How to make the best MP4 videos

[Craig Seeman]

Use software that has a good deinterlacer.

Sorry, but without further details, we can only give general information. Either you’re not using software with deinterlacing or your not setting it correctly for your source.

[Tod Hopkins]

I’m sure the issue is interlacing. The reason the two cases look different is most likely because your DVDs remain interlaced (as they should) and you are playing them back using DVD players that understand interlaced video. MP4’s are always deinterlaced (the format can handle interlacing but it’s rarely implemented) hence you are likely seeing deinterlacing artifacts. There is another possibility based on what you describe, reversed field dominance (also an interlace issue). If you are editing without an interlaced output (i.e. in software
only), there’s a good chance you will not see this while editing. When you deinterlace footage with reversed field dominance, or you reverse it when you are deinterlacing, you’ll get a vicious back and forth jitter on anything with movement as it combines fields in the wrong sequence.

But if you are simply looking for a better deinterlace, the best is dedicated hardware. You will need a post house for the best equipment, but most professional output cards like AJA and Blackmagic do a good job though you’ll need to pass through SDI baseband. For software, I recommend anything that uses FFMPEG and gives you the control you want. I use Handbrake for simple stuff or FF Works for more complex tasks. I don’t have time to get too deep and it often involves experimentation but using the “Yadif” filter set to defaults gives generally good results.

Cheers,

tod

[Tod Hopkins]

Handbrake only goes to MP4. Fine for making progressive release versions. FF Works can make progressive masters, such as ProRes to ProRes, and do many, many other things that Handbrake can’t. The quality is essentially the same since both are using FFMPEG as their transcode engine.