What is the best way to deinterlace and upscale films from DVDs using the Dione and Proteus models

Topaz Video AI General
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Hello, I am new here (TVAI user since November 2022), this is my first post. Please be lenient if it’s too “beginner” or not technical enough.

Generally, I am very glad I’ve started using TVAI and satisfied with the results I’m getting.

I am about to upscale a number of feature films ripped from DVDs (as .mkv files). Most of them are films from the 1990s and early 2000s, some may be from the 1980s or 1970s or even earlier decades. I will upscale them, cropping if necessary, from their native resolution to whatever is closest to FullHD (so, for example, 1920x816 if the film has the 2.35:1 pixel ratio, or 1440x1080 if it’s 4:3, and everything in-between), choosing the square pixels option.

The films I am referring too are interlaced, so I need to deinterlace them (I’ve tried upscaling them using Proteus without deinterlacing and the result looked horrible). My question is how to do it best.

I am using TVAI 3.15 on a system which allows me to process each film in no longer than 4-5 hours (a lot of them faster). Time is not an issue, I don’t mind waiting a couple of hours more, I’m mainly interested in the quality of the output.

I have so far used the Proteus model (for similar films which did not need deinterlacing), with results that I find satisfactory, so I would kind of like to stick to it. However, IIUC, I need to use the Dione model now to deinterlace the videos before upscaling (if I want to deinterlace within TVAI).

So if I understand the situation correctly (please correct me if I’m wrong!), I can go about it for example in one of the following ways:

  1. Deinterlace the 720x480 video using Dione, either converting it to square pixels or not, and then, as a separate process, upscale it to FullHD (1920x816, or 1440x1080, or whatever is appropriate) using Proteus (converting it to square pixels if I didn’t do it in the first step).

  2. Deinterlace, upscale and convert pixels to square ones using Dione.

  3. Deinterlace, upscale and covert pixels to square ones using Dione and then enhance the upscaled video (without any more upscaling) using Proteus.

I’ve tried processing one of the films using methods 1 and 2 above and compared the results. I have a feeling the result of method No. 1 is slightly superior, but I’m not sure if I’m not biased, as I intuitively think method 1 should be better.

So my questions are:

Would anyone have any recommendations as to how to proceed? - based either on the theory behind the models, or your own experiences (or both)

From the theoretical point of view of how the models work - is any of the methods described above better than the rest? Or perhaps a different method still would be most recommendable?

Furthermore, which Dione model would be best for 1990s movies/2000s movies/1980s or previous decades movies? The info I’ve found on this forum is that "“Dione-DV” is trained mainly to deal with high quality interlaced digital source such as DV, DVCPRO, DVCAM, etc. “Dione-TV” is designed to handle analog TV/VHS/8mm sources . I would think 1990s movies (and any older ones) should be closer to “Dione-TV” - is this correct?

Any info, comments and suggestions would be appreciated :slightly_smiling_face:.

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Hello.
It depends on the footage you process, but most films are produced in 24p (23.976fps progressive).
Later DVDs are often recorded in 24p, but early DVDs may be telecine and recorded in 30i (29.97fps interlaced).
For DVDs recorded in 30i, Inverse Telecine(30i → 24p) is required.

However, the current TVAI does not have an Inverse Telecine function.
Dione differs from Inverse Telecine because it is like bob deinterlacing in AI.

There are several ways to do Inverse Telecine.

1: Save the inverse telecine losslessly in another encoder and upscale it in TVAI.
2: Run TVAI’s FFMPEG in the CLI and execute FFMPEG’s built-in inverse telecine filter.
3: Write Avisynth or VaporSynth scripts to perform inverse telecine and have TVAI process them.

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DVDs may also be recorded in 30i (we broadcast vets actually tend to refer to it as 60i, since it is 59.97 interlaced fields per second.) because the original source material was filmed at 24p and then telecined to video (either before editing or–as was common in television shows, transferred and edited on video), and this 60i NTSC videotape master was used as the source for the DVD.

I hope that TVAI adds inverse telecine soon. It’s a huge hole in it’s video processing capabilities, IMO.

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You too vote for “Request: Add Inverse Telecine/DeTelecine/IVTC” in the “Ideas” thread!
By clicking on the “Vote” button in the upper left corner, you can cast your vote.

If you look closely, you were the one who started the IVTC thread.
Thanks for building a great thread.

