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It's a fascinating look into how they produce multiple encoded formats from source video, but something stuck out at me... One feature in their ingestion system

It's a fascinating look into how they produce multiple encoded formats from source video, but something stuck out at me... One feature in their ingestion system is meant to reject source inputs that would lead to a poor viewer experience. This doesn't seem to include interlaced NTSC video as a "poor experience" metric. I'm willing to bet that the majority of the screens on which Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is played are progressive scan, yet that show is interlaced at NTSC resolution. In cases like this, where the source material is analog and, I would have to assume, not available in progressive scan, is there a technical reason why Netflix doesn't de-interlace the source before encoding? DS9 seems big enough of a catalog to be worth encoding in a less jarring scan rate. Not complaining, mind you. The DVDs are interlaced too. Seems that the original recordings were NTSC only. Honestly curious if anyone has any insight.

castell 11y ago
The probably used DS9 DVDs as source. In fact DVD rental was their original core business.
- jfb 11y ago
  It's possible, but the way the rights are assigned, they more than likely went back to tape and had them recaptured.
dbcooper 11y ago
Are you sure they aren't 24p that's been flagged as NTSC interlaced but is actually converted to 30p via 3:2 telecine?
speakeron 11y ago
TNG was like this (sourced from a video version and with a very nasty interlace look) on Netflix up to a couple of months ago. Now they stream the magnificent remastered blu-ray HD version which is sourced from the original film with fresh CGI since the original CGI was tied to the video. It's not clear whether DS9 will get the same treatment.
- dbcooper 11y ago
  I prefer to watch SD rips from the TNG blu-rays. The merciless clarity of 1080p just kills the magic.
  - Keyframe 11y ago
    I agree. Remastered TNG, in 1080p, looks like a theater-based teleplay.
    - knodi123 11y ago
      at least it's not HFR. I was never able to achieve immersion in the hobbit movies, because I felt like I was watching people on a stage.
      - danjc 11y ago
        I had precisely that problem and this is the first time I've heard someone else mention it.
        superuser2 11y ago
        YES! I'm insanely sensitive to this too. I have to interrupt group TV watching to play around with the TV's menus and turn off the "automatically simulate 60fps" setting that so many Smart TVs have on by default these days. My mother can't tell the difference at all. I'm pretty sure this is just something that only a subset of the population notices enough to care about.
        Bognar 11y ago
        The simulated 60 FPS (or higher) are significantly worse than just 60 FPS source material. TVs attempt to interpolate between the frames automatically and it just screws everything up.
        11y ago
endurancerobot 11y ago
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jfb 11y ago
If size of catalog trumps video quality, you roll with NTSC if NTSC is the best you can get. Deinterlacing is extremely tricky, and if you can deliver interlaced video to playback devices, you're often better off punting.
lmm 11y ago
If you deinterlace an interlaced source before encoding you either discard information or store twice as much. And potentially people watching on an interlaced screen lose data - not all deinterlace/interlace pairings roundtrip cleanly. Better to store it in the original format, and then it can go through one round of deinterlacing on playback for those screens that need it, and none for those that don't. (Also deinterlacing approaches get better over time - if a particular episode entered their catalogue 10 years ago and was deinterlaced using the state of the art approach at the time, it would look much worse than a modern deinterlace)
- jfb 11y ago
  One of the overriding constraints on these sorts of video pipeline tasks is touching the input pixels as few times as possible. Every lossy transformation you do (cropping, scaling, color correction, transcoding) potentially introduces defects; and that's assuming that your lossless transformations (repackaging container formats, for instance) are bug-free. I'd love to see some figures from Netflix' QC team; I bet at their scale they see all kinds of insane edge case problems.
- izacus 11y ago
  Uhm, no, due to the way modern video formats work, you don't store twice as much data - on the contrary, H.264 and similar modern formats are significantly more efficient at storing progressive (including deinterlaced) video than equivalent interlaced stream.
  - lmm 11y ago
    Nope. Modern (and even ancient) video codecs can store interlaced data just as efficiently as progressive data - how could it be otherwise? But when you deinterlace e.g. a 30 frames per second interlaced source, either you store the result as 60 frames per second (twice as much data), or you lossily downsample to 30 frames per second.
Gelob 11y ago
That isn't Netflix's job. A post house delievers the raw .mov files to Netflix. The post house gets the files or tapes from the studio or whomever manages the libary for them (aka another post house). The post house has to comply to a set of standard's set forth by Netflix or it is automatically rejected. Most of the time things like no interlacing is in those requirements but also there can be exceptions if no other source material is available. iTunes works the same way. So say the post house that delievers to Netflix is only getting digital raw .movs and not the actual tapes, they may not be allowed to re-encode those or have access to the tapes to do the correct conversion.

