What's your favorite deinterlacer?

[okoye11]

MakeMKV is fantastic, but sometimes I run into video that needs to be deinterlaced and was wondering how you all handle it. I'm streaming to Roku devices and browsers, so I don't have a hardware solution, so I'd like to handle it in the media itself. I've tried Davinci Resolve, Handbrake, and Topaz Video AI. Davinci and Handbrake do...ok I guess, but they sacrifice half of the vertical resolution so the video ends up looking smeared (except on the rare occasion Davinci's pulldown feature works flawlessly). Topaz does a phenomenal job deinterlacing, but I have a hard time justifying its cost when I only need one of its many features.

[Woodstock]

If a source is truly interlaced, each frame is half the video. The view can change in that half frame between parts, so your result will either be twice the video rate and half the scene, or full frames assembled from pairs of half frames. Neither is perfect.

Many (most?) of the "free" encoders are based on the work in ffmpeg, including handbrake. If you dislike one, you'll dislike all the ffmpeg-based video tools. A number of the paid tools are also based on ffmpeg, so consider that, too.

[Ezatoka]

Handbrake do...ok I guess, but they sacrifice half of the vertical resolution so the video ends up looking smeared

Never for me. I especially never heard, that the resolution of a video changes. What can change is the FPS of the video, depending on the Deinterlacer.

With Handbrake I always use Decomb -> EEDI2 Bob, and never experienced the problems you described.