There is the Mike Crash "smart deinterlace" plugin (which he ported from the VirtualDub version) which deinterlaces just the comb section. I usually don't find that approach buys me any extra quality though. If you do use it, be sure to use it as a "Media FX" rather than on the track or clip because that will let you resize and downrez renders.

I pretty much always use "blend fields" unless I'm grabbing stills from the timeline. The reason why is that interpolate throws away one field and interpolates the remaining field. Blend fields interpolates both fields then blends them together. Blend fields looks smoother on motion and retains more of the original captured image.

Another thing to be aware of is that 60i looks best after blend fields deinterlace with a shutter speed of 60 set on the camera when you shoot (50 for 50i PAL). A shutter speed of 60 will also make 24p renders look their best. This is because at this shutter speed the motion blur of the fields blends better.

You're going to get different opinions on blend vs. interpolate, this is mine:

Blend will indeed keep more vertical information, that is until the image starts to move. Then you are taking two fields, which were taken at different moments in time, and blending them together. This "smears" the video in relation to time and also produces ghosting of the image because of the temporal difference. I don't use blending unless the image is static.

When you're converting from interlace to progressive, you are throwing away half the temporal resolution by going from 59.94 discrete images per second down to 29.97 images per second. (50 to 25 in PAL) What interpolation does is take one field and fills in the lines which are now missing because the next consecutive interleaved field has been thrown away. Interpolating is certainly a more temporally accurate way to do it and never causes ghosting of the image.

The best way to do it is by using a "smart deinterlacer" which can intelligently switch between blending and interpolating depending on the movement in the video. Mike Crash has such a deinterlacer for Vegas. There are also a number of them for Virtual Dub.

Now, if you're going from 59.94 interlaced HD to 59.94 interlaced SD, Vegas isn't actually deinterlacing anything. It is deconstructing each frame into it's individual fields and resizing them from HD to SD and then reinterlacing the frame. You have lost spatial resolution by going from HD to SD, but you haven't lost any temporal resolution whatsoever.

When you go from HD interlaced to SD interlaced, which method you choose has no effect. You do need to choose a deinterlace method though or it won't go through the steps John described. Usually I find that interlaced HD footage looks best downrezzed into interlaced SD. An exception to this would be when you are going to something that doesn't play back the interlaced footage correctly like some projectors.

Computer media players are notoriously bad at deinterlacing for playback on progressive monitors. At one end of the spectrum, Windows Media Player just mushes everything together (blends fields I think) and is especially bad with DVD movies. At the other end is VLC Player with half a dozen deinterlace methods (which must be selected every time), some of which use advanced heuristics.

But even VLC doesn't do as well with detail or temporally with interlaced material as a progressive file properly rendered with a well-tuned decomb filter. I ran many tests with this before deciding how to re-encode several years of performance DVDs I have produced for playback on my laptop. Progressive AVC was my best answer, and I've developed a way to keep my original chapter markers (but not the DVD menus).

Regarding AVC .mp4 / .m4v files for computer / portable playback, the decomb options available to x264 in AviSynth (and MeGUI and Handbrake) are especially good at maintaining detail while giving natural motion with almost imperceptible combing artifacts. Takes some practice, but the results can be rewarding. It's impressive to see concert footage where both the drummer and the faces in the audience look right!

I've been experimenting with this and am pretty satisfied with Smart Deinterlace in Vegas 9b which then is rendered to 60 frames per second progressive (actually, 59.94, of course) using Cineform set to Progressive in a project with Properties set to 59.94 and Best Render Quality. Seems to provide almost comb-free, smooth judder-free 60 fps motion; nice.

Video Enhancer (which appears to be some kind of modification of Virtual Dub with a nice GUI) seems to render much faster than Vegas, but I can't get 60 fps. I also tried MeGui, but it absolutely will not run on my computer - crashes immediately. I have HandBrake, but haven't tried it.

Could someone please post a tutorial the Handbrake settings? No need to go into how to frameserve - that's been covered frequently on this forum; just the HandBrake usage, for it is new for me and probably or others . . .

Any deinterlacer (like the Mike Crash smart deinterlacer) works best if you add it as Media FX rather than track or clip FX. That way it will deinterlace before scaling to a new resolution such as 1280x720.

Also, if you want to use a plugin deinterlacer, you need to disable the automatic Vegas deinterlace. You can do this either by selecting no deinterlace method (which will disable all automatic Vegas deinterlaces) or by right clicking individual clips and changing the media properties from interlaced to progressive. That will disable the Vegas deinterlace on a clip by clip basis allowing you to add a deinterlace plugin to each clip (as Media FX).

Handbrake is a straightforward GUI with simple controls, but with its own CLI terminal so you can get into the nitty-gritty too.
http://trac.handbrake.fr/wiki/HandBrakeGuide

The downside is no frameserving to Handbrake. It uses a lot of predictive stuff to save you all the work of AviSynth or MeGUI, so it needs the full file, not frame-by-frame.
;?(

The upside is it renders faster than MainConcept in Vegas -- 15% to 25% by my tests on two-pass h.264 renders with the same settings.

Here's a discussion Nick Hope and I had on this a few months ago . . .
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=661724

I can share my decomb tweaks with you, but like everything they depend on your source and tastes.

