[TESTING] Kodi v19 builds for Vero 4K / 4K +

If you do ever want to get into possible future enhancements, here are other things you can usefully get from those test clips; but let me just reiterate that these issues also happen in 3.14/Leia, so you presumably shouldn’t be looking at them now.

  1. The 480i wedge pattern decoded in software is deinterlaced correctly. Decoded in hardware you get a massive moiré pattern in the horizontal wedge, centered on the 240 mark. This indicates that it’s being deinterlaced as video instead of film.

  2. There is, however, a weird scaling issue that affects the 480i clip if it’s played in software (with 480p whitelisted). Set scaling to Nearest Neighbour and watch the vertical wedge on the left - every now and again you see a column of distortion sweeping across it from side to side. You can somewhat mask the effect but setting scaling to Bilinear. But if the video is 480i and the output is 480p, why is there any scaling going on?! The setting shouldn’t change anything. (So I don’t think this is a deinterlacing error, I think it’s a scaling problem - the problem being that it’s scaling when it shouldn’t be!)

  3. Decoded in hardware with deinterlacing set to Deinterlace or Auto-Select, the 1080i/60 wedge clip is decoded as video rather than film. (Big moiré pattern around the 540 mark). With Deinterlacing set to Off it’s deinterlaced correctly. It’s also handled correctly in software.

  4. The Little Dorrit clip is 1080i/50 VC-1. It is an example of deinterlacing errors that are easily visible on something that isn’t a dedicated test pattern. Watch for shots where you can see a gold box design on the side of the piano, and look at the top and bottom edges of the gold box and the reflections along the bottom edge of the piano. Artefacts are fixed by setting deinterlacing to Off, but very visible in Deinterlace or Auto-Select modes.

  5. The Sherlock clip is 1080i/50 h.264. Watch the pattern on Mycroft’s grey suit, especially between 00:30 and 00:47 - you get a shimmering effect because of deinterlacing errors. Because this is h.264 rather than VC-1 you don’t have the option of fixing it by setting deinterlacing to Off.

  6. The clip from Time Flight is 576i/50, MPEG2. It is correctly deinterlaced as video, but highlights poor quality diagonal filtering if it’s played in hardware mode. Decoded in software it looks okay. But in hardware, watch the control console between 00:10 and 00:15, and between 00:34 and 00:39 - note the jagged edges and “crawling” effect.