Deinterlacing

[emg178]

Does anyone have very noticable interlacing when playing back mpeg2? I do have this problem. The Mpeg2 files are hardware encoded w/ the 250 card on DVD ready high res. Playback is at 640x480 progressive scan w/ all in wonder 8500 dv.

When I turn deinterlacing on to high, the problem is lessened, but not gone. When I play them back w/ showshifter, the problem is much smaller.

I'm wondering if the 250 card can do some deinterlacing during capture at either x by 480 or x by 240 resolution. Also, does anyone use dscaler to scale the output? One solution would be to buy the Elecard mpeg decoder and use Dscaler w/ it (as suggested on SageTV's site). Has anyone done this?

Also, if I were to play this back in an interlaced mode, would my problem go away? I could send it back to the TV over S-video instead of component video. The quality of these videos does not really merit progressive scan at x by 480 anyway.

[RobertH]

yes if you send the signal out the video card in interlaced mode the tv will handle the deinterlacing for you, that is what the tv signal comes in by default 30 frames per second interlaced (60 fields).

Mpeg2 is naturally interlaced and the encoder on the pvr to the best of my knowledge only puts out an interlaced mpeg file.

Progressive scan is only meant for high resolution files that were origninally encoded in progressive scan, or if the hardware is actually doing progressive scan conversion. Since you are seeing the interlacing lines on the tv in progressive mode my guess is the ati card is not doing the auto deinterlacing like it should.

My suggestion is to turn off the progressive mode, send the video out the ati card using svideo in non-progressive mode, then let the tv do the work for you.

[emg178]

I'll give it a try that way.
A picky point, but I don't think most TV's do deinterlacing. They just display them in interlaced screen refreshes. The newer TV's do 'upconvert' the signal, which I assume means that they deinterlace in some way.

[emg178]

Wow! Now the Simpsons looks as good as a live broadcast as far as I can tell.