[Libav-user] getting interlace information

[Carl Eugen Hoyos]

aviad rozenhek <aviadr1 at ...> writes:

> is it possible to know if a video file is progressive or intelaced, 
> and what type of interlaced (TFF or BFF) is it, by using avprobe 
> or other libav tool?--

(Only FFmpeg tools are supported on this list, libav tools are known 
to contain several hundred regressions, some of them security 
relevant, and can therefore not be supported here.)

Some file formats (and/or codecs) store information like 
progressive / tff / bff in the file, FFmpeg may then show this 
information.
In many cases, this information is completely useless, because you 
are not interested how the hardware that encoded the picture was set 
up, but if the output images are actually progressive or not.
Where I live, TV broadcasters signal their program as interlaced 
even if they broadcast progressive content, and it is of course 
possible to encode interlaced material using an encoder that has 
been set up to encode progressively.

Afaict, only visual inspection tells you if the material is 
actually interlaced or not.

Carl Eugen