If I'm making a DVD that I know will be viewed (almost) exclusively on computer screens - i.e. on progressive rather than interlaced displays, would it be better for me to deinterlace the footage before encoding to DVD? Will this avoid getting interlacing artefacts - that combing we're familiar with - in moving objects? Is this a valid strategy? Why shouldn't I deinterlace?
Thanks
Mark
If you 'de-interlace' before encoding, you're making progressive at 25fps, i.e. jerky film motion, 25 images/second. If you make the DVD interlaced, you're putting 50 images/second on the disk, i.e. smooth motion. The DVD player will output the interlaced footage to the display, which, if it's a pixel-based panel, will de-interlace it at 50 images/second, i.e. 50fps, smooth motion.
So, it depends on whether you want smooth or jerky motion. Your choice :)
Interesting Alan. So the 50i DVD is shown as 50p on a computer screen, is that it? But each field of the 50i is half vertical resolution - so does that mean that each frame of the 50p is likewise?
tom.
Put it like this, pixel-based displays are all progressive, never interlaced. So, if you feed an interlaced signal into it, the display processor must do the de-interlacing. This way, you get 50 different images per second. If you de-interlace before making the DVD, you're making only 25 different images per second. Of course, we don't know how good the display processor is, and you tend to get what you pay for in this game, so a cheap display won't do a brilliant job, but at least you still get 50 images per second.