlace, you are (in my opinion) best off by simply emulating what a TV would do: bob-deinterlace to 60p.
It's going to look acceptable if not good, is very straightforward and easy.


So no TFM at all, just either QTGMC(), BWDIF(field=-2), Yadif(mode=1), etc... Pick what you like best.

[jagabo]

Just use QTGMC and encode as 60p. The result will be the same as watching the original video on a 60Hz TV -- except the deinterlacing will be better.

[LaserBones]

The best and most simple way: Encode interlaced. There is no way to get this really stutter-free, when you don't treat both kinds separately.
Even if you do so, you will have to use VFR (as others said already), or you could try to use motion-based conversion to get the 29.97i scenes to 23.976 (after deinterlacing, f. e. framereateconverter).
But the result will be always worse than what you have already.
Even more nice are scenes with overlayed parts of both kinds...
Again: Keep it interlaced.

Thanks for the advice. Just curious, since I see it mentioned often, where do you watch interlaced footage? If I watch interlaced footage on a device or piece of software that transcodes it for me it's usually inferior to what QTGMC will produce. Do you watch interlaced footage on an old CRT display? What's the advantage of keeping it interlaced in the current world?

[Sharc]

The best and most simple way: Encode interlaced. There is no way to get this really stutter-free, when you don't treat both kinds separately.
Even if you do so, you will have to use VFR (as others said already), or you could try to use motion-based conversion to get the 29.97i scenes to 23.976 (after deinterlacing, f. e. framereateconverter).
But the result will be always worse than what you have already.
Even more nice are scenes with overlayed parts of both kinds...
Again: Keep it interlaced.

Thanks for the advice. Just curious, since I see it mentioned often, where do you watch interlaced footage? If I watch interlaced footage on a device or piece of software that transcodes it for me it's usually inferior to what QTGMC will produce. Do you watch interlaced footage on an old CRT display? What's the advantage of keeping it interlaced in the current world?

Yes, today's progressive monitors depend on a good deinterlacer for playing interlaced content.
For some food for thought about deinterlacing take a look here:
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/404164-Why-is-QTGMC-so-destructive-and-why-do-so-m...l-recommend-it

[Quint]

The best and most simple way: Encode interlaced. There is no way to get this really stutter-free, when you don't treat both kinds separately.
Even if you do so, you will have to use VFR (as others said already), or you could try to use motion-based conversion to get the 29.97i scenes to 23.976 (after deinterlacing, f. e. framereateconverter).
But the result will be always worse than what you have already.
Even more nice are scenes with overlayed parts of both kinds...
Again: Keep it interlaced.

Thanks for the advice. Just curious, since I see it mentioned often, where do you watch interlaced footage? If I watch interlaced footage on a device or piece of software that transcodes it for me it's usually inferior to what QTGMC will produce. Do you watch interlaced footage on an old CRT display? What's the advantage of keeping it interlaced in the current world?

I should have better said: Keep it AS IT IS. I referred to stutter-freeness, which is not achievable (without motion-based conversion, as I wrote above, and this will be quite destructive).

If you had a normal only-interlaced source I would have suggested de-interlacing with the best possible filter, because better than let the tv-set deinterlace, but recently I learned that tv sets nowadays are pretty smart in deinterlacing... So I wouldn't have recommended anything.