Does anyone know of a good deinterlacing Program

I'm creating flash files from 720x486 interlaced footage. Does anyone know of a good quality deinterlacing program?

With no replies I will ask a question, are you trying to deinterlace flash files, or avi/mpg files, or deinterlace while converting to flash? There is a decent deinterlace filter in virtualdub if you convert to avi first.

We have been deinterlacing while encoding to flash in Premiere Pro CS4.

Best for most sources: AviSynth + TempGaussMC_beta1(), but very slow.

In VirtualDub:
Video -> Deinterlace... Yadif
Video -> Smart Deinterlace (by Donald Graft)

I looked at AVS and it looks a little complicated. Would I put AVIs into Virtual Dub? How do I do it? What commands do I need to use to get the best quality?

Right now I am trying Virtual dub using the Smart Deinterlace Donald Graft. I did not change any of the settings. I'm using frame only differencing, blend, compare color channels instead of luma, motion threshold 15, scene change threshold 100.

Our source footage is 720x480 SD, 29.97fps, 0.9 PAR, Matrox AVI files. What settings do you recommend and use? What works the best?

HELP, I need an answer on this by Monday!!!!!

Thank YOU!

The default settings of Donald Graft's Smart Deinterlace are usually pretty good -- except change from Blend to Edge-directed Interpolate.

To use the Yadif deinterlace instead, add the regular Deinterlace filter instead of Smart Deinterlace. Then select Interpolate Using Yadif Algorithm. ELA is worth a try too. Note, old versions of VirtualDub don't have Yadif and ELA. So you'll need a fairly recent build.

If your source is interlaced YV12 (interlaced MPG files, or PAL DV AVI, for example) you'll find that deinterlacing with VirtualDub yields chroma problems. This can be alleviated by using an AviSynth to open the source file and converting to YUY2 or RGB there:

Code:

AviSource("filename.avi")
ConvertToYUY2(interlaced=true)

or

Code:

AviSource("filename.avi")
ConvertToRGB(interlaced=true)

When using AviSynth you first create an AVS script with a text editor like Notepad. After typing in all the commands use Save As to save with a .AVS extension. Then you open that .AVS script in VirtualDub just as if it was a video file. AviSynth automatically takes over, executes the commands in the script, and hands processed video frames to VirtualDub.

Note that the above scripts are for opening AVI files. Other file types will require different commands. You can also use DirectShowSource("filename.ext") to open pretty much anything that WMP can play on your system.

If you put the AVS script in the same folder as the video file you don't have to specify the full path to the video file. If the script is in a different folder you have to specify the full path. Something like AviSource("D:\My Videos\video1.avi").

To use AviSynth you first install AviSynth. There is no user interface, everything runs in the background. The better deinterlacers in AviSynth have to be installed separately. The easiest thing to do is download the separate packages and extract the files into AviSynth's Plugins folder, usually C:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5\Plugins\. This way you don't have to specify the location of each filter in every script. Some filter packages use functions from other filter packages. So you need to download and install those other packages too. For example, TempGaussMC_beta1() requires MVTools, RemoveGrain, MaskTools, and NNEDI/EEDIE/Yadif. It's a pain tracking all these down but the results are worth it. The instructions that come with the filter package will tell you what other packages are required, if any. Your AviSynth script will end up looking something like:

Code:

import("C:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5\plugins\TempGaussMC_beta1.avs")
DirectShowSource("filename.ext")
TempGaussMC_beta1()
SelectEven()

Note that TempGaussMC_beta1() is a Bobber -- it's output is at twice the frame rate of the input. So a 720x576i30 source will come out as 720x576p60. I used SelectEven() to throw away every other frame to reduce the frame rate back to that of the source, 720x576p30.

If you're not familiar with VirtualDub -- note that the default behavior is to save frames as uncompressed RGB. That will create very large files (about 110 GB/hr with 720x576 25 fps videos). If you want to use compression select Video -> Compression..., select a codec, and press the Configure button to set that compression codecs specific parameters.

Originally Posted by jagabo

The easiest thing to do is download the separate packages and extract the files into AviSynth's Plugins folder, usually C:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5\Plugins\.

It's worth pointing out to newcomers that generally the only files you need to extract are the plugin DLLs. Many packages also include source code which is only of interest to developers. There is usually also some user documentation which should be read but does not need to be installed anywhere specifically.

Originally Posted by Gavino

There is usually also some user documentation which should be read but does not need to be installed anywhere specifically.

Good points.

I like to install the docs so I can reference them easily. I usually put them in the same folder as the plugins. But you often have to rename the doc files because many use the same name, like readme.txt. I usually rename the doc file the same base name as the plugin. So a package that includes FilterName.dll and Readme.txt becomes FilterName.dll and FilterName.txt.

