Strange frame/field progression from DV-AVI film capture?

[stevevid]

My wife and I recently participated in a Texas and university-based program called the "Texas Archives Of The Moving Image." The joint organization is digitizing old films owned by people in Texas. We submitted three 16mm films--two home movies from the middle 1950s and a film from the 1939 World's Fair my father-in-law was in. The organization returned the films to us and included three video files.

I tried to get the videos in uncompressed or lossless compressed formats, but I was unable to reach anyone who understood what I was talking about. The files are DV-based. VirtualDub is able to open and play the videos. AviSynth is able to read the files once I added Matrox codecs referred to in a 2010 thread on DigitalFAQ (thanks!).

GSpot identifies the files as DV Type 2 AVI, 29.97fps, interlaced, bottom frame first, and in DVD format. I assume the videos are telecined since I get strange motion/no motion when advancing the video one frame at a time. I tried using VD's de-interlacer with double frame rate and TFF/BFF as a test for interlacing but got even stranger motion where sometimes the preview input frame would move and the output would not. A few days ago I thought I saw that the format was YV16, but I haven't been able to confirm that today. Any words of wisdom on how to handle the structure of these videos?

Thanks,
Steve

[lordsmurf]

It's such a shame that self-declared "archivists" do such a shitty job. I went to that site, and some of those names are vaguely familiar to me, but from about 15-20 years ago. The resumes/about look nice on paper, but clearly they don't know as much as they claim.

- DV = yuck, you lose 50% of color data
- 29.97 = not the right film speed whatsoever, and leads to the blending/judder you see
- nope, not telecined, not if interlaced DV
- not YV16

Gspot is a tad dated and feature-bare, so try it again with MediaInfo. More details in there.

Essentially you have not-ideal digital versions of the film. I'm curious how the film transfer was done. If not wetgate, it's really just a low-end dry process. Wondering if scanned, or using the crappy camera-on-screen/sheet method (popular in 8mm>VHS era).

[sanlyn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by stevevid

GSpot identifies the files as DV Type 2 AVI, 29.97fps, interlaced, bottom frame first, and in DVD format. I assume the videos are telecined since I get strange motion/no motion when advancing the video one frame at a time. I tried using VD's de-interlacer with double frame rate and TFF/BFF as a test for interlacing but got even stranger motion where sometimes the preview input frame would move and the output would not. A few days ago I thought I saw that the format was YV16, but I haven't been able to confirm that today. Any words of wisdom on how to handle the structure of these videos?

Gspot is pretty long in the tooth these days, although you can get some partial info using it. Better to use the free MediainfoXP utility that can get more detail. Its text readout can be copied to the clipboard and pasted as text in a forum post. MediaInfoXP is a simple standalone app that requires no installer. Works in all versions of Windows. https://www.videohelp.com/software/MediaInfoXP

"GSpot identifies the files as DV Type 2 AVI, 29.97fps, interlaced, bottom frame first, and in DVD format" doesn't make any sense. DV can't be used for the DVD format, and neither can AVI containers. Perhaps you mean that the AVI video is burned as data to a DVD optical disc?

[stevevid]

I found that there are two MediaInfo programs. I downloaded MediaInfo as recommended by LS and MediaInfoXP as recommended by Sayln. Both seem to give the same info. The only difference I saw was MediaInfo lets me present the info in different ways such as text, HTML, etc.

Sayln, I agree with your comment about: ""GSpot identifies the files as DV Type 2 AVI, 29.97fps, interlaced, bottom frame first, and in DVD format" doesn't make any sense." The DVD format indication came from GSpot. So I guess GSpot is more than just long in the tooth. It can present odd information.

Here is the text from the MediaInfoXP analysis of the whole video:

Quote:

General
Complete name : D:\Videos\Texas Archives Of The Moving Image digitzed films\2018_01595\2018_01595.avi
Format : AVI
Format/Info : Audio Video Interleave
Commercial name : DVCPRO
Format profile : OpenDML
File size : 3.33 GiB
Duration : 15 min 42 s
Overall bit rate mode : Constant
Overall bit rate : 30.3 Mb/s
Recorded date : 2018-07-08T17:19:21-05:00

Video
ID : 0
Format : DV
Commercial name : DVCPRO
Codec ID : dvsd
Codec ID/Hint : Sony
Duration : 15 min 42 s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 24.4 Mb/s
Encoded bit rate : 28.8 Mb/s
Width : 720 pixels
Height : 480 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 4:3
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 29.970 (30000/1001) FPS
Original frame rate : 29.970 (29970/1000) FPS
Standard : NTSC
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:1:1
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Interlaced
Scan order : Bottom Field First
Compression mode : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 2.357
Time code of first frame : 00:00:00:00 / 00:00:00:00
Time code source : Adobe tc_A / Adobe tc_O
Stream size : 3.16 GiB (95%)

Audio
ID : 1
Format : PCM
Format settings : Little / Signed
Codec ID : 1
Duration : 15 min 42 s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 1 536 kb/s
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz
Bit depth : 16 bits
Stream size : 173 MiB (5%)
Alignment : Aligned on interleaves
Interleave, duration : 959 ms (28.73 video frames)
Interleave, preload duration : 959 ms

I used VirtualDub to preview the video and got odd image movement when I stepped through the video. I got the following movement progression in both input and output panes as I progressed step by step with VD in Preview Progressive mode. Forgive the odd formatting. I had everything lined up, but my extra spacing was removed when I submitted the reply:

Step: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
Movement: y n n y y n y y y n y y y n y y

On my VHS capture I can view the field by field progression with the VD deinterlace filter set up with Yadif double frame rate and TFF enabled. The output pane correctly shows movement with each step while the input pane only shows movement every two steps.

Any idea what causes the odd frame/field progression I see as I step through the video frame by frame? Is it caused by the need to insert frames to adjust between the fps of the film versus the 29.970 fps video? I tried the VD deinterlace filter to check the input and output movement and got even stranger progression. This setup showed one movement followed by one to five non-movement steps. Plus sometimes only the input or output pane would show movement. I had never seen the input move without the output moving.