Holy cow! Virtual Dub/AVISynth/TomsMoComp de-interlacing has me LOST!

Okay, so I've looked through the boards again for information related to V-Dub, AVISynth, and TomsMoComp, found out where to get them, but not how to USE them. I looked through the AVISynth pages to try and make head or tails of all this scripting gibberish to some, but very little, avail.

Basically, I'm trying to use the TomsMoComp filter/script? to deinterlace my footage (duh) but I guess I have to make my own script for it. After fiddling for a half hour with the readme and the AVISynth FAQ pages I still don't know what I'm doing. Virtual Dub doesn't want to load anything from AVISynth or TomsMoComp so I must be doing something wrong. Am I supposed to load the AVS files into V-dub or what?

I also tried just using the deinterlace filter that came with V-dub, but, as simple as Virtual Dub seems to be, I have no idea how to judge whether I've actually applied the deinterlace filter, whether it's any good or not, or how to render my clip with that filter applied.

So, in a nutshell, I'm looking for help on how to use the trio of AVISynth, TomsMoComp, and VirtualDub to successfully deinterlace my footage.

Gosh, two topics in less than four hours asking for help on the same darn thing with different specifics! I feel like such a n00b!!!!

 

Or you could just do it in Premiere or AE.. most people underestimate their abilities when it comes to deinterlacing. I've gone through just about every method you can think of, I just do it all in AE now. No need for all that other hoopla.

 

I looked at this for a while and ended up using the de-interlace filter that comes with Virtualdub. Open the footage you want to de-interlace, apply the filter, accept the default setting, and save the file again (give it a new name). A lot simpler than I imagined. Unfortunately I've found a lot of sites that talk about de-interlacing are more to do with DVD ripping and DivX and stuff like that.

It should be pretty obvious when a piece of footage is deinterlaced. It won't be criss-crossed with horizontals lines. Just use the comparison windows in VDub.

Never used the other apps you're talking about.

 

So I got Effects>Video>Reduce interlace flicker? Just pick like a one or a two on the scale, add to render queue, and that's it? That's all I have to do in After Effects? It just seems unreal to me that it would be that easy. The previewwindow just made my video look blurry, but I guess it didn't really look that sharp to begin with lol. Although we were shooting our test video through a clear glass window with the camera right up against it because I forgot my tripod attachment (yeah, I know... smooth)

Actually, after looking at what I rendered it looks like my video might actually be blurrier. Maybe it's supposed to, though--I'm no expert.

So that's all I have to do? I don't have to adjust any settings before I render it in order to deinterlace after selecting the effect application? IF that's all I need to do, it's just.... it's just.... too simple!

 

Don't know, sorry.

My version of AE is too old to play well with DV.

 

It's horribly complicated for us non-programmer types.

If you've correctly installed Virtual Dub and Avisynth then you ought to be able to load .avs files into Virtual Dub. An .avs file is just a simple text file that instructs avisynth what to serve to Virtual Dub. The contents of the .avs file that you have to make needs to look something like:

LoadPlugin("C:\Program Files\AviSynth2\plugins\TomsMoComp.dll")
clip = DirectShowSource("thenameofyourfile.avi")
return clip.TomsMoComp(0,5,0)

(assuming, of course, that "C:\Progam Files\Avisynth2" is the directory where you installed Avisynth, and you've also put "TomsMoComp.dll" in the plugins directory there. See the "readme" file that comes with TomsMoComp for an explanation of what the "(0,5,0)" part means.

 

Assuming you're frameserving (frameserving, how quaint) a DVD .VOB file... with VirtualDubMod and the AC3ACM plugin you no longer need to do this. It will open up the DVD movie/VOB file and already have it deinterlaced properly (for the most part. It's not perfect.).

If you're using a "true" 29.97fps AVI or a 29.97 fps AVI that's really 23.976 fps interlaced as your source file then regular VirtualDub will work with it just fine. No other software or plugins are needed to deinterlace properly. AE still works a little bit better for this though.

 

Virtual Dub gives me an error when I try and load the TomsMoComp script. And yes, before you ask it, I DID modify my tomsmocomp.avs file with the readme information and the help provided in this thread, which I am very grateful for. I'm pretty sure I have all my directories in the correct order and adjusted for case sensitivity if need be, as well. What it tells me now is that "Variable LoadPlugin is not found." So I dunno, I'm not sure what to do with it.

I also tried de-interlacing with After Effects' "Reduce Interlace Flicker" on a setting of one or two. What I rendered seems to have very little if anything difference than the original clip. Also, to my understanding rendering something that is being deinterlaced should take a LONG TIME, but the forty second clip I rendered was done in about 2 or 3 minutes AND didn't really look any better. In fact, I'd almost say it looked worse--something doesn't add up to me. Same thing happened in Virtual Dub, so maybe I'm just being a skeptic. I tell it to apply the deinterlace filter and go to File>Save as AVI and the video doesn't really look any sharper. *SIGH* I wish I was an expert already!

So to recap my list of problems to be solved:
Error trying to load TomsMoComp script into virtual dub
Suspicious deinterlacing activity by both Virtual dub and After Effects?? Or I'm just doing something wrong.

Thank you so much, guys. Without all of you here to help me along it seems like I'd never get anywhere beyond a few flashes of inspiration on how to accomplish something!

 

Here's a good place to start with deinterlacing in AE, packed in with a decent film-look tutorial.

 

In After Effects, "Reduce Interlace Flicker" is not a de-interlacing filter, per se. It's intended for you to apply to elements that you create in After Effects which are output as interlaced video. If there is too much contrast between consecutive lines in a frame, those lines will flicker on an interlaced display. "Reduce Interlace Flicker" will remedy this.

To de-interlace in After Effects, right-click on the loaded footage and select Interpret Footage > Main. In the box labelled "Fields and Pulldown", make sure that "Separate Fields" is set to "Lower Field First", and check the box labelled "Motion Detect (Best Quality Only)". Now, on the timeline, set the quality switch to best (it should be a smooth line going from lower left to upper right, not a jagged line going from upper left to lower right).

The native de-interlacing in After Effects is not as good as TomsMoComp. Anybody who says it is is just not very observant. I've stopped looking into de-interlacing, really, because I don't shoot interlaced anymore, so there may be developments that I don't know about, but I've only seen one de-interlacer that's better than TomsMoComp, and that's Algolith's. I recently purchased a week's license for Algolith's Algosuite, which is excellent, but very slow.

 

Is TomsMoComp a plug-in, or a stand alone product? Also, where can I get it?

 

One thing I forgot about de-interlacing with VDub is with certain types of AVIs (Microsoft DV-AVI type I at least), you'll lose the audio. Not really a big deal since many editing programs will let you marry them up again afterwards.

 

I'm bumping this for the reason of mentioning that I just discovered - entirely by accident - that if you put your computer's system date back, then the one-week licenses for the Algosuite plug-ins will start working again. This is an extremely unscrupulous thing to do, of course, but I think that if, like myself, you purchased a week's license for the purposes of evaluating the software, then this would be a reasonable way of discovering whether the Algolith plug-ins were a suitable solution to any problem that you run up against which you didn't think to test for during the week's "trial".

I have to say that the Algosuite plug-ins really are like magic - they're well worth checking out if you have $59 to spare!