[mythtv-users] Dirty haze on certain channels

[Jay Ashworth]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "jr" <jraymyth at gmail.com>

> > Ghosting of previous images? If so, it sounds like someone (CW/Fox
> > or your local broadcaster or your local re-broadcaster (cable co)) is
> > encoding with a bad encoder (or bad encoding options).

> I am not sure. Its like at some point during the scene, the recorder
> makes a light charcoal rubbing of the scene on transparent paper, then
> removes the paper, waits a few seconds and does it again. We just
> finished watching two episodes of first season Supernatural that I
> ripped from my DVD, and saw the same effect through MythVideo, if less
> often.

It sounds to me like you have a barely usable MPEG stream, and you're dropping I-frames; that's usually what causes ghosting in MPEG video.  And I know what 
you mean; it is hard to describe, isn't it?

It tends to look sort of like the luminance contours and edges are from the
new scene, but the color and textures are left over from the previous one.

If you're seeing it from DVDrips made locally, though, as well, then perhaps
that's not really the culprit... unless those are themselves bad.

You might try playing some of this video through mplayer, and see what you get.

In particular, if you run mplayer from the command line, it will puke up
error messages when it sees bad frames and such, giving you some hints
to work with.

Cheers,
-- jra