castell 11y ago

The probably used DS9 DVDs as source. In fact DVD rental was their original core business.

jfb 11y ago
It's possible, but the way the rights are assigned, they more than likely went back to tape and had them recaptured.

dbcooper 11y ago

Are you sure they aren't 24p that's been flagged as NTSC interlaced but is actually converted to 30p via 3:2 telecine?

speakeron 11y ago

TNG was like this (sourced from a video version and with a very nasty interlace look) on Netflix up to a couple of months ago. Now they stream the magnificent remastered blu-ray HD version which is sourced from the original film with fresh CGI since the original CGI was tied to the video. It's not clear whether DS9 will get the same treatment.

dbcooper 11y ago
I prefer to watch SD rips from the TNG blu-rays. The merciless clarity of 1080p just kills the magic.
- Keyframe 11y ago
  I agree. Remastered TNG, in 1080p, looks like a theater-based teleplay.
  - knodi123 11y ago
    at least it's not HFR. I was never able to achieve immersion in the hobbit movies, because I felt like I was watching people on a stage.
    - danjc 11y ago
      I had precisely that problem and this is the first time I've heard someone else mention it.
      - superuser2 11y ago
        YES! I'm insanely sensitive to this too. I have to interrupt group TV watching to play around with the TV's menus and turn off the "automatically simulate 60fps" setting that so many Smart TVs have on by default these days. My mother can't tell the difference at all. I'm pretty sure this is just something that only a subset of the population notices enough to care about.
        Bognar 11y ago
        The simulated 60 FPS (or higher) are significantly worse than just 60 FPS source material. TVs attempt to interpolate between the frames automatically and it just screws everything up.
        11y ago

endurancerobot 11y ago

I’m George Fomitchef and it will be very useful to me to do new acquaintances to people who are interested in high technologies I hope my activity will interests you. I am engaged in high technologies,mainly, lasers, diode laser engravers, telepresence robots and robotized systems and other. And here is a video wich will make a complete idea of what I am engaged. "Endurance project presentation" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzRX1NEYotM&feature=youtu https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzRX1NEYotM&feature=youtu. My website http://endurancerobots.com/about-endurance/ http://endurancerobots.com/about-endurance/ where you can find all information. I wrote many articles, and here is the last one ,about A Multifunctional Engraving Machine Endurance Wanhao DuPlicator i3. Maybe it will be interesting to you. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/multifunctional-engraving-machine-endurance-wanhao-i3-fomitchev https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/multifunctional-engraving-mac.... If you will have any questions i'll answer on them with great pleasure! You can write me on this mail adress gf@endurancerobots.com Thank you and Good luck!

jfb 11y ago

If size of catalog trumps video quality, you roll with NTSC if NTSC is the best you can get. Deinterlacing is extremely tricky, and if you can deliver interlaced video to playback devices, you're often better off punting.

lmm 11y ago

If you deinterlace an interlaced source before encoding you either discard information or store twice as much. And potentially people watching on an interlaced screen lose data - not all deinterlace/interlace pairings roundtrip cleanly. Better to store it in the original format, and then it can go through one round of deinterlacing on playback for those screens that need it, and none for those that don't. (Also deinterlacing approaches get better over time - if a particular episode entered their catalogue 10 years ago and was deinterlaced using the state of the art approach at the time, it would look much worse than a modern deinterlace)

jfb 11y ago
One of the overriding constraints on these sorts of video pipeline tasks is touching the input pixels as few times as possible. Every lossy transformation you do (cropping, scaling, color correction, transcoding) potentially introduces defects; and that's assuming that your lossless transformations (repackaging container formats, for instance) are bug-free. I'd love to see some figures from Netflix' QC team; I bet at their scale they see all kinds of insane edge case problems.
izacus 11y ago
Uhm, no, due to the way modern video formats work, you don't store twice as much data - on the contrary, H.264 and similar modern formats are significantly more efficient at storing progressive (including deinterlaced) video than equivalent interlaced stream.
- lmm 11y ago
  Nope. Modern (and even ancient) video codecs can store interlaced data just as efficiently as progressive data - how could it be otherwise? But when you deinterlace e.g. a 30 frames per second interlaced source, either you store the result as 60 frames per second (twice as much data), or you lossily downsample to 30 frames per second.

Gelob 11y ago

That isn't Netflix's job. A post house delievers the raw .mov files to Netflix. The post house gets the files or tapes from the studio or whomever manages the libary for them (aka another post house). The post house has to comply to a set of standard's set forth by Netflix or it is automatically rejected. Most of the time things like no interlacing is in those requirements but also there can be exceptions if no other source material is available. iTunes works the same way. So say the post house that delievers to Netflix is only getting digital raw .movs and not the actual tapes, they may not be allowed to re-encode those or have access to the tapes to do the correct conversion.