trouble with interlaced renders

James_May wrote on 12/29/2020, 9:54 PM

I've got family video VHS and Hi-8 transfers that I did some time ago that I'm just now polishing up for the family archives with noise reduction, white balance, cropping, etc.

My primary goal is to create Blu Ray discs that I can play back with full pause and slomo, fastmo facility, etc. I don’t need menus. Just chapter markers from the timeline and I’ve got that working with Drax.

Secondary goal is to created files I can stream on a Roku player or similar. It would be nice if these were the same basic files and I didn’t have to render twice. But I’m open to rendering once to an intermediate lossless format for the bulk of the time eating stuff like noise reduction and color correction, then re-rendering to 2 separate output formats if need be.

Apologies in advance for the long post, but the clues are in the below I hope!

Vegas Pro 18, Windows 7 professional

VHS and Hi-8 Scans – Source Media Properties

720x480x24, DV NTSC, pixel ratio 0.9091, LFF

Note 1: VLC player recognizes this source material as interlaced and properly plays it back as such, based on smooth appearance.

Project properties:

960x720, 29.97 NTSC, pixel ratio 0.9091, LFF, deinterlace method: none, smart resample

Render 1 properties:

Magix AVC/AAC MP4

Video: 29.970 fps, 720x480 Lower field first, YUV, 4 Mbps

Pixel Aspect Ratio: 1.000

Render 1 yielded these properties:

672x512x32, 29.97 NTSC, pixel ratio 1.00

Note 2: VLC player does not recognize the rendered files as interlaced. Always has horizontal line jaggies. When deinterlace is forced to on, every two “frames” are the same using the single frame advance feature. When not forced to deinterlace, each frame advance is different.

Note 3: Plays correctly as interlaced on Roku Streaming player.

Render 2 properties:

Magix AVC/AAC MP4

Video: 29.970 fps, 960x720 Lower field first, YUV, 8 Mbps, Pixel Aspect Ratio: 1.000

Render 2 yielded these properties:

912x752x32, AVC, pixel ratio 1.00

Note 2: VLC player does not recognize the rendered files as interlaced, even when deinterlace is forced to on. Has horizontal line jaggies and advances every two “frames” are the same using the single frame advance feature.

Note 3: Plays correctly as interlaced on Roku Streaming player.

Note 4: Render 2 looks significantly better.

Render 3 properties: Main Concept MPEG2 1440x1080-60i 8 mbps to Blu Ray disc

Note 5: Panasonic Blu Ray player does not play it as interleaved. Has horizontal line jaggies.

Questions:

What is the reason I am having the rendered material not being properly treated as interlaced on playback?
I am assuming rendering to interlaced is the best thing to do, rather than deinterlacing (with something like QTCMG) before rendering to a progressive format. Is this a sound course of action?
In the burn to Blu Ray disc operation, why don’t the Sony AVC or MainConcept video templates allow lower resolution than 1440? The BD spec supports them, as far as I can tell.
I don’t mind eating up space with the higher resolution though, so the problem really is that these templates are not yielding files that my Panasonic BD player recognizes as interlaced. Or am I missing something or is this pilot error somehow?

Comments

EricLNZ wrote on 12/30/2020, 2:27 AM

Personally I avoid interlaced mp4 files for delivery. Not all Blu-ray players or TV players handle them correctly as you have found. It is preferable to have mp4 files as progressive. But my experience is limited.

j-v wrote on 12/30/2020, 4:39 AM

@James_May

Vegas Pro 18, Windows 7 professional

Look for the main reason voor your problem:

Musicvid wrote on 12/30/2020, 11:46 AM

Render 1 properties:

Magix AVC/AAC MP4

Render 2 properties:

Magix AVC/AAC MP4

Render AVC to progressive for delivery. That is a 95%+ case scenario.

Render 3 properties: Main Concept MPEG2 1440x1080-60i 8 mbps to Blu Ray disc

Leave it interlaced per source for optical disc. Do not change original resolution or crop/pan/zoom!

480i is just fine for a BluRay; you can't make it "better" by upscaling.

Match your Project and Render properties to your source.

James_May wrote on 12/30/2020, 12:33 PM

Render AVC to progressive for delivery. That is a 95%+ case scenario.
Render 3 properties: Main Concept MPEG2 1440x1080-60i 8 mbps to Blu Ray disc

Leave it interlaced per source for optical disc. Do not change original resolution or crop/pan/zoom!

480i is just fine for a BluRay; you can't make it "better" by upscaling.

Match your Project and Render properties to your source.

There seems to be no option to burn to Blu Ray with resolution lower than 1440x1080, that's why I chose 1440. I did try as you suggest burning to a DVD. In both cases my Panasonic Blu Ray player did not treat it properly as interlaced. That's why I'm confused.

Former user wrote on 12/30/2020, 1:08 PM

Did you render it as 720 x 480 ,pixel ratio 0.9091, LFF? Bluray and DVD will both accept this format.

