Interlaced Antenna Playback pretty bad on new ATV client

[sfatula 194]

Ok, I am going to attach a sample video recorded off of local PBS which broadcasts in 1080i. Some details:

 

1. Playing on a gen4 Apple TV with Emby 1.4.00 client is pretty bad. In the sample clip attached, play in Emby and note the people when they move horizontally across the screen, you see the horizontal interlace lines following or leading the moving parts of the video

2. Playing on the 4th gen that looks bad with Emby, using vlc to play instead, looks great. 

3. If I set a max bitrate in the ATV client < the bitrate of the video, then it is transcoded by the server of course and also looks fine

4. When I playback the clip on Roku, it looks fine.

5. When I playback on my 4k ATV, I do not see the lines, it's fine.

6. The old version of the ATV app, whatever was before the mpv version, played the same interlaced videos just fine.

 

So, perhaps this is an issue only with the 4th gen Apple TV and Emby.

 

Same happens at 720i, yes, some subchannels here are in 720i and look fine on Roku and the 4k Apple TV also. 

 

So, attaching a sample for your reference. I had previously reported but had gone out of town for a while. 

 

 

Victoria.mkv.zip

Edited February 25, 2019 by sfatula

[Luke 39618]

There's no hardware deinterlacing on the Apple TV so the only real option would be some kind of setting to force transcoding for interlaced content.

[sfatula 194]

How does ATV4 VLC play it fine? MrMC? Infuse (there is no server transcoding with these). The underlying ffmpeg certainly does deinterlace, and mpv has a deinterlace setting as well. 

 

Note that the plex ATV client also supports it:

 

https://freetime.mikeconnelly.com/archives/8360

 

I don't believe your statement is accurate. This is a glaring defect to me since antenna tv is likely a large part of Embys user base?

Edited February 25, 2019 by sfatula

[Luke 39618]

Perhaps with software deinterlacing.

[sfatula 194]

Perhaps with software deinterlacing.

 

 

Perhaps, which mpv does support. So, my question is, do you see this as a pretty big defect for antenna users? Aren't there a lot of us? Many antenna channels are 1080i. I thought Emby was a dvr. Clearly, it is possible to deinterlace on atv4 as all the other packages mentioned do so.

 

I can see forcing transcoding if interlaced as a quick fix type event. But as a better solution, it should be fixed by using the mpv options. No?

 

Are you able to duplicate the playing on a ATV4 and see the interlaced lines? I am most curious about this. 

Edited February 25, 2019 by sfatula

[Luke 39618]

We will look into it, thanks.

[sfatula 194]

I would love to be in any new Apple TV Beta were that to happen sometime this year. You would get an antenna user, and, someone who uses Emby daily and is picky about defects. 

 

Add me to the list if one comes up. The Mrmc client is current far superior for playing Emby recordings, hopefully you can change that. 

Edited February 28, 2019 by sfatula

[Luke 39618]

This is on our list for review, thanks.

[unisoft 325]

If you are going to deinterlace Pal 25frame 50hz, you need to use 50fps to avoid washed out pictures with judder motion!

 

Please do not use 50i to 25p...

 

Why does atv have this issue? The TV normally deinterlaces interlaced content transparently on the fly. In UK you'd set atv to 1080p 50 display for normal HD res and TV De interlaces sd and HD correctly and 108024p films are switched to show correctly on atv 4k box.

 

If you have 4k TV principle is similar but higher resolution chosen.

Edited March 12, 2019 by unisoft

[denz 453]

As I mentioned previously I think I did in this thread my sony a8f deinterlaces hd content which is h264 but not sd which is mpeg2 content but using mrmc lite everything is deinterlaced but i will play with apple tv settings on the weekend to see can the sd be deinterlaced by tv.

[sfatula 194]

Why does atv have this issue? The TV normally deinterlaces interlaced content transparently on the fly.

Atv set to 1080p. Watching antenna channel directly via tv antenna input, looks great. Watching via hdmi and atv/emby/hdhomerun, awful when an i channel. Samsung tv.

Edited March 12, 2019 by sfatula

[denz 453]

I changed settings from 50hz to 60hz SDR but still made no difference still picture is not deinterlaced watching now motorsport f1 in emby it feels like it is missing frames on fast action.

 

Just switched to our satelite box that has it in 4k wow the quality is awesome on sony oled.

[sfatula 194]

This is still an issue in Beta 1.4.2.12. I still get interlaced lines. Senna asked me to post this here.

[gene0915 40]

Last night, I was watching various, OLD home movies that were shot in 4:3 and are interlaced. On Plex, they look good. With Emby, I get really bad interlacing artifacts. I saw another post about this that wasn't too old and I think Luke shared a screenshot of some spot that had a drop down for picking (I think) your de-interlacing method. Maybe I'm not recalling that memory very well or maybe that option has been removed from the server.

 

Here is an FFMPEG log from one of the videos. I'm using the latest Emby Apple TV beta app. Guess I could try and switch back to the production version and see if that helps or is better dealing with interlacing 'on the drawing board' to be addressed down the road?

 

 

ffmpeg-directstream-622e1e38-31a9-4638-b6f7-153325a88358_1.txt

[ebr 15574]

Hi.  Since you are on the beta of the Apple TV app, we hope a near future beta may help this so stay tuned...

[sfatula 194]

Yeah, interlaced content is currently not so good. For me, am using a post processing script that takes interlaced DVR recordings and converts them from 1080i to 1080p with frame doubling, the results are fantastic, even on sports. Kind of a hassle, so, am hoping for the deinterlacing on AppleTV to work one of these days. "near future beta" actually sounds awesome.

[spacecowboy2050 0]

@@sfatula what script are you using?  That would be great as I am having the same issue!

[Senna 368]

I guess the issue got forgotten @@sfatula

 

Can you provide the current status with current app version and Apple TV 4(HD) where the problems are visible on ?

[sfatula 194]

It's one I created and it uses my internal nvidia graphics card to do the deinterlace. If you don't have an nvidia card, likely wouldn't be of much use.

[sfatula 194]

1.4.2.24, still an issue, if not explicitly deinterlaced by my custom script, it looks abysmal. Visible on 4th Gen ATV and 5th gen, interlaced lines obvious.

[Senna 368]

Added deinterlacing issue as item 36 to Apple TV beta Collection Topic.

[vdatanet 1574]

Using native player in latest beta, forces transcoding with deinterlacing and playback is pretty good.

[sfatula 194]

Using native player in latest beta, forces transcoding with deinterlacing and playback is pretty good.

 

Yep, seems to be fine now.

[unisoft 325]

On 09/01/2020 at 16:45, sfatula said:

 

Yep, seems to be fine now.

Not on UK PAL content. Still awful. The native player throws a wobbly if the content is 1920x1080i25 and says not compatible. MPV Player does some smeary playing of it. Native Player is fine with 1920x1080p50 (i.e. deinterlaced content already using double frame).

I don't get what's wrong with Apple TV. Normally the interlaced content should just play and the TV deinterlaces transparently as every TV in the UK has a chip onboard that does this as interlaced content gets converted on the fly by TV using the double frame rate method as progressive TVs have always been unable to handle interlaced content as they use "full frames"; hence why they deinterlace on the fly. HDMI can pass interlaced content through for 1080i content.

Edited August 19, 2022 by unisoft

[Luke 39618]

Hi, please try Emby for Apple TV 1.6.3+, which is currently rolling out. Thanks.