How to set the interlaced flag in the MKV file so that the VLC can automatically play it interlaced?

Question

I have a MKV file, the source of which is NTSC MPEG-2 interlaced video. I converted it to H.264 MKV with HandBrake, but this process did not set the “interlaced” flag in the MKV file. The content is alternating, and I want it to remain interlaced because it looks much better than 60-second content with de-interlacing on the fly than 30-second content that was deinterlaced for time encoding.

I tried this ...

mkvpropedit -e track:v1 -a interlaced=1 foo.mkv 

which really set the interlaced bit ...

 |+ Segment tracks | + A track | + Video track | + Pixel width: 704 | + Pixel height: 480 | + Display width: 625 | + Display height: 480 | + Interlaced: 1 

But when I play a video from VLC with the deinterlacing set to "Automatic", it does not consider that the video is interlaced and therefore does not perform deinterlacing.

What am I doing wrong?

Software version:
HandBrake 0.9.5
mkvpropedit v5.0.1
Mac OS X 10.7.3

Answer 1

I would recommend trying FFMPEG.

Documentation: http://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg.html

'- ilme
Encoder forced rotation support (MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 only). Use this option if your input file is interlaced and you want to keep the interlaced format for minimal loss. An alternative is to deinterlacing the input stream with '-deinterlace, but deinterlacing introduces loss.

Since you mentioned that you are on OSX 10.7, you can use MacPorts to install all the + ffmpeg dependencies for you (after installing the depot, you can also create the latest version from git).

http://www.macports.org/

(You must be sure of the command line for all of these tools.)

Answer 2

so that the hand brake sets the interlaced flag:

-use H.264 (x264) Video codec

- at the bottom of the "Advanced" tab, add: tff or: bff, (depends on whether the source field is the first or bottom field first)