Capturing legacy 60i SD footage with correct cadence

[Bryan Worsley]

Originally Posted by Ron Evans

Hi Bryan good comparison. Not being too picky but both yours and Chris frame appears to be a frame after those of mine.

Yes, you're right. Now corrected.

[Bryan Worsley]

Originally Posted by Christopher Young

For the sports files the encodes have to turn around very quickly. Common example, maybe half a dozen 80-minute games back to back during the course of day where at the end of each game the team coaches and officials are hanging around like a bad smell waiting for their MP4 files on USB sticks. As soon as the first half of a game is finished we are encoding that first half of the game during the ten-minute break. As soon as the game is over the encoding of the second half of the game starts and needs to be finished or close to being finished by the time the coaches, officials, etc get up to the camera deck.

Therein lies the problem with QTGMC. It is slow even on a fast machine compared to some of the other deinterlace scripts around. Like in some cases four times as slow with motion intensive footage like sports.

Agreed for my own encodes I will use QTGMC. The quickest neatest way I have found to use QTGMC is in the German software from Selur. They make a free encoder app that comes standard with QTGMC/AVISynth as part of its internal scripts. Much easier to teach people to use that than trying to educate novice encoders through the ffmeg, virtual dub, MeGUI, AviSynth type routes. Nothing wrong with those applications methods but far too involved involved for this type of work where a simpler quicker Yadif encode will suffice.

So basically you need real-time deinterlace. I agree Yadif is probably the best/most convenient software deinterlacer for that case. Actually QTGMC uses Yadif as the core intra-field interpolator for the 'Ultra Fast' preset. Have you tried using QTGMC with multi-threading ?

Originally Posted by Christopher Young

Below is a similar frame from the footy using QTGMC in 'very fast' mode using "Hybrid" which is the software from Selur.
Their website is:

Welcome to the home of Hybrid | Hybrid.

Yes, I'm familiar with Hybrid. I like MeGUI though - it auto-updates all of the required packages and has some accessory tools that I find very useful e.g. AVS Script Creator, Muxers. Plus I have all of my custom encode profiles to hand. So I see no reason to change.

Originally Posted by Christopher Young

The Hybrid encode config with "x264 preset veryfast"

"x264 --preset veryfast --pass 1 --bitrate 20000 --profile high --level 4.2 --direct auto --b-adapt 0 --sync-lookahead 18 --qcomp 0.5 --rc-lookahead 40 --qpmax 81 --aq-mode 0 --sar 1:1 --qpfile GENERATED_QP_FILE --non-deterministic --range tv --stats "C:\Users\cyvideo\AppData\Local\Temp\Hybrid QTGMC Interlace 01.stats" --demuxer raw --input-res 1920x1080 --input-csp i420 --input-range tv --input-depth 8 --fps 50/1 --output-depth 8 --output NUL -

x264 --preset veryfast --pass 2 --bitrate 20000 --profile high --level 4.2 --ref 3 --direct auto --b-adapt 0 --sync-lookahead 18 --qcomp 0.5 --rc-lookahead 40 --qpmax 81 --partitions i4x4,p8x8,b8x8 --no-fast-pskip --subme 5 --aq-mode 0 --vbv-maxrate 62500 --vbv-bufsize 78125 --sar 1:1 --qpfile GENERATED_QP_FILE --non-deterministic --range tv --colormatrix bt709 --stats "C:\Users\cyvideo\AppData\Local\Temp\Hybrid QTGMC Interlace 01.stats" --demuxer raw --input-res 1920x1080 --input-csp i420 --input-range tv --input-depth 8 --fps 50/1 --output-depth 8 --output "C:\Users\cyvideo\AppData\Local\Temp\Hybrid QTGMC Interlace 01.264" -"

That's a two-pass encode profile though, targeting 20,000kbps bitrate. The first 50p x264 file you posted for the 'Footy' clip was encoded in (single pass) 'Constant Quality' mode at CRF=20.

[Bryan Worsley]

Originally Posted by Bryan Worsley

Actually QTGMC uses Yadif as the core intra-field interpolator for the 'Ultra Fast' preset.

Direct comparison of Yadif, QTGMC "Ultra Fast" and QTGMC "Slower"(default) which uses NNEDI3 as the intra-field interpolator. I used one AVS script to process the three in parallel, crop and stack the outputs and grab the composite output frame in VirtualDub. So it's free from the influence of x264 encoding variables:

https://imgur.com/GsiZTYj

Unfortunately I can't test the Video Mastering Works 7 deinterlacer myself. I ran the 30 day trial version a good while back, and they 'remembered'.

Edit: Also, for anyone interested, here's a 'one-stop-shop' for setting up VapourSynth (and thereby QTGMC) and Hybrid on MacOS:

https://forum.selur.net/showthread.php?tid=1279

As stated in the FAQ though "Starting from 2018, Hybrid is no more updated for macOS, but seems it still works well on macOS (Mojave)10.14.6"

Yadif is also available in Handbrake and FFMPEG for which there are MacOS versions.

DaVinci Resolve has a deinterlace function ( licensed Studio version only) but it's 'single field' only and not that great.

Don't know if any of this is helpful to you Charles ?

[Christopher Young]

Originally Posted by Bryan Worsley

That's a two-pass encode profile though, targeting 20,000kbps bitrate. The first 50p x264 file you posted for the 'Footy' clip was encoded in (single pass) 'Constant Quality' mode at CRF=20.

Correct sir. That is what I usually use for quick encodes where speed not ultimate quality is the prime objective. The Hybrid QTGMC upload is yes the dual-pass setting that I would normally use for quality encodes though slower.

Yes I love that MeGUI updates its components on the fly. More than happy to use it. With the footy very often students are used "as encoders." Many are keen to earn some extra money on the weekends. A lot of them do not have a clue about video per se so sometimes I teach them to use Avidemux as that is literally a three-click operation for people that have no idea what 'encoding' is. As you would be aware Avidemux is available for both Mac and PC.

https://mac.filehorse.com/download-avidemux/

No I haven't tried QTGMC with multi-threading but now that you have mentioned it I will give it a run.

The other thing I do like with Hybrid is the fact that I can throw Sony's XDCAM broadcast 50Mbps, 422, 50i 'MXF files at it. I haven't yet found any other deinterlace app capable of taking these broadcast MXF wrapped files. Not that I have tried extensively once I found that Hybrid could handle them.

Stay safe!

Chris Young

[Bryan Worsley]

Originally Posted by Christopher Young

With the footy very often students are used "as encoders." Many are keen to earn some extra money on the weekends.

That's very enterprising of you.

Originally Posted by Christopher Young

The other thing I do like with Hybrid is the fact that I can throw Sony's XDCAM broadcast 50Mbps, 422, 50i 'MXF files at it. I haven't yet found any other deinterlace app capable of taking these broadcast MXF wrapped files. Not that I have tried extensively once I found that Hybrid could handle them.

VirtualDub2 will import these files:

VirtualDub2

Has an internal Yadif deinterlace filter and integrated x264 (8bit and 10-bit) encoder also.

Originally Posted by Christopher Young

Stay safe!

And you.

[Christopher Young]

Thanks Bryan. Will have a look.

Chris Young