Image Quality – De-interlacing and 3:2 Pulldown
To test image quality, I took some screen shots from various DVDs and video files in an attempt to compare different settings on the new NVIDIA PureVideo technology as well as the default settings on ATI’s performance.
Getting screenshots that were exactly comparable turned out to be somewhat of an issue. I did get as close as I could, but I will also give you my personal thoughts on the “motion” of the video as well; after all, that’s what most important.
De-interlacing – Terminator 2 – Menu
It turned out the introduction movie on the second disc of the T2: Extreme DVD was able to clearly show the de-interlacing aspects of each graphics cards technology.
6600GT with Auto Deinterlacing Set
With NVIDIA’s decoder setting to “Auto” de-interlacing, I definitely could see motion artfacts and jaggies during the short introduction scene as well as here during the menu motions. You can see above that the menu slides back and forth, and while the animation occurs, there appears to be “ghosting” of the panels.
6600GT with Smart Deinterlacing Set
When I set the de-interlacing mode to “Smart” instead of “Auto”, the problem was greatly reduced. During the opening animation and while using the menu, the artifacts had basically disappeared and the overall image quality looked much better.
X700 Pro Default Settings
After installing the MMC 9.03 software, the artifacts on the ATI configuration were reduced greatly as well. Comparing quality of this screenshot as well as the actual animation between the two setups showed basically no quality difference and both produced excellent images.
Digital Video Essentials – Radar
This video that I used to again test de-interlacing comes from a home theater calibration DVD called “Digital Video Essentials.” It’s actually quite a good disc for setting up your home theater system, and it had tests we could use to test certain aspects of PureVideo as well. This scene shows a radar-like animation where the red bar sweeps across the circle in a quick animation. We are easily able to see the affects of interlacing here.
6600GT with “Video” Deinterlacing Mode
Notice that because the standard method of interlacing uses fields from both past and future frame to smooth out the animation, we get ghosting that shows only a partial move of the sweeping line. NVIDIA’s default settings do fix this IQ issue, but I manually set the de-interlace mode to “video” so I could demonstrate the issue for you.
6600GT with Auto Deinterlacing Mode
The NVIDIA PureVideo technology corrects this image issue by removing the bad frame and replacing it with correct ones.
X700 Pro Default Settings
The ATI driver does the same thing as the NVIDIA PureVideo technology here and keeps the ghosting from occuring. And actually, the ATI IQ seems a bit sharper here, though during animation they appear the same.
Street Car Video
In order to test 3:2 Pulldown, you need a video file that shows some specific properties of badly converted video. These screenshots were taken by me, but using a video that was provided by NVIDIA to demonstrate their PureVideo technology. These are not the same images used in the NVIDIA technical documents, however.
6600GT with “Auto” Setting
Notice the blurring around the text on the front of the cable car as well s the “jaggies” that occur along the rails the car is following.
6600GT with “Smart” setting
NVIDIA’s “Smart” setting gives us a much clearer picture here with the blurs gone, and more impressively, has smoother cable car tracks.
X700 Pro Default Settings
The ATI implementation of 3:2 Pulldown shows similar results to the NVIDIA PureVideo technology, the aspect ratio of the image is just a bit different.