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have you tried the simpler option of Deinterlacing and upscaling using Dione: DV (or TV) in one shot as a single step? you’ll be suppressed how decent job it does. I use that method and usually I am pretty happy with the results. you don’t need to process the entire movie to check the results. you can select the preview mode. that way you con compare many options pretty fast.

watch this video, it will give you guide lines on how to work with preview mode and with few settings/presets, etc.

if you do select to deinterlace your videos 1st and then upscale a progressive video then you should really check @TomaszW posts with his many ready made presets and test them out.
tip: don’t be fooled by the presets names, try them all. for example I found that his 8k Preset he named it, works best on my old 1990 interlaced Video8 Camcorder videos. so try them all (use the preview mode option to quickly compare)

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hello this is the second time you say “don’t be fooled with the names” regarding my presets, each preset is for each use, 4k is for 4k, 8k is for 8k, and so on. The names are not to fool you. Well, I wanted to clear things up on this side. Cordially

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I mean , that the person should not skip testing those preset from just because the names don’t fit his use case… because for me for example the preset names that should match my use case were not good compared to those presets that don’t match my naming use case which were far superior in my case.

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Thank you so much for all the replies! I appreciate your taking the time to post them. They are potentially very useful, although they also do raise new questions for me. I will post the most pressing ones below.

It depends on the footage you process, but most films are produced in 24p (23.976fps progressive).
Later DVDs are often recorded in 24p, but early DVDs may be telecine and recorded in 30i (29.97fps interlaced).
For DVDs recorded in 30i, Inverse Telecine(30i → 24p) is required.

How would I know if the particular footage needs Inverse Telecine (IVTC) or not?

However, the current TVAI does not have an Inverse Telecine function.

Interestingly, among the films I have upscaled so far (always using the Proteus model), there have been some cases where the source video (a specific example: a 1948 film ripped from a 720x480 DVD) was 29.97fps (at least judging by what VLC is showing me when I play the file; MediaInfo is not showing any fps information at all in this case) and after processing with Proteus, the resulting video is 23.976fps. Would that be because IVTC happened somehow? I was actually quite amazed to see that change (which did not effect the length of the film). Or is it that the VLC information regarding the source file may be incorrect? Could it be the case of a “later DVD recorded in 24p”?

have you tried the simpler option of Deinterlacing and upscaling using Dione: DV (or TV) in one shot as a single step?

Yes, this is pretty much option 2 I mentioned in my message: " 2. Deinterlace, upscale and convert pixels to square ones using Dione" - all in one single step. The results seem good to me. The resulting video is 59.940 fps.

Taking this into account (the seemingly good result), and contrasting it with this statement:

For DVDs recorded in 30i, Inverse Telecine(30i → 24p) is required.

would that imply my footage did not really need IVTC? If so, this brings me back to the question of how would I know, before processing, that the footage needs IVTC or not.

A further question: if I end up with a 59.940 fps video (movie) after the processing, is there anything wrong with it? I mean, would it have been better to have converted the footage to 24fps before upscaling (to also end up with a 24 fps processed video)? From what I’ve read on the web, people would say there is no ideal frames per second rate, it all depends on what I need, and they would say 24fps gives a “movie” feel to the video, while doubling the fps when deinterlacing (to 59.940 fps in case of a 29.97 fps source video) is highly recommended and ensures smoother motion. The Dione model does exactly that (doubles the fps when deinterlacing), so if the resulting video looks good, am I done or should I worry it’s not 24 fps?

And the last question for now: regarding the first method I mentioned - deinterlace the 720x480 video (ripped from a DVD) and convert it to square pixels using Dione (without upscaling), then, as a separate process, upscale it to FullHD using Proteus - is there any reason why this would be not recommendable? (like that for example it’s not advisable to process the same video twice using different models or something - I’m asking because I don’t know if there may be any such rules).

Thank you in advance for any replies :slight_smile: .

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I can’t answer you on the other questions you got as I got zero knowledge on Telecine.
but on this one, I actually recommend if you are planning to go that route of de-interlace your video 1st as a separate process, to de-interlace with an external program 1st using the QTGMC + bob method (not sure how it plays well with Telecine, maybe the telecine people here can comment) and not through TVAI. export it in a “lossless” video (see screen shots)
for this example I’ll be using “Hybrid” which is pretty popular tool and it is a freeware.

De-interlacing filter settings:

image
image1161×324 18.3 KB

Lossless Settings (pick one of the two lossless encoding options x264 or FFV1, both are fine)
H.264 / x264
image

OR (in this one, if you choose, make sure to output as “avi”, not “mp4”, under “Base” tab, bottom left)
FFV1
image

to select what encoding format you use (e.g. lossless x264 or FFV1) for the two lossless options above.
image

NOTE: bear in mind, encoding in “lossless” would generate large file size, so make sure you have enough storage available.

once you de-interlaced your video, you can feed TVAI with your de-interlaced video and use your filter/preset setting of choice.

