DVD Picture Quality

Try "Force Bob" or "Force Weave" instead of auto, and see which one is better.

Anyone know of any programs that incorporate more advanced deinterlacing algorithms available in software? I'm thinking of temporal adaptive deinterlacing in particular...

^blah..blah?

Quote
SSJiffy -> ^blah..blah?


Heh.

I meant: Are there any programs using any of the more advanced NTSC (standard TV--interlaced) to progressive (LCD/DLP/Plasma monitor--non-interlaced) conversion methods? I'm just talking about conversion from interlaced video to non-interlaced video-- not scaling from lower to higher resolution (i.e. 640x480 to 1920x1200); that's another issue entirely.

The most basic conversion methods can cause nasty-looking artifacts on screen, usually during on-screen motion, or heavy loss of detail (picture gets fuzzy), while the best hardware-based schemes (by, for example, Faroudja) do an amazing job of it.

Last time I looked, no software-only DVD player used anything more advanced than Bob and Weave, which are really basic conversion techniques.

I was asking if any software nowadays uses any of the fancier schemes...


EDIT: Okay, I've just now been reminded in another thread of a program called dscaler5--an open source TV/video program. It might use some of the more advanced schemes.

DVD image improvements

Okay, to try to answer the original poster's question:

DVD picture quality improvements can fall under several categories:
1. color
2. black level/white level
3. gray scale accuracy
4. color temperature
5. scaling
6. de-interlacing

1. color--make sure that your colors are spot-on; a good color calibration program will help there. Matter of fact, a decent one is built into the Nvidia display panel program for versions 77.72 and later, I believe.
2. black level/white level--or "contrast" and "brightness": make sure that video black = black ("brightness", go figure), and make sure that whites are the right intensity ("contrast"). LCD's tend to have problems here (black level for sure, some with contrast), but once again, a good video calibration program can help
3. gray scale accuracy--how gray is gray--i.e. do your grays have some red in them, or maybe blue? Not much you can do here, as far as I know. In fact, to do the job properly, you need some specialized test hardware. So just forget about it.
4. color temperature--simplified explanation: overall color balance of light in the scenes shown on the display. The NTSC standard is D6500, or approx. 6500 Kelvin. Many people prefer a bluer cast, though; the D6500 tends to make everything a little reddish.
5. scaling--it's done automagically by the Nvidia software
6. de-interlacing--this goes to the heart of my earlier post. De-interlacing is the science/art/black-magic of taking an interlaced video source and turning it into progressive video.
Interlaced video: basically 1/2 of the picture (alternating horizontal lines) is displayed at a time, alternating between even and odd fields, as opposed to progressive video which displays the entire picture at once. Most (maybe all?) software DVD player/video players only use basic de-interlacing techniques, namely Bob and Weave. If you can find some player software/codec/video hardware driver that allows for "per-pixel" de-interlacing, you're in pretty good shape.
An excellent read on the topic:
HERE.

Also a good read: HERE.

Now, I'm sure I missed a few areas...

bump