Utilities to deinterlace .m2t files?

[Allen Lu]

I'm looking for utilities that can deinterlace the HDV 1080i video once it is captured by capDVHS and remuxTS'ed so it can play through any mpeg player.

My question is at this point it is still interlaced but (seems) to retain it's sharpness. I tried various tools to just deinterlace the file and leave everything else as is without a recompression..is this possible?

TMPGEnc seems to do this the best without much overhead, however it requires that I recompress it.

I believe it can just be deinterlaced and kept as a stream mpeg-2..is that correct?

Any utilities known that can do this?

[Graham Hickling]

I don't believe its possible to convert interlaced mpeg2 into progressive mpeg2 without recompressing - some 'transcoders' can do funky things however so I won't swear that it's impossible.

The recompression usually has a fairly minimal effect on image quality however.

It is of course possible to PLAY interlaced material so that the output is progressive - all the software DVD players have this option - but I don't think that addresses what you want.

[Steve Nunez]

I believe Mpeg Streamclip can do what you're asking- do a web search and see if that's what you need.

[Allen Lu]

Thanks Graham and Steve..

Graham,

>The recompression usually has a fairly minimal effect on image quality however.

But no, its quite major. I see quite a bit of blur afterwards, whether I'm using constant bit rate (CBR) with one pass, two pass, etc or even variable bit rate and peak. They all have a noticeable degration.

I suppose it is because Im compressing again.

Steve,

Is Mpeg StreamClip Mac only? I'm on a WinXP PC.

[Mikko Lopponen]

If you're just viewing use VLC player and deinterlace on the fly.

[Allen Lu]

VLC player - tried various deinterlace method and they dont quite get all the interlacing out.

Tried the new TMPGEnc 4.0 Xpress. It seems to do the best job although recompressed to MPEG-1. Looks sharp.

[Graham Hickling]

>> I see quite a bit of blur afterwards

Is this blur from the deinterlacing process, or actually from the recompression itself? I've struggled to find a good deinterlacer (ending up using mvbob in an avisynth script) but using Procoder I've never noticed additional artifacts being added by the subsequent recompression to an HDV .m2t file.

[Allen Lu]

>> I see quite a bit of blur afterwards

>Is this blur from the deinterlacing process, or actually from the recompression itself?

Hard for me to tell since I cannot separate the two.

However after I RemuxTS the m2t file so I can play it, the still parts are much sharper as a m2t file than as a deinterlaced and recompressed mpeg-1. Regardless of the bit rate I still see some unsharpness (blur) in still parts of the video. I just want to deinterlace the m2t and not recompress it so I can retain it's sharpness for masters. Right now I keep my plain m2t files as masters besides the tape itself.

TMPGEnc 4.0 Xpress seems to be doing what your Procoder is based on your description. But one thing TEMPGEnc doesnt do is to deinterlace back to a HDV m2t file. When you said recompression to an HDV .m2t file, is it still interlaced?

[Graham Hickling]

Allen, what I usually do is a bit different from your workflow....I use the 'MVBob' plugin within an avisynth script to separate the fields into frames - so that I have 59.95 frame per second progressive footage - and then resize those frames to 1280 x 720. I then use Procoder to recompress the footage to a 720p60 .m2t transport stream which I can then play directly on my present Linkplayer2 (and which I hope will be futureproof for moving to HDVD or BlueRay disks in a year or so).

For mastering purposes, I encode directly from the avi script to a 720p60 Cineform codec avi.

[Allen Lu]

Graham, thanks for pointing me or mentioning Procoder. I'm trying out the trial for version 2 with HD extensions and it is doing quite a good job.

The best output I've seen going directly to something I can play is by using the MPEG HD NTSC template with MPEG2 elementary stream.

Seems to have an edge over TEMPGEnc 4.0 even.. I'll play with this one for a while.

[Allen Lu]

Finding TEMPGEnc and Procoder to be neck and neck. I noticed this last night while studying the results of the same m2t clip using the same MPEG1 output at 15000 bit rate.

TEMPGEnc seems to provide a smoother panning while Procoder is a little bit jumpy if I were looking at a text sign while panning.

[Tom Roper]

You probably already know it, but it's possible already to inexpensively archive 1440 x 1080i HDV footage on single or dual layer red laser DVD disks to the HD-DVD format....

....without re-encoding the native mpeg2TS stream.

The HD-DVD format supports native 1440 x 1080i as well as 1920 x 1080i.

I have the I-O Data LinkPlayer2 also. It's the ultimate Swiss Army knife, perfect because you can archive your footage in the native format. HD-DVD gives you a distribution format.

[Graham Hickling]

Hi Tom, Yes I did know that...however with my current display the 720p60 footage for some reason looks better than the 1080i stuff, hence my choice of that as an end-product at present.

I heart my Linkplayer!

[Allen Lu]

I have the Toshiba HD-A1 HD DVD player. Will this also play the HDV native m2t format ?

[Graham Hickling]

You are ahead of most of us on this one, so I'm not sure.

But yes I think it will at least ..... although it MAY require suitable authoring software (for example, most DVD players won't play a raw mpg file but will play a .vob, which is the same mpeg2 data packaged slightly differently.)

With no disrespect to DVInfo, I think a better place to ask that question would be here: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=148