[Eug]

Some of you may be aware that DVD Player.app (5.0) in 10.5 Leopard has a new so-called requirement:

"DVD Player requires a 1.6GHz processor or faster for improved de-interlacing."

However, I'm not entirely sure what this does. According to DVD Player's help file the new option is "better", and can slow the computer down, but beyond that it doesn't tell us much at all.



Looking at the DVD Player new features page I suspect it is based on this "Adaptive Video Analyzation technology that applies deinterlacing and inverse 3:2 pulldown on demand", but I'm not entirely sure what this means in real world usage. Anyone know? I ran DVD Player on an iBook 1.07 and a Cube 1.7 very briefly and both seemed to have adequate de-interlacing. I emphasize the "briefly" part though, and these were on small screens. I didn't try them on my huge projector screen or anything.

The rest of the interface seems like a huge improvement too. I especially like the chapters functionality.



And it's finally got that time slider. Finally! It was getting pretty irritating, especially since every other DVD player application out there has had one for years.

[Kenneth]

Upon opening up DVD Player 5.0, better quality was the optimal setting on my dual G4. I did play around the different setting. It used roughly 50 - 60% CPU resources under 'good quality' setting, but jumped to high-80s to 105% under 'better quality' setting.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by Kenneth 

Upon opening up DVD Player 5.0, better quality was the optimal setting on my dual G4. I did play around the different setting. It used roughly 50 - 60% CPU resources under 'good quality' setting, but jumped to high-80s to 105% under 'better quality' setting.

What CPU?

[Kenneth]

dual G4/1.25Ghz PowerMac G4 (FW800), 256MB Radeon 9600 Pro (Mac+PC edition), 2GB of RAM.

[angelmb]

Kenneth, your MDD is all my MDD would love to be !!

[PaperNotes]

Originally Posted by Eug 

"Adaptive Video Analyzation technology that applies deinterlacing and inverse 3:2 pulldown on demand", but I'm not entirely sure what this means in real world usage. Anyone know?

It means deinterpolation or upscaling, deinterlacing and conversion from fields to progressive full frames in real time if your CPU meet the demands of the algorithm.

[Kenneth]

Originally Posted by angelmb 

Kenneth, your MDD is all my MDD would love to be !!

I love my MDD. It's way smaller than a G5 and I can bear with the noise.

[JustinHorne]

Originally Posted by Kenneth 

I love my MDD. It's way smaller than a G5 and I can bare with the noise.

I miss my MDD.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by PaperNotes 

It means deinterpolation or upscaling, deinterlacing and conversion from fields to progressive full frames in real time if your CPU meet the demands of the algorithm.

Deinterpolation? I'm not sure to what that refers in DVD terms.

P.S. My Cube seems up to the task, according to DVD Player.app. I wonder if its 100 MHz bus will cut it though.

[Kenneth]

I'm curious. According to ATI website, it states that its' higher end GPU are MPEG-2/4 accelerated. Obviously, the de-interlacing doesn't off load the work to the GPU in this case. However, the CPU resource is dramatically lowered when doing DVD playback on a DP 2Ghz G5.

[P]

Movies are usually shot in 24p, ie 24 frames per second progressive (= one complete picture, like a photograph). Converting this to interlaced TV formats is not entirely straightforward. PAL is not really a problem - the movie is speeded up slightly so it is 25 frames per second. Every frame is then shot twice - first the odd lines, then the even lines. This makes it 50i, 50 frames per second interlaced. Normal playback shows the frames 1, 2, 3 etc without bother. This means that half the time, you see half of one (original) frame and half of the next. If you instead use the knowledge that the source was progressive to begin with, you can mix PAL frames 1 and 2 and send them as one progressive frame. You can then send frame 3 and 4 together, 5 and 6 together, etc. This way, you get in practice 25p, although for TVs each frame is sent twice so it technically is 50p. The effect is quite noticeable - the picture is quite a bit sharper. This is called progressive upconversion, a form of deinterlacing, and I really thought that Apple's DVD-player has done this for a very along time. Maybe I was wrong, but maybe the just changed the way it works for NTSC.

NTSC is a much bigger problem. The framerate is 60i, not 50i, so the PAL trick of speeding up the movie slightly won't work - the movie would move way too fast. Instead, you do a so called 3:2 pulldown. This technique works by inserting one extra prgressive frame into each set of 4 when interlacing, turning 4 progressive frames into 10 interlaced ones. It's not highly noticeable, because it is really two interlaced frames not inserted next to each other, but it does hurt quality more than the PAL interlacing does. - plus the PAL deinterlacing doesn't work.

What you really want is that 24p source back, though, so what reverse 3:2 pulldown does is that it detects which frames were inserted, deletes them and rearranges the rest to be able to do the regular PAL-like deinterlacing. This makes a big difference in quality, and it sounds like this is what Apple is doing.

[PaperNotes]

Originally Posted by Eug 

Deinterpolation? I'm not sure to what that refers in DVD terms.
.

Deinterpolation is the technical term for resizing images or video and applying anti-aliasing to the image to smooth out the resize. Number 9 graphics cards were the first to have this in hardware because CPUs weren't powerful enough. Deinterlacing is merging the left and right fields into a progressive full frame image.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by P 

Movies are usually shot in 24p, ie 24 frames per second progressive (= one complete picture, like a photograph). Converting this to interlaced TV formats is not entirely straightforward. PAL is not really a problem - the movie is speeded up slightly so it is 25 frames per second. Every frame is then shot twice - first the odd lines, then the even lines. This makes it 50i, 50 frames per second interlaced. Normal playback shows the frames 1, 2, 3 etc without bother. This means that half the time, you see half of one (original) frame and half of the next. If you instead use the knowledge that the source was progressive to begin with, you can mix PAL frames 1 and 2 and send them as one progressive frame. You can then send frame 3 and 4 together, 5 and 6 together, etc. This way, you get in practice 25p, although for TVs each frame is sent twice so it technically is 50p. The effect is quite noticeable - the picture is quite a bit sharper. This is called progressive upconversion, a form of deinterlacing, and I really thought that Apple's DVD-player has done this for a very along time. Maybe I was wrong, but maybe the just changed the way it works for NTSC.

