Help with ripping interlaced DVDs

[Larry the Loafer]

I seem to say this every time I make a new thread, thank anxiety for that, but if this is the wrong place to ask this, I apologise.

A while back, I went through my DVD collection and ripped a bunch of TV shows onto a hard drive, many of which were from a time where interlaced video was commonplace and you had to pull off a few tricks to maintain that lovely and smooth 50i look that I have a bit of an obsession with.

It's been a while since then, however. I've come across a box set I'm trying to rip using Handbrake (having been decrypted and ripped into VOB files) but I can't seem to get the desired effect. I've been trying Decomb and Bob and I get a relatively smooth result, but freeze frames reveal an ungodly amount of ghosting that I don't ever recall seeing when I ripped my last batch. Anything other than Decomb gives me a 25fps video file, despite setting Handbrake to export in 50fps, and trying to use Decomb and EEDI2, despite apparently producing better results, would probably result in my natural demise by the time it finishes exporting.

Any and all advice would be greatly appreciated!

[Classicnewcbbc]

maybe try using make mkv then handbrake as recently i've had problems with handbrake

[Larry the Loafer]

MakeMKV didn't have anywhere near the amount of export settings I'm looking for, and I'm also trying to export to MP4. AFAIK MakeMKV doesn't give you that option.

[wonkey_monkey]

The most helpful thing is almost always to upload a short unprocessed sample somewhere, if you can. What DVD is it?

[Classicnewcbbc]

MakeMKV didn't have anywhere near the amount of export settings I'm looking for, and I'm also trying to export to MP4. AFAIK MakeMKV doesn't give you that option.

ya you use MakeMKV export it as an MKV file then put that file into Handbrake then convert that file to how you want it MP4 whatever Handbrake has now really cracked down on copyright and ways of stopping you for ripping protected discs

[dbl]

Adobe Premiere users reading this thread

Right click on the clip on the timeline > Field Options... > select Flicker Removal option > OK

And say hello to smooth flicker-free de-interlaced video.

[Neil Jones]

I seem to say this every time I make a new thread, thank anxiety for that, but if this is the wrong place to ask this, I apologise.

A while back, I went through my DVD collection and ripped a bunch of TV shows onto a hard drive, many of which were from a time where interlaced video was commonplace and you had to pull off a few tricks to maintain that lovely and smooth 50i look that I have a bit of an obsession with.

It's been a while since then, however. I've come across a box set I'm trying to rip using Handbrake (having been decrypted and ripped into VOB files) but I can't seem to get the desired effect. I've been trying Decomb and Bob and I get a relatively smooth result, but freeze frames reveal an ungodly amount of ghosting that I don't ever recall seeing when I ripped my last batch. Anything other than Decomb gives me a 25fps video file, despite setting Handbrake to export in 50fps, and trying to use Decomb and EEDI2, despite apparently producing better results, would probably result in my natural demise by the time it finishes exporting.

Any and all advice would be greatly appreciated!

https://tvforum.uk/mediatech/kodi-filmic-effect-44388 might be of interest.

MakeMKV and then FFMPEG. If you want to encode a batch of TV episodes in one go without having to enter 24 command line prompts you can knock up a batch file, based on information on the above TV Forum thread:

Save into a file encode.bat (or whatever):

Code:

ffmpeg -i "%1" -map 0:0 -map 0:1 -acodec aac -ab 256k -vcodec libx264 -crf 18 -vf "w3fdif=complex:all" "%2"
exit

Put the below into another batch file, same location as the first one above:

Code:

start /w encode title_t01.mkv s3e01.mkv
start /w encode title_t02.mkv s3e02.mkv
start /w encode title_t03.mkv s3e03.mkv
start /w encode title_t04.mkv s3e04.mkv
start /w encode title_t05.mkv s3e05.mkv
start /w encode title_t06.mkv s3e06.mkv

Encode is the name of the first batch file, title_t01.mkv is whatever MakeMKV gives it and then s3e01.mkv is the filename you want that file to be. S30e01 is for Kodi scraping purposes

You might also want to stick FFMPEG in the system32 folder which makes it accessible from anywhere (in a default Windows setup).

[wonkey_monkey]

Wouldn't yadif be a better choice than w3fdif? And it's pretty fast, I think.

[Neil Jones]

Wouldn't yadif be a better choice than w3fdif? And it's pretty fast, I think.

Please read my post again as to why it is there.

[wonkey_monkey]

Wouldn't yadif be a better choice than w3fdif? And it's pretty fast, I think.

Please read my post again as to why it is there.

Done that, though I don't see how it answers my question...

w3fdif is very good given its simplicity, but it leaves behind quite a bit more shimmer and aliasing compared to -vf "yadif=1:-1:0", e.g.:

https://i.imgur.com/0CKWW8s.png (view at 100% if possible)

yadif does smooth away a little more detail, and adds some bad pixels (or at least does with ffmpeg, I hadn't noticed when using it previously). qtgmc isn't an ffmpeg option but is another (much slower) deinterlacing filter included for comparison.

[Larry the Loafer]

Thanks for all the advice folks! I'll have another go tomorrow and report back.

[Neil Jones]

Wouldn't yadif be a better choice than w3fdif? And it's pretty fast, I think.

Please read my post again as to why it is there.

Done that, though I don't see how it answers my question...

As was alluded to, it gets the job done (I probably should have mentioned the batch files were mine, I just used the syntax from Noggin in that thread (is Noggin on TV Live Forum under a new handle? Shame if they aren't) to build them). Did what I wanted, posted it for Larry's benefit if he finds it useful.

[Larry the Loafer]

Thanks again for all the advice. I tried playing about again with some of the settings and gave ffMpeg a go (to absolutely no success, I'm guessing I set it up incorrectly).

But I have to apologise. I went and checked the DVD playing through a PS4 over HDMI. The same ghosting artifact I was seeing on my export was present on the DVD; I must've tricked my own brain into thinking it was running smoother through the PS4 than it was on my PC. The source is an American sitcom from the 90s, and I was focusing on a graphic that transitioned in and out during the opening credits. As I say, the ghosting was present on both the DVD and the export, so I'm guessing this is just a natural result of the conversion from NTSC to PAL video when the DVDs were mastered.

So this was all a result of human error and brain trickery. I reiterate my apologies and thank you all once again for your help

[Neil Jones]

Must all that bashing from Nick Frisby, has screwed your brain

[James2001]

so I'm guessing this is just a natural result of the conversion from NTSC to PAL video when the DVDs were mastered.

It's amazing how much the quality of NTSC>PAL conversions vary, even on shows from the same era. Some look almost as if they hadn't been converted at all, some look blurry, smeary and overall terrible. The old Fresh Prince copies that were in use until this year for example were horrific (a shame the new ones have been converted to 24p, then sped up to 25p so look terrible in a different way).

Doesn't help when sometimes they run a process that was clearly intended for filmed material (removing the 3:2 pulldown and adding the 4% speedup) to 60i material. There were a couple of shows on Nickelodeon a few years back that had clearly happened to and the motion looked really jerky. Also seems to be increasingly common too that shows shot in 60i somehow get filmised when we get them over here- happens with things like the Masked Singer US on ITV2, The Joy of Painting on BBC4 and The Tonight Show and the Late Late Show on Sky Comedy and when one of the US daytime soaps was shown on one of the more minor channels a couple of years back- I think some people have stopped caring about doing these things properly!