Ok my test with the Donald Graft smart deinterlacer made a huge file but it the quality of the deinterlace was good. I guess I will need to use some compression in the video tab to create a smaller file. I'm concerned about the chroma problem you mentioned. I am not at work and cannot check the color of the AVI files. The Video was shot in the early 1980s. It was imported from a DVCAM tape via Firewire into my Axio LE. I know it is a Matrox AVI but I cannot confirm the color right now.

What sort of Chroma problems occur and is using AVS the only way to fix them?

I'm trying the Yadif you recommended right now.

The chroma problem looks like the image in this post (that's very bad case):
https://forum.videohelp.com/topic376421.html#2028685

Ok I have not seen that using any of these tests with my footage:

I tried:

Smart Deinterlace with the edge directed interpolation. Compressed to AVI using the Cinpack codec. The deinterlacing looked good but I didn't like the compression. I then tried using smart deinterlace again but with Uncompressed RGB/YCbCr. I thought this looked much better.

I tried using the Yadif algorithm uncompressed and it looked comparable to the Smart deinterlace only played a lot smoother in Windows Media player.

I'm trying ELA now but so far have not seen any of the chroma problems yet.

The chroma problem will show up only with interlaced YV12 sources. It will be most noticeable with large motions of colored objects or in a frame who's two fields come from different source frames. What container and codecs are are your starting video? GSpot or MediaInfo can tell you if you're not sure. 720x486 is a little unusual these days.

For compression, cinepak is pretty outdated. What compression codec you want to use depends on what you plan to do with the output. If you are going to convert to MPEG for DVD you'll want to use uncompressed. Or HuffYUV or Lagarith to get a bit of compression with no quality loss. If you're looking to make a final output file something like Divx/Xvid or x264vfw will be better. You will have to install those if you don't already have them.

As I understand it, the chroma problems in VirtualDub come from incorrect conversion of interlaced YV12 to RGB (chroma upsampling error). I believe some VDub filters are able to work directly in YV12 which would bypass the problem. However, I don't know if any of the deinterlacers fall into this category. Any thoughts on this, jagabo?

Yes, the problem has to do with the conversion to RGB for filtering. I believe some filters can work in YV12 now (like the internal brightness/contrast filter) but, as far as I have seen, none of the deinterlacers does. I just checked the internal deinterlacer (all modes) and Smart Deinterlace. Both showed the problem.

I used media info on the one of the files I want to deinterlace. Here is the information that was provided:

General
Complete name: ST Day 1 Tape 5.avi
Format: AVI
Format/Info: Audio Video Interleave
Format profile: OpenDML
File size: 5.18 GiB
Duration: 23mn 35s
Overall bit rate: 31.4 Mbps
Writing application: Matrox DSX AVI file . Format: 6. Build: 1.0.0.405

Video
ID: 0
Format: Digital Video
Codec ID: dvsd
Codec ID/Hint: Sony
Duration: 23mn 35s
Bit rate: 28.8 Mbps
Width: 720 pixels
Height: 480 pixels
Display aspect ratio: 1.500
Original display aspect ratio: 4:3
Frame rate mode: Constant
Frame rate: 29.970 fps
Standard: NTSC
Resolution: 24 bits
Colorimetry: 4:1:1
Scan type: Interlaced
Bits/(Pixel*Frame): 2.778
Stream size: 4.74 GiB (92%)

Audio
Format: PCM
Format settings, Endianness: Little
Format settings, Sign: Unsigned
Codec ID: 1
Codec ID/Hint: Microsoft
Duration: 23mn 35s
Bit rate mode: Constant
Bit rate: 1 536 Kbps
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 48.0 KHz
Resolution: 16 bits
Stream size: 259 MiB (5%)
Interleave, duration: 33 ms (1.00 video frame)

We will have to make MPEG-2 for DVD from this footage but we want to deinterlace the video for encoding to flash.
So we do want to make DVDs and Flash files.

You have a DV AVI file. Most DV decoders will give you uncompressed RGB or YUY2 video from NTSC DV. No chroma problems there. You can force VirtualDub to use its internal DV decoder if you want to be sure. Options -> Preferences -> AVI -> Prefer internal video decoders...

For later MPEG and Flash encoding I would use go ahead and use uncompressed RGB if you can afford the disk space. HuffYUV or Lagarith if you want to shrink the files to 1/2 to 1/4 the uncompressed RGB size.

Is there any way that Virtual Dub can work with Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 or do I have too export to some intermediary format to use these deinterlacers? If so, is AVI the best option? Do you know of any deinterlacers at all that work with Adobe Premiere Pro CS4?

Frame serve from VirtualDub to Premiere:
http://www.videotools.net/index.php?rub=guides&htm=virtualdub_frameserver_premiere.htm