Thanks Nick, exactly the sort of advice I am looking for, I'll give that a go tomorrow

Many thanks, Duncan

Duncan,

Thanks for posting. I never read instructions (unless having serious problems) and did not know about the "Apply Yadif to All Media.cs" script.

I also, for the first time, read the notes. It clearly states, which I actually assumed, that the plug must be applied as a Media FX, not a Track or Event FX.

I tried exactly what you did, refreshed the script menu and it was there. I am using VP11, latest, 64bit only, hence copied the script to the Sony script folder in Program Files. Running the script changed all the interlaced clips to progressive and applied the Yadif plug as a Media FX. It does this for all clips currently in the Project Media pool.

It may not help your current situation but does confirm that all actually should work as planned (it is a great plug).

Edit: Nick you replied while I was typing (I am a bit slow). There is a script in the zip file to apply the plug to all the interlaced clips currently in the Media Pool. Very handy.

Willem.

Just to explain the "why" of this, well as I inderstand how Vegas works.

When you apply an FX to the media the FX does it's work before anything else.
This is fairly important with de-interlacing because all the advanced de-interlacers work by studying motion. If you scale,crossfade, or do anything to the video before de-interlacing the de-interlacer will have a hard time doing its job and / or you'll get a funky outcome.

If atl possible don't use the de-interlacer until after you've finished editing, all of them are pretty CPU intensive and will make editing a bear. If you want to see your footage de-interlaced there is a de-interlace option for the secondary preview monitor that seems to use the GPU in all versions of Vegas and that has no playback performance issues.

Bob.

Hello All:

Here is a +1 for the Yadif plug-in and a thank-you to Farss for providing the link in a different post.

I followed with rapt attention the HD to SD Challenge:
http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=738303
as well as any related threads.

I tried a few of the "cookbook" methods described in the various posts, but, to my eyes, it made no difference in DVD quality.

Having just acquired a Dell XPS laptop to replace my 4-year old Dell Inspiron laptop, last week I saw for the first time my DVDs on a hi-def screen. Although said DVDs look "good" on my 4-year old Dell Inspiron screen and my 14-year old 30" Panasonic tube tele, they look rather horrible on a hi-def computer screen : (

My customers tend play my DVDs on their computers or their hi-def TVs. Few report they have Blu-ray players so delivering on BD isn't the best option. I think I may be the only person remaining in the world with a genuine tube TV, thus I'm not too concerned about delivering a DVD that is optimized for tube tele viewing.

So I downloaded the Yadif plug-in, followed the instructions, and ran everything through Vegas and DVD-A. The first test DVDs look pretty darn good on the hi-def XPS screen as well as on YOTTV. I have more tinkering to do with my workflow. Also I may have to break down and buy a hi-def TV. I've been meaning to, but I don't watch much TV when I'm home.

Regards,

Kimberly

small test i did a while ago:

3x view:
http://i.imgur.com/A3drJ.png

@malowz:

I kinda think the Yadif looks better . . . fewer jagged edges, still crisp? Subjective, I know.

I downloaded a trial of Mainconcept Reference 2, which I understand is a transcoding tool. It was my hope that the tool would transcode my HDV footage to a suitable SD format and "magically" address the downrez quality issues. The software did indeed transcode and for me it was fast! But the quality was terrible. Either I was doing something wrong, or I don't correctly understand the purpose of the tool. I didn't play around with it too much, but in the little time I spent I did not find any advanced interlace/de-interlace tools other than specifying field order and whether you want progressive or interlaced.

I might download a trial of Sorenson Squeeze with the same goal in mind. Here too I don't fully understand all the possibilities.

The price points are similar for the Mainconcept and Sorenson tools but the way you gain access to codecs affects the pricing on Mainconcept. Of course I would rather achieve my solution with Vegas or with Vegas plus a few free Ofx such as Yadif before paying $$$ for another application : )

@Kimberly
deinterlace and stuff are always a PITA to fully understand, but we can get there ;)

2 main questions: what is your source, what is your destiny?


If you have a HD, 30i video:
to DVD:
1# Keep interlaced, reduce size only. Proper process: 30i > 60p > resize > 30i
2# Deinterlace, reduce size. Proper process: 30i > 30p > resize

to Blu-ray:
1# Keep interlaced, no need to process.
2# Deinterlace to 60p, resize (can only make 1280x720/60p)
3# Deinterlace (30i > 30p)

to WEB:
1# Deinterlace (30i > 30p), resize

-----------------------------------------------------------------

If you have a HD, 60p video:
to DVD:
1# Interlace, reduce size only. Proper process: 60p > resize > 30i
2# Keep progressive, discard frame. Proper process: 60p > 30p > resize

to Blu-ray:
1# Interlace. Proper process: 60p > 30i
2# Keep 60p Progressive, resize only (can only make 1280x720/60p)
3# Keep progressive, discard frame. (60p > 30p)

to WEB:
1# Keep progressive, discard frame. (60p > 30p)

-----------------------------------------------------------------

If you have a HD, 30p/24p video:
to DVD:
1# Keep progressive, resize only.

to Blu-ray:
1# Keep progressive.

to WEB:
1# Keep progressive, resize only.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Notes:
To my knoledge, DVD does not support 30p "as spec", but authoring software nowadays allow to make 30p DVD.

