Briefly, deinterlacing is a solution to display interlaced videos on progressive screens. There is a lot more about deinterlacing which we shall discuss in the first segment of this article. We will also show you how to deinterlace videos by using VLC Media Player, Avisynth and TMPGEnc.

Part 1: What is deinterlacing

So what does deinterlace mean? Well, videos are of two types, that is interlaced and progressive. Interlaced videos are the type of videos with one frame only having alternate lines of a picture displayed. In contrast, progressive videos sequentially draw all the lines that a video has. Interlaced videos, like 1080i videos are mostly used to save bandwidth while broadcasting, especially by cable companies. Progressive videos like 1080p videos are common with streaming sites like Hulu, Apple TV+, Netflix, etc., and the displays available these days are all progressive. What that means is they support 2160p, 1440p, 1080p, 720p, etc., videos by default and not 1080i. Therefore, the solution to display those interlaced videos on the screens available today is to deinterlace them. Now, it is not a perfect solution, and some have described it as a fundamentally impossible task, but it can happen through “temporal interpolation”. Softwares like VLC Media Player, Avisynth and TMPGEnc.

What-is-deinterlacing

Part 2: The easiest way to add interlacing effect on video

We have shown you how to deinterlace a video, and while it is fundamentally an impossible task that must always produce some image degradation, software tools like VLC Media Player, Avisynth and TMPGEnc make it possible through “temporal interpolation”. Now suppose you want to do the opposite by adding an interlacing effect, that is possible with Leawo Video Converter Ultimate, which is a very powerful but easy to use video converting program. That is because it incorporates a video editor which allows you to trim, watermark, remove noise, interlacing, and more before you convert your videos. You also get the ability to convert normal video from 2D to 3D.

Note: Leawo Video Converter Ultimate is built in Leawo Prof. Media.

Download and install it on your computer, then follow the easy steps below.

Step 1: Import the source videos

You can click on the “Add Video” icon to import the videos or directly drag them to the main menu. Once the videos have been imported, then you can see them on the list.

deinterlace video

Step 2: Select the output format

Click “Change” button to enter the Profile settings panel, then navigate to the “Format” section and select an appropriate video format accordingly.

deinterlace video

Step 3: Adjust video parameters

Click the “Edit” drop down box instead of “Change” in the main menu. It includes “Video Codec”, “Bite Rates”, “Resolution”, “Frame Rate” and “Aspect Ratio”. Adjust them accordingly. You can also adjust the audio parameters.

deinterlace video

Step 4: Add the interlacing effect to your videos

The video editor allows you to edit the videos by watermarking, merging, cropping, adjusting parameters, converting them to 3D, and also interlacing them before you convert the videos. The video editing icon is placed next to each video, therefore click it to enter the editing menu. Under the 3D panel of the editor, you should find the interlacing option, labeled as ‘Interleaved’. Enable the option and move on to the last step.

deinterlace video

Step 5: Convert the videos

Set the output folder for the output video files. Click the green “Convert” icon on at the bottom to start converting, and wait for the conversion process to finish.

deinterlace video

Part 3: How to deinterlace in VLC Media Player

VideoLAN launched VLC Media player back in 2005, and it remains a dominant and key media playback software today. In fact, as of July 2020 it has been downloaded over 2 billion times and it has about 700 contributors, and also 70 000 commits. This can be attributed to its simplicity and ease of use, the fact that it is multi-platform with Windows, Mac, Linux, Android and iOS apps available for users, and the fact that it is free and open source. According to the company behind VLC Media Player, it remains the most popular app on the Windows platform in its category, and that was also made possible after Microsoft announced that it would no longer be bundling Windows Media Center starting with Windows 8. It can play many file formats on a wide range of platforms, which is not very surprising because in their own words, the company did say that "VLC plays everything and runs everywhere.”. VLC Media Player also incorporates some advanced tools that users can take advantage of. For instance, it can allow you to control the media playback speed, it can repair damaged media files, it incorporates network streaming, and in this case, it can easily deinterlace videos. There are two methods for deinterlacing video through using VLC, and they are:

deinterlace-videos-vlc

1. The easy method:

Step 1: Open the VLC Media Player app, then click the drop down ‘Tools’ menu, then select ‘Preferences’. Alternatively., you can open the Preferences by pressing Ctrl+P on your keyboard.
Step 2: When the menu opens, click on the video tab. Under ‘Video’ you should see the ‘Dinterlacing’ drop-down button. Click it and select ‘On’ from the drop-down menu.
Step 3: When you are done with the settings, click on ‘Save’ then try playing your videos again.

