Field matching filter for inverse telecine. It is meant to reconstruct the progressive frames from a telecined stream. The filter does not drop duplicated frames, so to achieve a complete inverse telecine fieldmatch needs to be followed by a decimation filter such as decimate in the filtergraph.

The separation of the field matching and the decimation is notably motivated by the possibility of inserting a de-interlacing filter fallback between the two. If the source has mixed telecined and real interlaced content, fieldmatch will not be able to match fields for the interlaced parts. But these remaining combed frames will be marked as interlaced, and thus can be de-interlaced by a later filter such as yadif before decimation.

In addition to the various configuration options, fieldmatch can take an optional second stream, activated through the ppsrc option. If enabled, the frames reconstruction will be based on the fields and frames from this second stream. This allows the first input to be pre-processed in order to help the various algorithms of the filter, while keeping the output lossless (assuming the fields are matched properly). Typically, a field-aware denoiser, or brightness/contrast adjustments can help.

Note that this filter uses the same algorithms as TIVTC/TFM (AviSynth project) and VIVTC/VFM (VapourSynth project). The later is a light clone of TFM from which fieldmatch is based on. While the semantic and usage are very close, some behaviour and options names can differ.

The decimate filter currently only works for constant frame rate input. If your input has mixed telecined (30fps) and progressive content with a lower framerate like 24fps use the following filterchain to produce the necessary cfr stream: dejudder,fps=30000/1001,fieldmatch,decimate.

The filter accepts the following options:

order

Specify the assumed field order of the input stream. Available values are:

auto

Auto detect parity (use FFmpeg’s internal parity value).

bff

Assume bottom field first.

tff

Assume top field first.

Note that it is sometimes recommended not to trust the parity announced by the stream.

Default value is auto.

mode

Set the matching mode or strategy to use. pc mode is the safest in the sense that it won’t risk creating jerkiness due to duplicate frames when possible, but if there are bad edits or blended fields it will end up outputting combed frames when a good match might actually exist. On the other hand, pcn_ub mode is the most risky in terms of creating jerkiness, but will almost always find a good frame if there is one. The other values are all somewhere in between pc and pcn_ub in terms of risking jerkiness and creating duplicate frames versus finding good matches in sections with bad edits, orphaned fields, blended fields, etc.

More details about p/c/n/u/b are available in p/c/n/u/b meaning section.

Available values are:

pc

2-way matching (p/c)

pc_n

2-way matching, and trying 3rd match if still combed (p/c + n)

pc_u

2-way matching, and trying 3rd match (same order) if still combed (p/c + u)

pc_n_ub

2-way matching, trying 3rd match if still combed, and trying 4th/5th matches if still combed (p/c + n + u/b)

pcn

3-way matching (p/c/n)

pcn_ub

3-way matching, and trying 4th/5th matches if all 3 of the original matches are detected as combed (p/c/n + u/b)

The parenthesis at the end indicate the matches that would be used for that mode assuming order=tff (and field on auto or top).

In terms of speed pc mode is by far the fastest and pcn_ub is the slowest.

Default value is pc_n.

ppsrc

Mark the main input stream as a pre-processed input, and enable the secondary input stream as the clean source to pick the fields from. See the filter introduction for more details. It is similar to the clip2 feature from VFM/TFM.

Default value is 0 (disabled).

field

Set the field to match from. It is recommended to set this to the same value as order unless you experience matching failures with that setting. In certain circumstances changing the field that is used to match from can have a large impact on matching performance. Available values are:

auto

Automatic (same value as order).

bottom

Match from the bottom field.

top

Match from the top field.

Default value is auto.

mchroma

Set whether or not chroma is included during the match comparisons. In most cases it is recommended to leave this enabled. You should set this to 0 only if your clip has bad chroma problems such as heavy rainbowing or other artifacts. Setting this to 0 could also be used to speed things up at the cost of some accuracy.

