Deinterlace software
 

I have been real happy with DVFilm Maker. It renders reasonably fast and also has options for grain, adding red for more of a film look, and adding letterbox. This program is available for both Mac and PC, I have it on both and it works well on each platform.

More info is available on their website: http://www.dvfilm.com/

You can download a demo and try it out.

BTW - The cost is about $100 bucks, quite inexpensive compared to some of the other products out there.

I am not associated with DVFilm in any way, I'm just a satisfied customer.

Brad,

I checked out that DVFilm site and it looks great, almost too good to be true. Do you have any samples of your before and after footage you can post, or at least the after?

I'm also a happy user of DVFilm Maker. Here are some frame grabs from footage processed with the program using the default de-interlace settings. They were shot with a PDX-10 in anamorphic 16:9, and the resulting 720x480 images were stretched to 854x480 in photoshop (click on the thumbnails to see full res images). The blowing dress and waves give you a good idea of what the program is capable of.

http://www.greenmist.com/trovatore/film/20030812

Actually, only the first 6 examples show the effect of DVFilm Maker. The bottom 2 frames (night scenes) were shot at 1/30 sec exposure, so the software has no effect on them.

The following were also processed with DVFilm Maker:

http://www.greenmist.com/trovatore/film/20030831

My only minor complaint is that the software doesn't recognize anamorphic 16:9 and just treats it like 4:3. This really doesn't change anything, but you have to set the anamorphic flag on the processed footage when you drop it into your NLE.

I'm running it on the Mac under OS 9.2. It will run in the background, however sometimes when I return to a background render I find the program has hung, which often requires a re-boot.

But I think it's a great tool for the price, and appreciate the fact that it works without After Effects, which I don't have :-)

Those are some beautiful frames, Boyd.

Totallky agree. I think I'm going to get it. Thanks for the tip Boyd. You should do a short movie clip so we can see how it looks in motion.

It seems to be a Mac users dream, and a PC users nightmare. The only compatible input format is AVI (DV type 2 compression) and the only output is a Quicktime.mov file.

I may be way off base, but isn't an MOV lesser quality than a dv compressed AVI file? Can mov be encoded to mpeg2 without quality loss?

Thanks guys. I'll see about posting some short clips, but wonder how useful they will be in highly compressed/reduced size.

I'll confess total ignorance when it comes to PC's, but I think .MOV is just the quicktime suffix. QuickTime files can use any sort of compression that you like, as long as you've installed the needed codecs.

Hi Alex,

<<<-- Originally posted by Alex Dunn : It seems to be a Mac users dream, and a PC users nightmare.-->>>

DVFilm is a dream with Mac and FCP, but still looks great when crunched with a PC. As I mentioned there are some workarounds, but in my opinion, it is still well worth it if you are seeking what I consider a much more pleasing look from "cold and hard" video.

<<<--The only compatible input format is AVI (DV type 2 compression) and the only output is a Quicktime.mov file.-->>>

If I remember right, don't quote me yet, but that isn't as big a problem as it might seem. Once you output the Quicktime.mov file, simply open MSP, import the .mov file, then drag it into your timeline. You will probably need to do a "smart check and convert" so go get a beer. Once that's done, then you can do whatever you need to do with it...export, print to tape, etc.

<<<--I may be way off base, but isn't an MOV lesser quality than a dv compressed AVI file? Can mov be encoded to mpeg2 without quality loss? -->>>

There are many on this forum who have more wisdom than I, but I believe that the .mov file that DVFilm produces is not a compressed file, but has all the necessary resolution to retain your original quality. I haven't noticed any loss when going from AVI (DV type 1 to DV type 2) to DVFilm (.mov) to (imported MSP to tape output). The final product has seemed, to me anyway, to have all of the information as the original.

I haven't done a conversion with my PC for awhile, but am quite willing to play around with it again and see if I can remember my exact workaround. At any rate, you might play around a bit and see if any of my suggestions help you get where you are heading.

I'll fiddle around some more and see if I can jog my synapses and remember exactly what workarounds I used to get a final product that I was happy with. DVFilm does produce a great look with the PC, it just takes a little extra effort to get there.

If anyone should find flaws in my logic or methods, I welcome your suggestions.

Guys, see my earlier post in this thread for comparisions: Copy the provided link into your browser and take a look at a LOT of example pictures of different de-interlacers :)

QuickTime myth
 

The myth about QuickTime being low quality from a PC user's perspective actually makes a lot of sense, but is a myth nevertheless. It comes from QuickTime being used historically for highly compressed video with codecs like CinePak, Sorenson and now MPEG4. So PC users tend to think of QuickTime as something like RealVideo. But worry not: QuickTime files with DV encoded video retain all the information the DV codec can carry. Assuming the DV codec being used is good, the video will be good. The same thing goes for AVI, which is basically Microsoft's lousy imitation of QuickTime. AVI or QuickTime are a kind of file format, but the video contained in those files can be encoded with assorted codecs depending on the needs. Thus you can have a low bandwidth MPEG4 video which can be streamed through ADSL or a 10 bit per channel uncompressed video which needs a SCSI array to play back in realtime; both can be QuickTime or AVI files but the codec being used is the important thing.