2. The advanced method:

Step 1: Open the VLC Media Player app, then open the Preferences by pressing Ctrl+P on your keyboard.
Step 2: Enable the option to see all settings. Navigate to Video > Filters > Deinterlace.
Step 3: Choose your preferred deinterlace mode, like ‘Blend’ or ‘Mean’ from the Streaming deinterlace mode drop-down menu.
Step 4: When you are done with the settings, click on ‘Save’ then try playing your videos again.

Part 4: How to deinterlace in Avisynth

Using Avisynth for deinterlacing is not as easy and straightforward as you would do it through VLC Media Player. In fact, it requires some very advanced techniques, but we are sure professionals can handle the task relatively easily. By using Avisynth, there are more than one ways to deinterlace a video, but Bob deinterlacing will probably give you the best results because the quality will be higher. In the most basic form, bobbing involves making each field in an interlaced video frame into a separate picture (frame) and then doubling its vertical size. At the end, the video will receive the same resolution as the original. Because it does not require any information from the surrounding fields or frames to create the missing lines, Bob deinterlacing is sometimes referred to as dumb bobber.

Avisynth

Bob does not have an argument for specifying field orders, which basically means it will use any order that the Avisynth application guesses for your video clip. By using AssumeTFF, you can explicitly set the field order of each clip if you want the top field before the bottom. If you want the bottom field before the top, then you can use AssumeBFF.

Here is an example:
Bob (clip Clip, float "b", float "c", int "Height")

The “b” stands for the blurring value, and the “c” stands for the ringing value. Therefore, if you want to make sure that this method gives you the best results, make sure that your script has everything correct.

Part 5: How to deinterlace in TMPGEnc

To deinterlace video by using TMPGEnc is just as advanced as using Avisynth, therefore it will be up to you to choose the appropriate tool. TMPGEnc, otherwise known as Tsunami MPEG Encoder is a video transcoding software, which primarily serves to encode VCD and SVCDs to MPEG formats. It is available on the Windows platform, and free of use although you need to pay for Video Mastering works as well as MPEG-2 encoding. Using TMPGEnc requires extra steps, specifically you need to set the frame rate you want to keep for the output video before deinterlacing.

TMPGEnc

Because TMPGEnc is so advanced, the steps on how to deinterlace video are different depending on the specific needs. As such, we would recommend you to visit the supplier website on this link, which has specific tutorials.

Part 6: How to deinterlace video in Premiere

If you are using Adobe Premiere, you can easily deinterlace a video. Open up the program and then a video project that you are hoping to tweak.

deinterlace a vide

Take the footage that you want to edit, drag it into your timeline and then use the menu to deinterlace. You will select Clip, Video Options and then Field Options.

Now you have the Field Options window that you can use to select Flicker Removal. This is a good option if you have a short clip with minimal motion. You can also select Always Deinterlace which will scan your videos and remove half the frames that are not needed. It is a bit of a lengthier process, but it will ensure that your video is high quality. It is the best option for content that has more motion.

Part 7: How to deinterlace video in FFmpeg

As command-liner tool, FFmpeg actually helps you do a lot of things like converting videos. It could also help you deinterlace video easily. The key is to get a proper filter in the command line of FFmpeg.

Some people have reported that the yadif filter works for deinterlace video in FFmpeg, with detailed command line listed below:

    ffmpeg -i input.vob -vf yadif -c:v libx264 -preset slow -crf 19 -c:a aac -b:a 256k output.mp4

If you have to stick with FFmpeg, you could also try the nnedi filter, which is much more advanced but at the cost of massive reduction in processing speed. Therefore, it will depend on what is your use case, and how critical is rendering time.

Part 8: How to deinterlace video with Handbrake

To deinterlace videos with Handbrake, first, click "Picture Settings" at the top-right corner; second, after opening the dialog box, choose "Filters"; third, move the slider to "Deinterlace"; Choose the deinterlacing level from the drop down menu. This is the fastest yet simplest way to deinterlace video using Handbrake, but sorry to tell you that you'll sacrifice the video quality.

deinterlace a video

There's another better Handbrake deinterlacing video method, Decomb, a new filter offered by Handbrake, which is also available in the "Picture Settings". The decom filter only handles visibly interlaced videos, so you don't need to check if the video is interlaced or not. "It won't destroy the detail in progressive sources the way Deinterlace will, and should be faster than 'Slow' or 'Slower', according to Handbrake wiki. There are several different deinterlacing modes and parameters, including combing detection parameters, EEDI2 parameters, etc. which is quite confusing. Handbrake deinterlaces videos, sound perfect? The short answer is no.