[MEncoder-users] Encoding to DVD: to deinterlace or not?

[Scott W. Larson]

James Hastings-Trew wrote:
> The odd fields are just a little bit
> lower, spatially than the even fields. If you were to take each field
> and send it as a full frame at 60 fps, it will have half the vertical
> resolution, stretched up to fit the screen which would look ugly.

Actually it's pretty hard to tell in most cases. Try it yourself in
Photoshop. Remove every other line in a photo halving its vertical size
then resize it back to its original size. It doesn't look as good as
before but it doesn't look ugly.

> Because of the spatial differences between the fields, you would have
> annoying bobbing artifacts. It is not a solution that any DVD player or
> TV set uses that I am aware of.

My four year old Sharp Aquos HDTV uses this bob-deinterlacing. There are
clips on the Internet to demonstrate the artifacts caused by it. They
display flickering horizontal bands.

In regular content bob-deinterlacing artifacts are hardly noticeable and
is used by most if not all cable boxes that output to progressive
displays. Most HDTVs sold these days use more advanced deinterlacing
techniques of course.