James_May wrote on 12/30/2020, 1:15 PM

Did you render it as 720 x 480 ,pixel ratio 0.9091, LFF? Bluray and DVD will both accept this format.

Yes, sort of. That was my first render, but I didn't see a way to keep the pixel at 0.9091, so left the default as it was at 1.00. The outcome does not get played as interlaced on my Blu Ray player nor does VLC recognize it as interlaced either. Do you think the pixel ratio discrepancy is fooling them some how?

Former user wrote on 12/30/2020, 1:25 PM

Yes, it is not 1:1 it needs to be set to the correct pixel size. Which template are you using to render? You should start with one of the defaults.

James_May wrote on 12/30/2020, 1:42 PM

I'm trying that now. I had two discrepancies: I had UFF rather than LFF first, and I had 1.00 vs 0.909. Only because I couldn't find the right template before now. Assuming this works, is there a way to burn this to BD from the timeline? I can't find any options for that. And, do you think it was the pixel ratio or the UFF/LFF issue that was causing the resultant file not be be playing as interlaced?

James_May wrote on 12/30/2020, 2:00 PM

I just tried rendering to MainConcept DVD Architect NTSC, standard template but changed from default UFF to LFF: Video: 29.970 fps, 720x480 Lower field first, YUV, 6 Mbps Pixel Aspect Ratio: 0.909

The project properties were the same as above, except 960x720: The resultant .mpg file DOES NOT play as interlaced on VLC, whereas the original source material does.

Next, I changed project properties to match source properties and re-rendered as above: Same result, VLC not playing it as interlaced. Again, AVI source material plays correctly as interlaced.

Further thoughts very much appreciated.

Former user wrote on 12/30/2020, 2:24 PM

The MPEG-2 and Sony AVC / MVC encoders have several predefined rendering models. Some presets have a resolution between 320x240 up to 1920x1080. Not to mention that in some models the resolution can be manually set by the user.

I can't understand your difficulty in customizing your rendering.

Former user wrote on 12/30/2020, 2:35 PM

Why are your project properties not matching you video? that is not the problem but is just something else to clog the thought process. VLC is a computer player. It plays the video to match your computer. Burn a DVD with your file as a test and see how it looks on a TV.

James_May wrote on 12/30/2020, 2:37 PM

The MPEG-2 and Sony AVC / MVC encoders have several predefined rendering models. Some presets have a resolution between 320x240 up to 1920x1080. Not to mention that in some models the resolution can be manually set by the user.

I can't understand your difficulty in customizing your rendering.

I think I'm past that now, thanks. The issue at hand is: why don't the 720x480 NTSC 0.9091 LFF renders play back properly as interlaced on the VLC player and on my Panasonic Blu Ray player? (And, it doesn't seem to matter whether the project properties start at a higher resolution or the same resolution as source and destination, which is as it should be I should think.)

James_May wrote on 12/30/2020, 2:43 PM

Why are your project properties not matching you video? that is not the problem but is just something else to clog the thought process. VLC is a computer player. It plays the video to match your computer. Burn a DVD with your file as a test and see how it looks on a TV.

Well, as the recent experiments I did reported, it doesn't seem to matter about project properties. But not to clog thinking, even when source=project=render props, it still doesn't play back as interlaced on VLC, whereas the source material does. That is the quandary at the moment.

Second quandary is that I would like to burn this to Blu Ray and can't find any suitable presets for doing so when using the burn video to Blu Ray tool.

EricLNZ wrote on 12/30/2020, 4:12 PM

It may not be related but I recently ran into a bug when changing a templates default field order with 16:9 SD. Best not to do so even if the resulting field order is not the normal for PAL or NTSC. For example I find that whilst PAL mpg is usually UFF first, players happily handle LFF correctly.

Teagan wrote on 12/30/2020, 5:21 PM

In my experience VLC and even Media player classic are HORRIBLE at reproducing interlaced videos correctly, they always show artifacts that don't show on a dedicated blu ray player, even with deinterlacing disabled. VLC's deinterlacing is enabled by default to "blend" among other methods. This happens on any rendered interlaced video file from vegas that is compatible with the DVD and blu ray standard that I encode from Vegas.

Cyberlink power dvd 10 and above seem to do better for me. The only place where I can take my files to see if they play correctly, with 100% confidence, is to play them on a blu ray player, or blu ray software like cyberlink power dvd, from a disc.

(from here I assume you can use DVD architect from magix, not the burn to blu ray from vegas).

I would suggest keeping your hi8 video files at the source resolution to save space (720x480, 4:3, 29.97i, bottom field first) and anywhere from 2.4-3Mb/s max (AVC) as anything higher is diminishing returns. 4Mb/s to be safe (although overkill), if you have the space. I chose 2.4Mb/s for my ~40 hi8, one BD-r-DL project. The blu ray presets can be changed to output Blu ray AVC, 720x480, 29.97i, 4:3, bottom field first. If you don't see those options in the customize template menu choose another blu ray preset in vegas.