EDIT: I haven't tried Mike Crash's plugin, but I'm going to see how it compares. Since almost every third-generation decomb filter is based on Donald Graft's work (which started with his smart-bob filter years ago), I bet the results are comparable with AviSynth, Handbrake, etc.

musicvid, thanks; I'll toy with it. If you have spare time to post your settings, that might speed up my experimentation by giving a starting point (I'll be using 1440x1080i HDV .M2T files from Sony HC1, talking-torso shots)

OK, but I am just transcoding MPEG-2 SD from DVDs I have produced in the past. My settings are possibly going to be too sharp for you, esp. on high contrast diagonal edges. As I said, apples and oranges!

Decomb: 1:2:6:9:60:16:16 (default is 1:2:6:9:80:16:16)

CLI Fast: ref=2:bframes=2:me=umh:deblock=-1,0
CLI Slower: ref=2:bframes=2:me=umh:deblock=-1,0:weightb=1:b-pyramid=1
CLI Slowest: ref=2:bframes=2:me=umh:deblock=-1,0:weightb=1:b-pyramid=1:analyse=all:8x8dct=1

REMEMBER, the more advanced params you add, the lower the compatibility, particularly with Quicktime. You should test playability after every render.

A good guide here (for x264, not for Handbrake specifically):
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/menc-feat-x264.html#menc-feat-x264-encoding-options

EDIT: My apologies to ScorpioProd for carrying this discussion so far off-task!

********

EDIT: The Mike Crash plugin left a lot of interlace artifacts in both detail and motion areas, and took about 40% longer to render than HB.

Now I'm really confused. I'm mixing 1920x1080 60i clips (Canon HF10)and PNG static images with Vegas Pro 9.0b, 32-bit, rendering with DVD Arch., to playback on a standard DVD player (Oppo) and 1080P TV. So far, the best playback is with project and rendering settings at 720x480 progressive (deinterlacing left at blend).
John: Are you telling me I'm throwing away half my resolution? Any suggestions on how to get the most out these clips, short of buying a Blu-Ray burner?
Thanks, Donald

It's been stated a couple of times in this thread, and I fully agree, that if you are downconverting HD interlaced content for SD DVD, the render should be interlaced as well. There is no reason to destroy detail if the DVD is going to be played back on a TV of any kind.

All of the "other" discussion here relates to file playback on a computer, and whether one should let the player do the deinterlacing, or render the file as progressive with any one of a number of available deinterlace / decomb schemes -- once again, it has absolutely nothing to do with producing DVDs.

"Usually I find that interlaced HD footage looks best downrezzed into interlaced SD. An exception to this would be when you are going to something that doesn't play back the interlaced footage correctly like some projectors."

So terribly sorry, this is where I took the discussion into another area -- computer monitor playback of video files, and some may not have made the "switch." I'll be more careful which threads I post my discussion in from now on.

"Usually I find that interlaced HD footage looks best downrezzed into interlaced SD. An exception to this would be when you are going to something that doesn't play back the interlaced footage correctly like some projectors."

That's what I would have thought, but I find that when I render the 1920x1080 60i files as progressive, I get less distortion of fine detail, e.g. the netting of a soccer goal, and less "ficker" of horizontal lines, e.g. the top of a fence. What am I doing wrong?

For those interested in smart deinterlacing, I have a new found respect for the free Mike Crash smart deinterlacer now that I know to insert it as Media FX rather than as Track FX or Event FX. To my eyes at least it looks exactly the same as the frameserving methods but is a heck of a lot easier.

For those that don't know, the free Mike Crash Vegas plugins are http://www.mikecrash.com/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownload&cid=13here.[/link]

wikksmith,
What are you playing back the files on? It makes as much or more difference than how they were rendered? Perhaps something is set less than optimally on your DVD player or TV.

I'm using a Oppo DV-980H Up-Converting Universal DVD Player, which appears to be working fine. The differences between progressive and interlaced rendering are subtle, and I can see them on both my computer monitor and the TV.

Well, I thought I knew how to do this. I am trying to install mike crash deinterlace. I downloaded and successfully installed his dll files in C:program files\sony\filters. This was the default location of the install. I rescan my scripts in Vegas 8 and I can see the scripts in the script menu.

However, when I apply the script to an event I get this error:
"The module was expected to contain an assembly manifest."

Huh?

Erik

I never tried running the .dll as a script.
I think it was intended to be run as a plugin, and it shows up in the FX window as a plugin.
That's how it works for me, anyway.

"it shows up in the FX window as a plugin."

And there it is... thanks. I have no idea what is wrong with me.

Erik

So, just so I don't confuse myself, if I have some interlaced SD material that I want to deinterlace for the web, for example, I should add the Mike Crash Smart De-interlacer at the Media level in a progressive project with de-interlace sert to none and render as progressive?

I had just been editing as a DV NTSC interlaced project with de-interlaced set to blend and rendering to WMV progressive.

Have I got that correct?

Yes. You can add the deinterlacer either as Media FX or as a clip effect with the little triangular pre/post switch in "pre" position (triangle looks like an arrow pointed to the left).