Blu-Ray also, AFAIK, does not support 30p too. but you can make a progressive video with "interlaced" flag, and author.

making a interlaced Blu-ray it's fine. few interlace artifacts, great definition.

making a interlaced DVD, to watch on a hi-def TV its not that great, depend on the quality of the TV or DVD deinterlacer. don't watch too close from the TV ;P

30p DVD/Blu-Ray will have a bit sharper image, but "judder" in motion scenes, compared to 30i or 60p sources. making 30p progressive DVD or Blu-Ray may have "indesired" results, like decoders trying to deinterlace progressive video... but as i don't do this, don't know for sure... ;P

to get the "best quality", i recommend AviSynth, as most of the "power" filters/plugins are made for it.

30i to 30p can be made in vegas, as Yadif for Vegas is a great quality deinterlacer.

the most "delicate" process is resize and keep interlaced video. the result file will always be a tradeoff between sharpness and flicker vs. blurriness and no flicker. one day i used the software that came with a EX3 to convert to DV. it did a proper conversion, but oh my, the video was ultra-blurry. using avisynth and "specialized" software, made a much sharper video, but with a bit of flicker/jaggies on fine lines.

Malowz:

Many thanks for your response! I am shooting HDV 1080i, which I believe is 60i? I deliver exclusively on DVD to my customers. I've made a few BD-5s for home use, and the quality is really good without any special hocus-pocus.

Here is a shot of the Vegas Pro 11 project properties that I normally use for my DVDs:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/41612696/Properties%20HDV.JPG

I've also tried using these project properties:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/41612696/Properties%20SD.JPG

In either case, the deinterlace method is set to "Interpolate" rather than "None." My assumption is that this will cause the footage to be deinterlaced when I render.

My typical render template for DVD is below:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/41612696/Render%20DVD.JPG

Using DVD-A and the above process, I get "pretty good" DVD quality. Using the Yadif plug-in the quality is "darn good," meaning better than without Yadif.

So any advice you may have on what I can change in the above process, or on Yadif, would be really helpful, I've heard good things about AVIsynth, but I don't yet understand how to use it.

Regards,

Kimberly

PS. Sorry if this is a complete hi-jack of the original thread. Did not intend it that way.

If you're rendering interlaced HDV footage to interlaced DVD footage, setting the "deinterlace method" to "interpolate" tells Vegas to split the interlaced video frames into individual fields before it resizes and then reinterlace the video. You will have taken 60i HD footage and converted it to 60i SD footage. Extracting the fields, resizing and reinterlacing is exactly how it should be done. Technically, you are not converting interlaced to progressive.

Of course, when you use Yadif on 60i material, you end up with 30p and have thrown away half the temporal resolution of the video. i.e. 60 discrete images per second down to 30 images per second. (In PAL countries, its 50 down to 25.)

If you want interlaced output, you can deinterlace the HD to double rate progressive (eg, 60i to 60p) using the "best" deinterlacer, then convert to SD using the "best" interpolator, and then convert back to interlaced by discarding unwanted lines. In principle, you should also low pass filter (blur) the progressive HD before converting to SD and possibly also sharpen the SD at the end.

People have their pet deinterlacers, filters and interpolators, but what is truly best is likely to be dependent on the nature of the video material.

Peter, that's what Vegas does anyway. If you set a deinterlace method (doesn't matter which one, either blend or interpolate) Vegas will take each interlaced frame and split it into individual progressive fields at 1920x540 at 60p. If you have the rendering quality set to Best and resize to SD video, it will take each field and resize them using the Bicubic algorithm to 720x240 and then reinterlace the video back into 720x480 interlaced and set the aspect ratio flag to 1.2121. You'll end up with perfectly resized interlaced video.

Standard definition cameras typically apply some sharpening, HD cameras don't, so blurring the HD video shouldn't be necessary.

Taking interlaced 60i video and converting to a 30p final product is a different matter altogether. The Yadif deinterlacer does a better job than the stock Vegas deinterlacers.

Yes, in principle that is what Vegas does. What it doesn't do is give you the option of an interpolation method that some people may like. The double rate deinterlace is just another step in the interpolation process. Some deinterlace methods use both fields to fill in the missing lines and therefore may give a better result (eg for a static scene) than if interpolation is carried out on each field in isolation of the other. For not quite static scenes, such interpolaters use de-combing tricks, etc.

The blurring or low pass filtering I mentioned is to reduce artifacts due to aliasing after reducing resolution, just as it is advisable to low pass filter audio before you reduce the sample rate.

@Kymberly:

need to download yadif:
http://avisynth.org.ru/yadif/yadif.html

avisynth:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/avisynth2/files/latest/download?source=files

virtualdub:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/virtualdub/files/virtualdub-win/1.9.11.32842/VirtualDub-1.9.11.zip/download

put the yadif "dll" on the avisynth plugins folder:
(C:\Program Files (x86)\AviSynth 2.5\plugins)

copy this script (a very crude one) and put inside a file with extension ".avs" (like video.avs)

change the path to your video file on the second line (like "c:\myvideos\video.avi")

LOADCPLUGIN("C:\Program Files (x86)\AviSynth 2.5\plugins\YADIF.DLL")

AVISOURCE("path to your videofile", pixel_type="RGB24")

ConvertToYUY2(matrix="PC.601", interlaced=true)

LanczosResize(720,1080)

Yadif(mode=1, order=1)

LanczosResize(720,480)

SeparateFields()

SelectEvery(4,1,2)

Weave()

open the .avs file in virtualdub

on virtualdub toolbar, select "Video" > "Fast Recompress"
then, "Video" > "Compression" and choose a compression codec (like Canopus HQ, my source video is also Canopus HQ) ;P

"File" > "Save as AVI"

also, sorry to help the thread to go "off the rails", but we at least are still talking about yadif ;P