WHAT IT DOES: (Basic)

The plugin works at two different levels. By default, at the Basic Level, it is a normal DScaler deinterlace method, with the following features:

- A merge of Blended Clip, Greedy (Low Motion), and some new stuff

- Greedy implied pulldown, like the Greedy (Low Motion) method

- Parm blending like the Blended Clip method, for less sizzling.

- Lookahead motion detection

- Diagonal Jaggie Reduction (DJR ;-) ) to smooth out the stair step effect in moving diagonal lines. This is accomplish by horizontally smoothing only the rapidly moving pixels, leaving the stationary ones alone. If a diagonal edge is not moving then it won't be jagged anyway under Greedy (High Motion). I've previously somewhere here posted a couple snaps of some hard to handle Video Essentials scenes off my test machine and a $135 non-progressive DVD player. See the Flag and the Lampposts .

- Slider adjustments for Max Comb, Motion Threshold, and Motion Sensitivity. However the defaults should be okay for most cases.

- Basic Level is compatible with all MMX, Pentium II, AMD K6-II, K6-III, Celeron and above machines. Performance will probably be about that of the Greedy (2-Frame) method.

WHAT IT DOES: (Advanced)

There is also an Advanced Level (experimental) which is invoked if you check any of the boxes in the Method UI panel. You won't be able to do this unless you are running a machine supporting the Intel SSE instruction set (only integer SSE instructions are needed). The Advanced options should run on Athlons, Intel P-III, P4, and the faster Celerons.

When using the Advanced Features Greedy (HM) maintains its own internal history of the last 4 video input fields. This means it must be able to examine every field and you can't use it at the same time as DScaler's regular Auto_Pulldown option. So if you are going to use the advanced options, please first be sure the Settings/Deinterlace/Auto_Pulldown option is not checked.

Using the Advanced Options is also very sensitive to machine performance and dropped frames, so you may have to lower your Settings/Pixel_Width to 640 if you get jerkiness. It's also best to have Hurry_When_Late=0 in the DScaler.ini file.

The new check box enabled features are:

- Built in 3:2, 2:2, an n:m Pulldown. This does pulldown matching, not removal, so all frames are displayed. I think this eventually will work better with video overlays and live TV viewing that is extensively edited, but it still needs improvement.

- In-Between Frames. This gives judder reduction for those of us with fixed 60 HZ RTPV's. In a 3:2 pulldown situation it will select an appropriate pair of fields to average once out of every 5 frames. This can effectively display every new input frame 2 1/2 times. It will cause a small amount of motion blur every fifth frame but I personally leave it turned on all the time now for a smoother film picture sequence. It will also work with 2:2 pulldown (I think) but there one half of the frames will be averaged and the motion blur may not be acceptable.

- Adjustable Edge Enhancement. This is due to an idea posted by this forum's MR. Wigggles. It enhances only a small amount, on the horizontal axis. When turned on you can use a slider to adjust it.

- Adjustable Median Filter. Also due to Mr. Wigggles, this can help filter noise. However if set over about 3-5 it will also cause motion artifacts on fast moving scenes. Also has a slider.

- Vertical Filter. This is a post-deinterlace software vertical filter that can remove both noise and some leftover deinterlace artifacts. It gives results similar to the hardware version available on the Advanced Video Flags screen, but not so extreme and without the jitter.