Default value is 1.

y0, y1

These define an exclusion band which excludes the lines between y0 and y1 from being included in the field matching decision. An exclusion band can be used to ignore subtitles, a logo, or other things that may interfere with the matching. y0 sets the starting scan line and y1 sets the ending line; all lines in between y0 and y1 (including y0 and y1) will be ignored. Setting y0 and y1 to the same value will disable the feature. y0 and y1 defaults to 0.

scthresh

Set the scene change detection threshold as a percentage of maximum change on the luma plane. Good values are in the [8.0, 14.0] range. Scene change detection is only relevant in case combmatch=sc. The range for scthresh is [0.0, 100.0].

Default value is 12.0.

combmatch

When combatch is not none, fieldmatch will take into account the combed scores of matches when deciding what match to use as the final match. Available values are:

none

No final matching based on combed scores.

sc

Combed scores are only used when a scene change is detected.

full

Use combed scores all the time.

Default is sc.

combdbg

Force fieldmatch to calculate the combed metrics for certain matches and print them. This setting is known as micout in TFM/VFM vocabulary. Available values are:

none

No forced calculation.

pcn

Force p/c/n calculations.

pcnub

Force p/c/n/u/b calculations.

Default value is none.

cthresh

This is the area combing threshold used for combed frame detection. This essentially controls how "strong" or "visible" combing must be to be detected. Larger values mean combing must be more visible and smaller values mean combing can be less visible or strong and still be detected. Valid settings are from -1 (every pixel will be detected as combed) to 255 (no pixel will be detected as combed). This is basically a pixel difference value. A good range is [8, 12].

Default value is 9.

chroma

Sets whether or not chroma is considered in the combed frame decision. Only disable this if your source has chroma problems (rainbowing, etc.) that are causing problems for the combed frame detection with chroma enabled. Actually, using chroma=0 is usually more reliable, except for the case where there is chroma only combing in the source.

Default value is 0.

blockx, blocky

Respectively set the x-axis and y-axis size of the window used during combed frame detection. This has to do with the size of the area in which combpel pixels are required to be detected as combed for a frame to be declared combed. See the combpel parameter description for more info. Possible values are any number that is a power of 2 starting at 4 and going up to 512.

Default value is 16.

combpel

The number of combed pixels inside any of the blocky by blockx size blocks on the frame for the frame to be detected as combed. While cthresh controls how "visible" the combing must be, this setting controls "how much" combing there must be in any localized area (a window defined by the blockx and blocky settings) on the frame. Minimum value is 0 and maximum is blocky x blockx (at which point no frames will ever be detected as combed). This setting is known as MI in TFM/VFM vocabulary.

Default value is 80.

Top fields:     1 2 2 3 4
Bottom fields:  1 2 3 4 4

Input stream:
                T     1 2 2 3 4
                B     1 2 3 4 4   <-- matching reference

Matches:              c c n n c

Output stream:
                T     1 2 3 4 4
                B     1 2 3 4 4

Input stream:
                T     1 2 2 3 4   <-- matching reference
                B     1 2 3 4 4

Matches:              c c p p c

Output stream:
                T     1 2 2 3 4
                B     1 2 2 3 4

Match:           c         p           n          b          u

                 x       x               x        x          x
  Top          1 2 2     1 2 2       1 2 2      1 2 2      1 2 2
  Bottom       1 2 3     1 2 3       1 2 3      1 2 3      1 2 3
                 x         x           x        x              x

Output frames:
                 2          1          2          2          2
                 2          2          2          1          3

Match:           c         p           n          b          u

                 x         x           x        x              x
  Top          1 2 2     1 2 2       1 2 2      1 2 2      1 2 2
  Bottom       1 2 3     1 2 3       1 2 3      1 2 3      1 2 3
                 x       x               x        x          x

Output frames:
                 2          2          2          1          2
                 2          1          3          2          2

fieldmatch=order=tff:combmatch=none, decimate

fieldmatch=order=tff:combmatch=full, yadif=deint=interlaced, decimate