I've used the guides to the best of my ability to try to work through this on my own, but I figured I'd try the forum to get some further advice on how to deal with this.
I ripped some footage from my DVDs of Code Lyoko -- a "pseudo anime" that you all probably love to hate, but that's another thread for another day -- and got this:
frame 1:
frame 2:
frame 3:
Pretty standard quality. Now it's time to de-interlace. I tried using the AMVIVTC function first, since this is what I've had the most success with in the past. My simple script is was as follows:
MPEG2Source("C:\Users\Preferred User\Desktop\DGIndexProjectFiles\CL3.d2v", CPU=4)
AMVIVTC(mode=1)
ConvertToRGB32()
That gets me these frames:
frame 1:
frame 2:
frame 3:
The script deinterlaces the video, but makes it run slower than molasses when played in Virtualdub or in Adobe Premiere. Being nearly impossible to work with is one thing, but aside from that, the frames (fields?) seem blended, and even with the bare-minimum of motion between these frames, frame #2 contains "traces" of the images in frame #3, and frame #3 contains traces of the imagine in frame #2. This is kind of gross and I get the feeling that nobody here would stand for such a thing if they caught someone else turning in a video like this. So I'd like to get rid of it. But first, maybe I can make the script run a little better in my applications. Maybe I'll try the AMVDeint function.
MPEG2Source("C:\Users\Preferred User\Desktop\DGIndexProjectFiles\CL3.d2v", CPU=4)
AMVDeint(mode=0)
ConvertToRGB32()
Success! Now I can play it smoothly in Virtualdub and edit in Premiere with ease. But there's still a problem.
frame 1:
frame 2:
frame 3:
These still look really bad. Is this what they call "field blending" or something else? Is there a way to get rid of it? To be honest, at least in viewing it in Virtualdub and working with it in Premiere, it looks fine while it's playing. I haven't cut and exported anything using it yet, so I don't know if or how it could create problems when used as source material. I get the feeling this is a common problem, although I've never seen it show up in any footage from anime that I've used to date. Could it be because this isn't anime, but a French cartoon, and one that was likely converted from the original PAL format to NTSC for our region 1 viewing pleasure? The guide does say of
Full Field Blended Sources, "these are the scourge of PAL anime DVDs."
Has anyone had success restoring this kind of footage to a progressive, non-blended, clean-looking state? Is there anything that can be done, and if not, does it even matter? I'd probably be willing to let it slide if this was something I was simply making for myself, but I get the feeling that viewers and possible collaborators on this idea I'm working on won't like this one bit. Any advice would be really appreciated.