NTSC is a much bigger problem. The framerate is 60i, not 50i, so the PAL trick of speeding up the movie slightly won't work - the movie would move way too fast. Instead, you do a so called 3:2 pulldown. This technique works by inserting one extra prgressive frame into each set of 4 when interlacing, turning 4 progressive frames into 10 interlaced ones. It's not highly noticeable, because it is really two interlaced frames not inserted next to each other, but it does hurt quality more than the PAL interlacing does. - plus the PAL deinterlacing doesn't work.

What you really want is that 24p source back, though, so what reverse 3:2 pulldown does is that it detects which frames were inserted, deletes them and rearranges the rest to be able to do the regular PAL-like deinterlacing. This makes a big difference in quality, and it sounds like this is what Apple is doing.

Thanks for the long post, but if you were asking about my last post, I was specifically asking about the deinterpolation. However, regarding this... are you saying that OS X should be able to output reconstructed 24p and provide 72p output on screen or to an external display? Cuz if so, that would be a major upgrade. That description they had doesn't outright say this though.

Even if it can reconstruct 24p but continues to output 60p, that would basically be pointless.

Originally Posted by PaperNotes 

Deinterpolation is the technical term for resizing images or video and applying anti-aliasing to the image to smooth out the resize. Number 9 graphics cards were the first to have this in hardware because CPUs weren't powerful enough. Deinterlacing is merging the left and right fields into a progressive full frame image.

Thanks.

Any link on the Apple site where they discuss DVD Player's new deinterpolation capabilities? The only blurb I could find was that vague one I already posted, and they didn't actually mention deinterpolation/upscaling.

I didn't check the developer support site though.

[P]

I don't know exactly what the DVD Player app outputs - I don't even have Leopard on my main machine yet - but what I described is how 3:2 pulldown works in general. For that matter, I don't know how DVD player did for say NTSC sources on a 75 Hz CRT display. Some sort of interpolation over time, perhaps?

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by PaperNotes 

Deinterpolation is the technical term for resizing images or video and applying anti-aliasing to the image to smooth out the resize.

I would call that 'interpolation'.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by TETENAL 

I would call that 'interpolation'.

Yeah, I was wondering about that.

[PaperNotes]

yeah i **** up with technical terms if I don't use them for a long time.....like everyone does

[Eug]

OK, now I know why I had never heard the term used in this context. Cuz it isn't.

[Eug]

So I did some limited testing on my 1.7 GHz Cube with 100 MHz bus.

No deinterlacing -- 30-35% CPU, with rare spikes over 40%. However, it is unwatchable.

Good -- Around 60% CPU, with rare spikes over 70% when switching scenes. Very good quality. Combing is rare, but I did notice it on some text.

Better -- Around 70% CPU, with rare spikes over 80%. I even noticed very rare spikes over 90% (when switching scenes). Excellent quality. Combing is non-existent in my limited testing.

However, with "Better" I can hang the Finder if I try using the menu bar during playback. The movie continues to play fine, but the computer is completely unresponsive to commands.

I didn't really try to analyze upscaling quality, but on this small 20" screen, it looks relatively similar.

[Cadaver]

On my Mac Pro 2.66GHz and 30" Cinema display (and 1900XT), the "Better" setting looks really, really good - even blown up to full screen. Much better than the DVD player app in 10.4 looked (and not just being selective with my memory). I didn't notice any significant CPU usage with either setting, BTW.

[Eug]

Originally Posted by Cadaver 

I didn't notice any significant CPU usage with either setting, BTW.

Heh. The power of the Mac Pro. My 1.7 GHz G4 was almost brought to its knees. The 1.6 GHz requirement is definitely justified (although I wonder how much better a G4 1.67 might have performed with its 167 MHz bus).

[PaperNotes]

I haven't had a chance to test a DVD yet because I gave all my library to my brother. What's the scrubbing like?

[Eug]

Originally Posted by Cadaver 

On my Mac Pro 2.66GHz and 30" Cinema display (and 1900XT), the "Better" setting looks really, really good - even blown up to full screen. Much better than the DVD player app in 10.4 looked (and not just being selective with my memory). I didn't notice any significant CPU usage with either setting, BTW.

Ok, I hooked this Cube up to my projector (90" screen, 1280x720). I used "Good" mode, since the other mode slows down the machine too much. I'm running VGA, with a custom resolution of 1280x720. GPU is GeForce 6200.

All I can say is that even the "Good" mode is very, very good upscaling. My Xbox 360 is pretty poor for upscaling. Both my Toshiba HD-A2 HD DVD player and my Panasonic projector are noticeably better at it than the 360, but not stellar. However, DVD Player.app 5.0 in Leopard is noticeably better again. Quite impressive.

Too bad it's such a pain using a computer as a DVD player. The Cube doesn't have 5.1 output anyway. However, despite these limitations, it's almost worth it to watch it from the Cube anyway. Almost. I'll eventually be getting a Mac mini for this room though, and I'll also be getting another standalone player (hopefully with top notch upscaling).