P.S. I have noticed personally that “Original Pixel” settings in TVAI generated sharper and slightly more detailed/quality results then selecting “Square Pixel” on my 1998 Video8 4:3 576i camcorder movies

you can test both for yourself and preview both on TVAI and if you wish you could also use a compare tool to check the results to see for yourself if you notice any difference between the two (that would save you tons of time). or just playback the 2s / 5s preview you generate from both one right after the other to see if you spot any difference in quality.

Video-Compare - Video compare tool
Topaz Video AI v3.0: Working with multiple video files - YouTube - how to use preview mode

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How would I know if the particular footage needs Inverse Telecine (IVTC) or not?

There is a detailed explanation on wikipedia.
(“Telecine” and “pull-down” are originally two different words, but are generally used interchangeably.)
The process diagram will help you get an idea of how the conversion between 24p and 30i is done.

To determine whether or not a video is a pulled-down video, feed the video frame by frame in the video editor.
If it looks like “A,” “B,” “B+C,” “C+D,” or “D,” then it is most likely video being pull-down.

Or is it that the VLC information regarding the source file may be incorrect? Could it be the case of a “later DVD recorded in 24p”?

Please read “Soft and hard telecine” on the “Telecine” page.
Older or lower quality DVDs may be recorded in hard telecine (30i), while newer or better quality DVDs are recorded in soft telecine (24p → 30i decoding).
Some players may recognize soft telecine as 30i.
I tried to display the information in Mediainfo and VLC for videos encoded with Soft Telecine.

Mediainfo
Mediainfo547×900 158 KB

VLC
VLC618×930 26.1 KB

A further question: if I end up with a 59.940 fps video (movie) after the processing, is there anything wrong with it?

The image quality is reduced because the original resolution is low and the amount of information is low.
720x480 30i (29.97 fps) is like 720x240 at 59.94 fps.
It is smooth as movement, but the amount of information as a picture is half the resolution.
For telecine video, inverse telecine is performed to 720x480 24p to obtain the appropriate amount of information.

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Maybe this also help… Interlacing patterns

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Hi, thanks 1000 times for the lossless encoding method! For a long time I used the Prores thinking it was the best, I tested your method with the H264 in lossless, there is a big difference in quality! I also work with camcorder videos from 98 to 720x576. On the other hand, when I used the Prores, with QTGMC, I did not put everything in slower, the more we increase the “final temporal smoothing”, the more details we lose in the movements.

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Thank you SO MUCH to akilaspam and TicoRodriguez for your detailed replies, and also to Carlito for the link. I greatly appreciate all the info and tips!

The information (which I’ll still have to ‘digest’ fully) already makes the whole picture much clearer. And the lossless method of de-interlacing in Hybrid sounds just like what I need. I’ve used Hybrid before (a little bit), so I’m slightly familiar with it.

I will have to do my homework now. I will get back with feedback about the results or more questions.

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that is why i stopped using ProRes, I noticed it has weird quality issues on my Video8 processing in some cases (i posted a whole new post about this issue here in the forum).
now I only use the lossless x264 and the lossless FFV1 (started to like that one). I personally couldn’t tell the difference in quality between the two, to me they look the same.
once you de-interlace your videos, check out @TomaszW presets for upscaling.
I personally found two that works great for my Video8 files.

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Was QTGMC able to do inverse telecine (30i → 24p)?
I thought it was used to convert 30i to 30p or 60p.

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Indeed the prores is to be banned in fact :slight_smile: I haven’t tested with FFV1 yet, I’ll test when I have time, are you talking about hybrid or vai presets? PS: the final temporal smoothing loses less detail in H264 Lossless than in Prores, so it’s great! but with H264, the files are only 65 MB / s and in dark passages, it is like kind of spots.

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Which Prores profile are you using in Hybrid, LQ or HQ ? LQ compresses more and for that it removes even more noise and details…

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QTGMC is a deinterlacer, not an inverse telecine tool.

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I knew I couldn’t do inverse telecine in QTGMC.
I think that inverse telecine is the best way to get the best image quality for a telecine (pull-down) video, so I am uncomfortable with the name QTGMC being mentioned.

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I was using prores hq with hybrid and vai, but lossless h264 in hybrid followed by a vai model gives much better results. Afterwards with hybrid I always code in prores hq because I don’t know if h264 with the crf at 0 has less loss than prores. I am using version 2.6.4