Up-scaling them to 960x720 will do nothing except waste space on your disc. Avoid up-scaling unless you have extremely sophisticated software designed to do that. Vegas will just increase the file size with no noticeable improvement in quality.

Although you should probably look into having your menu system be at 1920x1080 while keeping the video streams at the source resolution. These two resolutions are not dependent on each other.

You can have a menu system that is 720x480i and have feature streams at 1920x1080p or vice versa, or any mix, by the way. Even 1280x720p60 if you want. Anything that is in the blu ray standard can be mixed and matched on a blu ray no matter where it is. The only limitation is that each feature/file can only be one resolution, obviously, with the menu system having to be one global resolution and frame rate - that counts as one feature.

About not having to render twice, you can probably get away with rendering a AVC/AAC file, using a non-blu ray preset, and get away with it since Vegas will re-encode the audio to AC-3 or PCM, which ever you choose. It could re-render the video as well if it's not within the blu ray standard, so I'd just suggest rendering everything twice, one for blu ray standard and one for AVC/AAC for casual viewing on any device.

Also, there is no perfect way to "deinterlace" something. There's many methods to try to do this, but perfectly it's impossible.

James_May wrote on 12/30/2020, 6:17 PM

Thanks Teagan, very helpful!

I just tried some additional experiments which showed me the following:
1. VLC player, even with deinterlace forced on and using any of the methods, does not do well at all with MPEG2 source material. It looks almost as bad as no deinterlacing. This is not true of AVI files. There it does a good job with them probably because they are uncompressed. That is the red herring that was confusing me.

2. My Panasonic BluRay player does a similarly HORRIBLE job with MPEG2 files created by Vegas burned straight to a DVD with DVD Architect template NTSC 720x480. The slomo and pause look good, but normal motion doesn't. This contradicts your experience as I take it from your post.

3. Roku streaming from USB stick does not recognize .mpg files. It looks like those are going to have to be AVC.

Regarding your last bit of info using DVD Architect, I was hoping not to buy a new version. I have 5.2 from Sony.

Would rendering the noise reduced time intensive heavy lifting version to MagicYUV lossless, then re-encoding to the above two formats make sense?

Teagan wrote on 12/30/2020, 6:19 PM

That advice should work with the older DVD architect version from Sony.

About the noise reduced time, I am not familiar with that but the rendering to that uncompressed format should speed up your two renders, however you will have a huge file to deal with.

Also, to add, the problem may actually be with a TV setting and not the blu ray player. I believe there's a couple settings that modern TVs have that can affect interlaced content, along with the LCD panel just not working well with interlaced content, plainly. I believe that phenomenon is called "jaggies", when you see artifacts from interlaced content.

I'd try disabling some advanced settings like black frame insertion and things like "lg tru motion" and see if that helps.

Musicvid wrote on 12/30/2020, 6:50 PM

You might try your renders to x264 in Handbrake, Happy Otter Scripts, or Voukoder (search this forum).

James_May wrote on 12/30/2020, 8:03 PM

...
Also, to add, the problem may actually be with a TV setting and not the blu ray player. I believe there's a couple settings that modern TVs have that can affect interlaced content, along with the LCD panel just not working well with interlaced content, plainly. I believe that phenomenon is called "jaggies", when you see artifacts from interlaced content.

I'm pretty sure it's not the display device, which in this case is a DLP projector, as it properly displays interlaced MP4 content from my Roku player's thumb drive. I couldn't find any settings in the Panasonic BD player to affect interlace, though they may be in there somewhere... It does have latest firmware, that I know.

I appreciate your willingness to help.

JN- wrote on 12/31/2020, 3:44 AM

@James_May “Secondary goal is to created files I can stream on a Roku player or similar. It would be nice if these were the same basic files and I didn’t have to render twice.”

I would, and have done all of this, but for non BR disc playback, I rendered out my files to .mp4. progressive also. You can then play the mp4 progressive anywhere without worrying about playback interlacing isssues.

When preparing for BR I mostly just burnt to iso image within VP, under tools, then burnt to disc, using Nero, no menus of course, just chapters, but I tailored my projects accordingly, less work. I did a small number of full menu DVD projects using DVDA, that really required menus. SD material isn’t, doesn’t really require higher than DVD quality, and you can also get quite a lot on a DL DVD.

The only time I had a perceptual issue on BR TV playback was when I chose 24 fps instead of the source PAL 25 fps. Otherwise, the playback always looked great, better than on PC, probably a BR player/TV upscaling effect.

I also rendered out a Cineform intermediate of all completed projects, selecting the correct field order for the output file. So my “Archive” then would consist of Cineform files for the projects + .iso images of DVD and BR.