Strange interlacing on playback

[n4mwd]

I just installed WMC for 11 and EPG123 on a new Win 11 computer (thanks GaRyan2). The installation took some time, but it seems (mostly) flawless so far.

The only issue that I am having is that live and video playback is interlaced for some reason. I took a closer look at one of the files that I recorded with the old win7 WMC system and there was no scan line interlacing that I could tell. With the new system, when people/objects move horizontally on the screen, they get split up into scan lines and they separate as they move.

I am totally unfamiliar with Win11. Is there a setting in WMC or Win11 to fix the scan line / interlacing issue?

Anybody else see this after installing on Win11?

Prior to installing WMC, I tried to play the video that was pre-recorded by the old win7 WMC system. It could only play audio and not the picture, This tells me that whatever codec is being used, came over with WMC when it was installed.

Also, my system is 100% digital. There are no analog tuners anywhere. Analog is interlaced, but its nowhere that noticeable.

[n4mwd]

Update:
After installation of WMC, I can play the video with windows media Player, and now it has video as well as audio, but the interlacing is still present. So this might be a codec issue. But if that is the case, why wasn't there interlacing on the Win7 version?

[Space]

This could be due to the "29/59 bug/issue". It can often be alleviated by turning off some of the post-processing options in the graphics card settings, such as "dynamic contrast". It is caused by improperly encoded 1080i video which switches between a 29 fps and 59 fps framerate rapidly, some graphics cards/drivers can't handle this as gracefully as others and turning off some of the post-processing options allows it to handle it better.

You can use Google to search for "29/59 bug" (the search here on the forums does not work very well for this due to the "words" being too short), but here are a couple links:

https://www.thegreenbutton.tv/wiki/The_ ... Rate_Issue

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=13419

[n4mwd]

I thought it was 29/59 for sure when I read that wiki page you posted and looked at the photos. Those photos are pretty much exactly what I'm seeing. Only mine is a bit worse. However, when I pulled up the diagnostics, the frame rate was constant.

On mine, the interlacing effect is only noticeable when there is motion. So a video with a still background doesn't have the problem until something moves. Then the effect only appears on the object that moved.

I went through the windows 11 settings and the only thing I found was something called HDR. Unfortunately, it doesn't let me change anything.

Its strange that this does not happen with the older win7 machine playing the same video. That machine is about 10 years old.

Its starting to look like the only fix is to take my glasses off so I can't tell what its doing.

[n4mwd]

I just noticed that the issue is also present when I just hit pause on the display. This capture was from a 1080i live broadcast. I cropped it so you can see how his hand is almost completely washed out while the background is stable.

Although this is new hardware, I'm pretty sure this is a win11 bug. The only sure may be to wipe it and put ubuntu with virtualbox and win7 on it.

EDIT: You'll need to enlarge this photo to see the interlacing. Here is a closer view.

[n4mwd]

This is definitely a codec issue. I downloaded VLC and VLC plays the same video flawlessly on the same machine.with no interlace artifacts.

[Space]

Pretty much the only time you will see de-interlacing artifacts is when there is motion. The de-interlacing process tries to take two separate half/images (every other scan line) and "sew" them together. That can leave "jaggies" on the edges of objects if that object was in motion and if the algorithm doesn't properly get rid of them.

The 29/59 bug caused some de-interlacing algorithms to get confused (or to get turned on/off rapidly) due to not being needed for 29 fps (the 29fps indicator essentially means progressive), but needed for 59 fps (with 59 fps indicating it is interlaced).

But if you are not seeing the fps change rapidly between 29 and 59 in the debug for WMC, then there may be something else wrong with the de-interlacing. I know that win7 drivers allow you to mess with different de-interlacing modes in the graphics card settings, but not sure about win10/11.

Don't take my word for it, but I don't think many codecs handle the de-interlacing. I believe that is something that is handled after the codec does it's job. I think all the codec has is flags that tell if the video is interlaced or not and it is up to the display routines to handle it. But, again, I know very little about this, so I could be completely wrong. If VLC plays it fine, then it may just be that it properly allows the video driver to de-interlace the video and WMC does not for some reason. It might just be a "WMC interfacing with win10/11 drivers" thing since WMC knows noting about win10/11.

[n4mwd]

The main problem is that the problem happens only with WTV files which are rebranded MPEG2 files and the source is not interlaced to start with. The box plays youtube, mpeg1, and mov files just fine. But only VLC can properly play the WTV files.

When I first got the win 11 box to come up, and did all the updates, I tried playing the pre-recorded WTV file, but it could only play the audio with no video. This tells me that the codec necessary to play the video was not part of the win11 install, but oddly, the part that knows how to read the WTV file was actually there.

When I installed GaRayan's WMC install, it must have come with the defective codec. After WMC was installed, the win 11 player could play audio and video, but with the interlacing bug.

I downloaded the k-lite codec pack, but it didn't seem to change anything. If it does have a working codec, windows is giving priority to the bad codec. There used to be a way to fix this, but I'm not sure how it works on win 11.