I am having problems rendering to DVD. Tried deinterlacing and making progressive DVD, tried also interlaced DVD, all to no avail. Input files are MP4, they are interlaced but the file info says they are progressive.

I managed to get the clips to correctly deinterlace by setting force_progressive=0 in the advanced tab, and everything looks correctly deinterlaced on the final DVD in my PC, but strangely looks interlaced (with comb effects) with a DVD Player on a regular TV.

I also created an interlaced DVD and the transitions look fine on the TV, but the video clips look "wavy" on the heavy movement parts.

Also, in my PC, I get the same "wavy" effect if I deinterlace the input files with ffmpeg.

mediainfo tells me the following about my files:

General
Complete name : sdv_0025.mp4
Format : MPEG-4
Format profile : JVT
Codec ID : avc1
File size : 3.92 MiB
Duration : 6s 740ms
Overall bit rate : 4 883 Kbps
Encoded date : UTC 2003-01-31 16:06:00
Tagged date : UTC 2003-01-31 16:06:00

Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : Baseline@L3.0
Format settings, CABAC : No
Format settings, ReFrames : 1 frame
Codec ID : avc1
Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding
Duration : 6s 740ms
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 4 646 Kbps
Width : 720 pixels
Height : 480 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 3:2
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 29.970 fps
Standard : NTSC
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.449
Stream size : 3.73 MiB (95%)
Language : English
Encoded date : UTC 2003-01-31 16:06:00
Tagged date : UTC 2003-01-31 16:06:00

Audio
ID : 2
Format : AAC
Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec
Format version : Version 4
Format profile : LC
Format settings, SBR : Yes
Format settings, PS : No
Codec ID : 40
Duration : 6s 570ms
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 128 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : Front: L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Stream size : 98.8 KiB (2%)
Language : English
Encoded date : UTC 2003-01-31 16:06:00
Tagged date : UTC 2003-01-31 16:06:00

However, I can see they are interlaced. Additionally, if I play the original input clips and set the bob deinterlacer in VLC, it looks jittery.

Ok, it was a week ago when I rendered. I remember trying gop=12 for the final rendering to see if that would fix the problem. Now I am viewing the DVDs again just to confirm the visual problems. I don't have a DVD Player and regular TV readily available (I don't own a TV, got TV Tuner on PC).

For the Interlaced NTSC DVD, mediainfo tells me:
VIDEO_TS.VOB: Interlaced, M=1, N=18, 29.970 fps, TFF
VTS_01_1.VOB: Interlaced, M=1, N=12, 29.970 fps, BFF
VTS_01_2.VOB: Interlaced, M=1, N=12, 29.970 fps, BFF
VTS_01_3.VOB: Interlaced, M=1, N=12, 29.970 fps, BFF
VTS_01_4.VOB: Interlaced, M=1, N=12, 29.970 fps, BFF

- If I play it on VLC without deinterlacing, the Slide transitions and moving objects have a comb effect, they are definitely interlaced.
- If I play it on VLC with the Bob deinterlacer, the Slide transitions look smooth, but moving objects look "wavy". If I play it at 0.10x speed, I can see the top and bottom scanlines alternately disappearing on every frame, I don't know if it's a normal effect from the Bob deinterlacer.

For the Progressive NTSC DVD, mediainfo tells me:
VIDEO_TS.VOB: Interlaced, M=1, N=18, 29.970 fps, TFF
VTS_01_1.VOB: Progressive, M=1, N=12, 29.970 fps
VTS_01_2.VOB: Progressive, M=1, N=12, 29.970 fps
VTS_01_3.VOB: Progressive, M=1, N=12, 29.970 fps

- If I play it on VLC without deinterlacing, everything looks fine.
- If I play it on VLC with the Bob deinterlacer, everything looks fine. If I play it at 0.10x speed, I can see the top and bottom scanlines alternately disappearing on every frame, just as in the interlaced DVD.

Both DVD menus (VIDEO_TS.VOB) are still images, and were created with qdvdauthor.

I will watch them on a DVD player with a regular TV tomorrow.

Ok, I played the input files this way:

mplayer -vf tfields=1:0 sdv_0048.mp4

The video playback is very smooth. Then I played them with tfields=1:1 and the playback is jittery. According to the docs I read, the input files are Interlaced TFF, even though the header says they are progressive. How do I let Kdenlive know the input is TFF? I don't have much hard drive space to burn so reencoding the input clips is not an option for me.

sorry, we do not yet have an override exposed for field dominance. I will put that on my todo list.

Nice, also, not just an override for field dominance, but also for the progressive/interlaced flag on the input files, because as I said earlier, my input files are flagged as progressive when they are Interlaced TFF.

Upon close inspection of the output files that look "wavy" when playing with the Bob deinterlacer in VLC and the -vf tflags=1:0 or tflags=1:1 in mplayer, if I play them without deinterlacing filters, the combing effect is blurred. I guess it's because of the reencoding and the incorrect flagging as progressive that the scanlines get blurred and become unusable.

