[mythtv-users] CBS/NBC 1080i and telecine

[Andrew Gallatin]

I started using SageTV a while ago, due to their extenders, but
now that the Nvidia Ion is here, I'd like to return to Mythtv.

One of the things that drove me nuts about MythTV when I used it (in
the 0.19 days) was my CBS (and now NBC) stations' handling of
interlacing.  They don't send a straight 1080i 30fps mpeg stream
except for "live" or "digital" events.  Most shows are telecined
24fps with repeat flags.   On these shows, MythTV will treat the
repeat flags as a sign the video is progressive, and pop in/out
of interlacing.  So CBS/NBC 1080i video looks terrible in MythTV (and in
mplayer, etc, but great in the h/w media extender).  Going into the
menu and forcing deinterlacing was a "sort of" workaround.

I just tried the a -fixes build of MythTV (whatever is in the Yast repo
on OpenSuSE 11.1) and it looks like the problem is still there.
If I use MythVideo to play a file recorded from NBC, I see the following
repeating in the MythTV log (and I've enabled a "ivtc filter):


2009-07-15 13:43:46.472 Set video sync frame interval to 33366
2009-07-15 13:43:46.472 Disabled deinterlacing
2009-07-15 13:43:46.640 NVP: interlaced frame seen after 7 progressive 
frames
2009-07-15 13:43:46.641 Set video sync frame interval to 33366
2009-07-15 13:43:46.641 Enabled deinterlacing
2009-07-15 13:43:46.822 NVP: progressive frame seen after 6 interlaced 
frames
2009-07-15 13:43:46.889 Set video sync frame interval to 33366
2009-07-15 13:43:46.889 Disabled deinterlacing
2009-07-15 13:43:48.141 NVP: interlaced frame seen after 33 progressive 
frames
2009-07-15 13:43:48.141 Set video sync frame interval to 33366
2009-07-15 13:43:48.141 Enabled deinterlacing
2009-07-15 13:43:48.323 NVP: progressive frame seen after 6 interlaced 
frames
2009-07-15 13:43:48.390 Set video sync frame interval to 33366
2009-07-15 13:43:48.390 Disabled deinterlacing
2009-07-15 13:43:49.058 NVP: interlaced frame seen after 19 progressive 
frames
2009-07-15 13:43:49.058 Set video sync frame interval to 33366
2009-07-15 13:43:49.058 Enabled deinterlacing
'video_output' mean = '38349.80', std. dev. = '9984.67', fps = '26.08'

So, my questions are:

1) Does anybody know if there a fix for this in the trunk?  Or is
my best bet to compile a trunk version of MythTV and see for myself?

2) If I were to get an Ion, I'd want to use VDPAU.  Will the 
deinterlacing be done entirely in hardware, insulating me from
this issue, or will it still happen?  I can't (easily) see for myself,
as I don't currently have an Nvidia card which supports VDPAU.

3) Is there any software based player which handles these sorts of
files correctly?

Thanks,

Drew