Interlacing issues with captured video

[fornax]

A few weeks ago I found some of my old middle school basketball games on VHS tapes and decided to have a go at learning some video editing while converting the tapes to a digital format (DVD). Step one, of course, was to get the video off the tapes and onto my computer. I borrowed a VCR from my Mom, as well as the Dazzle DVC100 USB capture device I bought her a couple of years ago, and tried to figure out if I could even get the device to work in Ubuntu. Lo and behold, after trying a few different things, I was able to get a pretty satisfactory capture (of video, anyway... couldn't finagle the audio, but I did that later with Audacity) out of VLC.

To make a long story short, I need to do it again (because I think I made some bed decisions regarding resolution/framerate/etc.), but I can't reproduce the quality I managed before, and I made the cardinal mistake of not documenting what I was doing while I was doing it.

The main problem is that my videos are now coming out with some bad combing from the interlacing. I looked at the previous video (which I'm pretty sure came straight out of VLC), and there's no combing in it. I do remember having an issue with it originally, but somehow I got past it, and I can't for the life of me remember if I did something about it, or if it just decided to start working.

Here's what avconv says about the original "good" file:

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avconv version 0.8.5-6:0.8.5-0ubuntu0.12.10.1, Copyright (c) 2000-2012 the Libav developers built on Jan 24 2013 14:52:53 with gcc 4.7.2 [mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2 @ 0x8b9e880] multiple edit list entries, a/v desync might occur, patch welcome [h264 @ 0x8ba3200] illegal reordering_of_pic_nums_idc [h264 @ 0x8ba3200] decode_slice_header error Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from '/home/david/Pictures/basketball.mp4': Metadata: major_brand : isom minor_version : 0 compatible_brands: mp41avc1qt creation_time : 2013-03-12 02:03:42 encoder : vlc 2.0.5 stream output encoder-eng : vlc 2.0.5 stream output Duration: 01:38:39.96, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 1153 kb/s Stream #0.0(eng): Audio: mp2, 44100 Hz, stereo, s16, 127 kb/s Metadata: creation_time : 2013-03-12 02:03:42 Stream #0.1(eng): Video: h264 (High), yuv420p, 696x480 [PAR 80:87 DAR 4:3], 1016 kb/s, 29.97 fps, 1001 tbr, 1001 tbn, 8589.93 tbc Metadata: creation_time : 2013-03-12 02:03:42

And here's my attempt (and failure) at duplicating that format exactly:

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avconv version 0.8.5-6:0.8.5-0ubuntu0.12.10.1, Copyright (c) 2000-2012 the Libav developers built on Jan 24 2013 14:52:53 with gcc 4.7.2 [mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2 @ 0x9db9880] multiple edit list entries, a/v desync might occur, patch welcome [h264 @ 0x9dbe200] illegal reordering_of_pic_nums_idc [h264 @ 0x9dbe200] decode_slice_header error Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from '/home/david/Desktop/bballvideos/basketball2.mp4': Metadata: major_brand : isom minor_version : 0 compatible_brands: mp41avc1qt creation_time : 2013-03-30 21:03:43 encoder : vlc 2.0.5 stream output encoder-eng : vlc 2.0.5 stream output Duration: 00:00:33.26, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 2927 kb/s Stream #0.0(eng): Audio: mp3, 44100 Hz, stereo, s16, 127 kb/s Metadata: creation_time : 2013-03-30 21:03:43 Stream #0.1(eng): Video: h264 (High), yuv420p, 696x480 [PAR 80:87 DAR 4:3], 2793 kb/s, 30 fps, 25 tbr, 1001 tbn, 50 tbc Metadata: creation_time : 2013-03-30 21:03:43

Basically, to walk through what I'm doing...

• Open VLC (2.0.5) and hit Media->Convert/Save...
• On the Capture Device tab, select my Video Device, an Audio Device, NTSC video standard, and hit Advanced Options.
• Enter Width=696, Height=480, Framerate=29.97, click Ok, then click "Convert/Save"
• Choose a destination file, leave Profile at the default "Video - H.264 + MP3 (MP4)", and click "Start". (The Deinterlace check doesn't seem to do anything... I've tried with and without.

I let it play for a bit, stop it, and view my combed-through video.

I'm rather confused at this point. Does anyone have any ideas on what I may have done before that could have crushed the interlacing?

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Did you change deinterlacing in preferences?

[fornax]

Did you change deinterlacing in preferences?

If you're referring to the settings in Tools->Preferences, Video, it appears those only apply to playback? I did a capture with deinterlacing turned on there ("Bob" mode), and though the captured video played back well in VLC, I can tell by playing it back in another player that the combing is still there.