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Doctor Who NTSC DVD - Ghosting Image

addiesin

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I'm following (barely getting through) Captain Khajit's guides to get some SD sources editable for some tests, one that is giving me trouble is classic Doctor Who. An Unearthly Child (the first episode of the first season of the first iteration of the show) has some motion ghosting in my avi even after deinterlacing. It's definitely not interlacing (horizontal lines breaking through everything as a result of different video fields displaying), it's like a shot of a hand and the hand starts to move, and there's a ghostly trail that follows it. Looks kinda like frame blending maybe? Maybe not? It appears to be there in the source before deinterlacing too but I want to make sure I've done everything I can before I call it fine and move on.

I do know this episode's source went through a lot to get to dvd, it is the original tape projected onto a wall, the projection being filmed onto i think 16mm, which travelled and lived for decades before the restoration team ran it through vidFIRE and finally in my case an NTSC conversion (the process possibly called telecine? i'm not sure about the terminology, trying to learn). So it is very possible the problem I'm seeing is damage inherent to the source and not fixable through mere demuxing/decoding/filtering/processing with the tools in Captain Khajit's guide. In fact, I suspect it's just light artifacts from filming a projection, FAR back in the footage's lifespan. But if that's not the case and I'm doing something wrong I'd really like to know and do it correctly instead.

Some information, I'm using the american release (the set is officially called "Doctor Who: The Beginning"), so the dvd is NTSC. I have no real knowledge of how they transferred it from PAL or if I should try to undo that and get back to 25fps before editing. Can anyone offer guidance? Should I accept the ghosting as part of the source and move on working with deinterlaced 29.97fps footage? Scrubbing through it doesn't look like there are any repeating or dropped frames in the source, motion is smooth and constant, just ghosty.

Here's a screen recording of me showing the hand thing frame by frame in VirtualDub.

M2V (before VirtualDub/AviSynth) MediaInfo output:
General
Complete name : D:\DoctorWho-VideoWork\MarcoPolo\Demuxes\Beginning-1\Ep1\VideoFile.m2v
Format : MPEG Video
Format version : Version 2
File size : 941 MiB
Overall bit rate mode : Variable

Video
Format : MPEG Video
Format version : Version 2
Format profile : Main@Main
Format settings : CustomMatrix / BVOP
Format settings, BVOP : Yes
Format settings, Matrix : Custom
Format settings, GOP : M=3, N=15
Format settings, picture st : Frame
Bit rate mode : Variable
Maximum bit rate : 9 800 kb/s
Width : 720 pixels
Height : 480 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 4:3
Frame rate : 29.970 (30000/1001) FPS
Standard : Component
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Interlaced
Scan order : Top Field First
Compression mode : Lossy
Time code of first frame : 00:59:59;00
GOP, Open/Closed : Open
GOP, Open/Closed of first f : Closed
Color primaries : BT.601 NTSC
Transfer characteristics : BT.601
Matrix coefficients : BT.601

Deinterlaced AVI (After VirtualDub/AviSynth) MediaInfo Output:
General
Complete name : D:\DoctorWho-VideoWork\MarcoPolo\Demuxes\Beginning-1\Ep1\beginning-1-1.avi
Format : AVI
Format/Info : Audio Video Interleave
Format profile : OpenDML
File size : 4.84 GiB
Duration : 23 min 20 s
Overall bit rate : 29.7 Mb/s
Writing library : VirtualDub2 build 44282/release

Video
ID : 0
Format : Lagarith
Codec ID : LAGS
Duration : 23 min 20 s
Bit rate : 29.7 Mb/s
Width : 720 pixels
Height : 480 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 3:2
Frame rate : 29.970 (30000/1001) FPS
Standard : NTSC
Color space : Y
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 2.866
Stream size : 4.84 GiB (100%)
 
Last edited:

Zarius

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Yeah, sorry if I didn't reply earlier, these sort of things just aren't my skill level and I doubt they ever will be :(
 

morrigan

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From my PAL version of the same release, I would say the ghosting is inherent to the source. Here's a little snip I took of the hand in question from my copy: https://streamable.com/tz5ii2

Not sure if that's any help, but I thought I'd have a quick look in case it does.
 
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addiesin

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addiesin

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Good news/bad news. The bad: Following that process didn't fix the issue.

But I think I did make some mistakes (unrelated to the ghosting issue) preparing my source anyway around the DGIndex/DGIndexNV steps and going through these other steps and rechecking all my software and plugins is starting to make me more familiar with where I get tripped up and more comfortable with the process. So my current plan is to move ahead with preparing these episodes and hope I come across one that was transferred from its original tape to confirm the problem isn't replicated there, which would suggest my suspicion about it being light artifacts from a second generation filming is correct.

Open to more ideas!
 
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