I definitely need a way to tell kdenlive/mlt that my input files are already interlaced even when they are flagged as progressive.

There is already a way to override progressive (1) or not (0) in the Advanced section of the Clip properties dialog.

Tried that already, if I set "force progressive" to 0, it deinterlaces my input videos, halving the frame rate. I don't want deinterlacing, my videos are high speed movement so deinterlacing is undesirable.

In my input files, for example, there is a knife throw. When I play it, the throw is about 48 interlaced frames. In the output video, when I play it, the throw has been reduced to 24 progressive frames!! I don't see any interlacing, it's a single full frame, I don't see two interlaced frames, but a single full frame. I have played both input and output videos in VLC and mplayer without deinterlacing to make sure.

I already checked my project and it's set to DVD NTSC, mlt is using the dv_ntsc profile, I am forcing the rendering to Interlaced, I tried with the top=1 and top=0 options, with deinterlace=0, etc. The output video is supposed to be interlaced, mediainfo tells me so, and I can see the interlaced scanlines in the "Slide in/out transitions", but outside the transitions,the actual output video is 29.97 fps progressive, no interlaced scanlines.

Deinterlacing does not half the framerate; it halves the vertical refresh rate, which is different. 24 progressive frames does not come from 48 interlaced frames; it comes from 48 interlaced fields. Maybe it is just terminology, but your terminology is misleading to others reading this, which is why I am correcting it.

I do understand and appreciate your desire to retain the full motion that the interlace captures. However, you asked for a way to override whether a clip is progressive or interlaced, and I simply told you how.

"top=1 and top=0" are not valid melt options. Those are ffmpeg command-line-only options. There is no way to set a field dominance at this time. It is always bottom-field-first.

So now the problem is that you are getting an undesired, not-explicitly requested deinterlace on your clip. A deinterlace will be forced when the vertical resolution changes for whatever reason because the scaler is not field-aware. Likewise, other effects may force a deinterlace because they are not field-aware, and they know that applying the effect to an interlaced picture would be ugly.

The easiest test is to simply put your clip in an empty DV/DVD NTSC project, and render it to DVD. Have you tried that already? Works fine for me using a NTSC DV clip.

Ok, so I created a new DV/DVD NTSC project, added a clip and rendered it. Same problems as before. If I don't set any special things, the fields are blurred together, and if I set the force_progressive=0 in the advanced tab for the clip, it gets deinterlaced even with the Force Interlaced option.

My observations have given me some clues to the problem, though.

When playing the rendered vob with both VLC and mplayer, there is a black space above and below the image, which isn't present when playing the original clip. I compared the stdout of mplayer while playing both the original clip and the rendered vob, and found this difference:

Original clip:
**********
*snip*
Starting playback...
Movie-Aspect is undefined - no prescaling applied.
VO: [xv] 720x480 => 720x480 Planar YV12
**********

Rendered VOB:
**********
*snip*
Starting playback...
Movie-Aspect is 1.33:1 - prescaling to correct movie aspect.
VO: [xv] 720x480 => 720x540 Planar YV12
**********

So, my camera is really messing up with the video files. First, flagging interlaced video as progressive, and second, no Movie-Aspect ratio... Well, after reviewing stuff, I concluded that my original clip's pixel ratio is 1/1, and the default DV/DVD NTSC profile is 8/9, so I created a new profile called "DV/DVD NTSC fix", with the pixel ratio at 1/1, and this eliminated the black spaces above and below, and also the undesired deinterlacing!


When playing this new rendered VOB with mplayer, I get:
**********
Starting playback...
Movie-Aspect is 1.50:1 - prescaling to correct movie aspect.
VO: [xv] 720x480 => 720x480 Planar YV12
**********

Now I need a way to tell MLT that my input clips are TFF, and everything should be done. Is there a way to do that? Manually editing the mlt input file maybe? In SVN maybe?

If you make a profile that is 720x480 with 1.0 pixel aspect, then it is not really 4:3 display aspect as you can see from the mplayer output 1.5:1. Maybe what you should do is in the Advanced clip properties set the pixel aspect of your clips to 0.89. However, I do not know if that is enough precision (because it is really 8/9). In the development tree, we replaced pixel aspect with display aspect which takes a w:h. It is more user friendly and computes a pixel aspect with double precision.

For TFF, you can try this to set the top field first. Edit the project file in a text editor. Locate the <producer>s that reference your files. For each one, add a <property name="force_tff">1</property>.

Adding the force_tff property fixed the issue, now I get an all BFF output!

As for setting the aspect ratio to 0.89, that gets me the "720x480 => 720x540" as before, but now there is no black space above and below the image, which is good, but the input clips gets deinterlaced.

I just tried the SVN version of kdenlive and mlt, and forced the aspect ratio to 640x480. I am getting "720x480 => 720x540" and it's interlaced as expected! I am happy with the results, I can finally publish my DVD!!

Thank you :)