The Trials Of Being A Vidder Who Has Not Vidded In Years

[morgandawn]

I can digitize my own VHS videos and have been doing it for years. Digitizing 8mm requires equipment so we hired a company to do it for us.

This is what we got back:


On the TV I see this


My email:

Hello I received my DVD with the Super 8mm transfer. The footage has bad interlacing. One of the reasons we picked XXXX was because of its interlacing process. But now I wonder if I may have misread the process?

"Most services use a process called interlacing to adjust the speed of your film for television; the problem is, interlacing can cause annoying visual problems in some players when you play your DVD on your computer. Because we think you should be able to enjoy your movies on your computer too, we use a technique that will minimize those problem"

"Then we will prepare your order for television viewing by manually retiming the digital file, without the use of interlacing or pull-down."

The interlacing problem shows up when the footage is played on both a DVD player and on the computer. If the video had been properly  encoded, the the DVD players and TVs would automatically  "interlace" the analog source  and I would not see artifacts. And if your technique had worked, I also would not see interlacing on computer playback.  The fact that the interlacing is showing up on  *both* the DVD player and the computer playback means something is not working.

As a side note: we tested the DVD on two DVD players and TVs - an old standard DVD player/analog TV and a newer DVD player and LCD TV. The results were the same.

 

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

Yikes!

I hope you can get a do-over.

[morgandawn]

I don't think I will. But I will write a Yelp review and possibly send a complaint to the BBB. We are after all in the same Bay Area although they do business nationally.

[laurashapiro]

GRAR, how frustrating! I suspect you know more about the technology than they do.

[morgandawn]

I am not so sure I understand what is happening. Usually when working with analog source you don't deinterlace because DVD players and TVs do it for you. This meant the interlacing problem would only be seen on the computer - which is what I thought they were addressing with this:
""Most services use a process called interlacing to adjust the speed of your film for television; the problem is, interlacing can cause annoying visual problems in some players when you play your DVD on your computer. Because we think you should be able to enjoy your movies on your computer too, we use a technique that will minimize those problem"

But then this:
""Then we will prepare your order for television viewing by manually retiming the digital file, without the use of interlacing or pull-down."

Seems to me to say they would output deinterlaced DVDs and not interlaced. But in this DVD the de-interlaced footage should not be showing up as interlaced on the DVD player.

I suspect they're going to try to sell me on the fact that Super 8mm is 16fps and that this is an artifact of upscaling to 29fps. But I have the same Super 8mm converted into VHS which was then digitized to DVD and it looks far better.

[laurashapiro]

You have legit proof that they don't know what they're doing. So frustrating!