can you watch a dvd in prog-scan mode on a computer?

[bryantm3]

is this possible, and what software do i need? or would i need an entirely different cd drive?

 

[Jedi2016]

You would need a DVD drive.

I believe most every DVD player for the computer automatically uses progressive-scan, since computer monitors are all pro-scan.

 

[bryantm3]

well, my dvd player on my mac plays it interlaced. and so does pretty much every other computer i've seen. when i click on 'deinterlace' in the menu bar, it makes it fuzzy.

 

[Jedi2016]

Yeah, that's something you kind of have to live with. The only PC software I've ever used was PowerDVD, and everything did look a bit fuzzy.

The deinterlacing has to happen, though... regardless of what you may hear, the actual video file on the disc is interlaced. I've never actually seen a computer play it back that way, though.. maybe that's just how PowerDVD always does it, I dunno.

 

[bryantm3]

are you sure the VOB files are interlaced??
i thought they went frame by frame, and the dvd players converted this info to make it interlaced.

 

[MDS]

DVDs are interlaced but there can be a mix of film and video frames and there are flags to indicate that the following frames go together and should be displayed progressively. Sometimes the flags are not present or incorrectly authored and the player tries to guess based on the 'cadence'. That is why no player is absolutely perfect on all DVDs.

 

[RLA]

Hello
Try using refresh rates that are multiples of 23.976 fps for film based material 47.952 or 71.928 or try 59.940

Many of the new G-force and ATI drivers allow for custom refresh rates
If yours does support this you can use Powerstrip to create them

http://www.entechtaiwan.com/util/ps.shtm

For an explanation of 3:2 pull down and de-interlacing
Read this
http://scanline.ca/deinterlacing/?N=D

 

[Jedi2016]

are you sure the VOB files are interlaced??
i thought they went frame by frame, and the dvd players converted this info to make it interlaced.

Nope, they're interlaced. I've ripped files off of DVDs before, to get live animation reference when working on something in LightWave, and I always have to reverse the 3:2 pulldown to end up with the original 24p video. The actual VOB/MPEG-2 file is 30i. For NTSC, anyway.. PAL is 25p.

If the video is deinterlaced properly, you don't lose anything.. the full frames are all there, it's just that some of them are split over two frames of animation. If the fields are simply combined (rather than discarded, which most deinterlacing software does), you end up with the original full-resolution frame. In a video editor, you have to be a real stickler about recombining the fields in order to do it right. I'm not sure how DVD players or TVs do it.

We won't have to worry about that with the hi-def DVDs, though. Both BD and HD-DVD are encoded on the disc at 24p. Assuming that's the framerate of the original footage, of course. But most everything is shot at 24fps these days, including almost all pre-recorded TV shows. I think reality shows still use 30fps video, but that's not real TV, so it doesn't count.