JES Deinterlacer Preferences

General Preferences
Anamorphic Preferences
Color Preferences
File Preferences
iPod Preferences
Compressor
Deinterlaced playback preferences
Debug messages preferences

General Preferences

Sound preferences

To have the sound of the input movie copied (or converted) to the output file check "Copy sound"
To save some disk space you can check "Copy by reference" at the risk of losing the sound if you delete the original.
If you do QTMovie export and uncheck "Sound" in the export dialog the sound is simply copied instead if the preference to copy sound has been set.

Force QuickTime Import

Forcing QT import sometimes solves problems with iMovie projects and other movies which are simple in the sense that they have only one video track which is not temporally compressed, yet are complex because of many edits, transitions etc. They may not open or processing may hang at some point.

Use FCP TimeScales

Some of the timescales FCP prefers to work with are different from the QuickTime defaults. If you are going to use the result movie in an FCP project you may want to check this box.
This feature is only available for standards conversion and inverse telecine.

Play Progress Sound

If you check this box the sound is played 2 seconds at a time during processing.

Maximum Number of Projects

The maximum number of projects carried out simultaneously can be set to at most 8, but you may want to set it to a lower value, like 4.
Projects that cannot be carried out immediately end up in the waiting list shown in the project queue window.
Doing many HD projects simultaneously may cause the app to run out of memory! Search the Console messages for "malloc".
For standard conversion with interlaced HD input I advise a maximum of 2 projects.

nice number

The "nice" number determines the Unix priority of the application.
If JES Deinterlacer hogs the processor, set it to a higher value. Default = 1 which is a little nicer than most applications and should be OK in most cases.
If you change the nice number from the command line this is not reflected in the preferences!
The nice number cannot be decremented while the application is running. To lower it, set the value and restart the application.

Copy preferences from total preset

If checked the preferences in the total preset are used.
Sometimes you may not want this. For example, a preset created by someone else may contain different file settings.
If the preferences part is essential but part of it must be adapted you can select the preset in the Presets window, set it in the dialog, customize it and save it as a new preset.
Another way to deal with the problem is to make a preferences preset for your normal preferences and reset it after using the total preset.

Anamorphic Preferences

Anamorphic preferences control the handling of cropping and aspect ratio.

Paint edge color over in edge

If you want to keep the edge pixels of the input movie in the output movie, leave this box unchecked. The edges often contain clean pixels!
If they are really dirty you may want instead to have them painted over in the output frame buffer.

Quess real Mpeg media dimensions

Use this option if you work with NTSC and PAL MPEG2 (media 720x480 or 720x576). Otherwise leave it off as it may cause ugly artifacts. You can do an uncompressed bare project and view in "Encoded pixels" mode in QT Player (Presentation: Conform aperture to) to see the media as used by the app.

Height 1080 MPEG2 is anamorphic

If you check this box height 1080 MPEG2 is treated as 1440x1080, else as 1920x1080.
The wrong choice causes scaling artifacts (due to a bug in the QT MPEG playback component).

Image percentage to stretch

If you do "stretch sides" this determines how the image is stretched.
For example, consider stretching 480x720 to 16:9 = 480x854 with the default value 0.25. In this case 0.25*480 = 120 pixels are used and stretched to 120+(854-720) = 254 pixels. IOW on both left and right sides 60 pixels are stretched to 127 pixels.
Note: you can edit some image description extensions of a movie with my utility JES Extensifier.
This applies to pixel aspect ratio, clip, gamma, nclc and fiel (interlace).

Color Preferences

A set of rarely needed, esoteric color transforms.

NTSC Safe Colors

If the output needs to be shown on TV through analog broadcasting you may need to limit the sum of Y and C amplitudes.

Don't Scale Chroma

Video digitizers often allow separate control of luma and chroma. Luma is controlled with Brightness and Contrast settings, Saturation is a separate setting. If you check this box you can correct luma digitizing settings.
Sometimes brightened up video looks too saturated without this setting. Also contrast reduction (black level < 0) may lead to funky colors in dark areas without this setting.

YUV Sanity Check

The YUV sanity check turns oversaturated YUV into valid RGB by means of desaturation. This may be necessary if the original analog video contains video artistry.

File Preferences

Keep Source File

Don't remove the source file from the dialog after processing is finished. This is convenient when you are testing with various settings, or if the source file is renewed or edited on a regular basis.

Keep result

Don't delete the result file after cancel. This lets you do a quick test with no need for a short reference movie. Sometimes only the video can be inspected.

Default Target Folder

The default target folder can be set either to the folder that contains the input movie or to a fixed location (ususally the Movies folder).

Keep input name

Copy the source file name (not adding " proj").
The file name extension may change of course.

Keep creation date

Copy the input file's creation date.
The start time of the project is set as the modification date.

Use scratch disk

Create the temporary file (for export from file) on the scratch disk, rather than on the same disk as the target file.
This is useful for multipass h264 compression, for example (temporary files can be huge).

iPod Preferences

Small iPod

If checked, Standards conversion scales the movie to fit in 320x240 frame dimensions.
Else the movie is scaled to fit in 640x480.

Compressor preferences

Preferred compressor

Lets you choose a default compressor for SD (PAL/NTSC) presets, HD (720p,1080i,1080p) presets and for any size output.
These compressors are also used by default in other cases whenever appropriate.

Photo-JPEG may be interlaced

Check this when your Photo-JPEG movies are all interlaced (or telecined).

Stretch mp3

Variable bit rate mp3 loses sync in long movies due to a QuickTime bug. Check this to have this bug corrected.

Deinterlaced playback preferences

Screen ID

Select the screen to be used for full screen playback

Speed

Select default playback speed

Full Screen

Open and play movies in full screen mode, autoclose.
Any manipulation during playback (like stop) cancels autoclose.

Debug messages preferences

General

Debug messages are off by default. They are mainly for my own use, but if you are so inclined you can try to chase a bug down a little before reporting it.
"Threads" are units of application code that can be run simultaneously on multiple processors.
"Components" are just sets of source files or even sets of subroutines that constitute some functionality.
This message system replaces the old downloadable debug variant of the application.

Write to file

If you check "Write to file" messages are written to a file in home/library/logs/JES debug logs.
Each thread uses its own file. In order to view, double click on it or (better) open from TextEdit using UTF8 format. Use a "Fixed Width" font like Monaco 10.
You can always trash the logs folder, even while a project is running.
Direct display in a TextEdit window is nice but often too slow. If the Activity Monitor shows TextEdit at 100% CPU all the time JES D will get bogged down.
If you check neither "Write to file" nor "Use TextEdit" the messages are sent to the system Console (search for "Deinterlacer"). This mixes all threads and display can be delayed by several minutes (closing the application may speed things up, as may switching to "All messages").

Print name

Only one of thread name, component name or subcomponent name is printed. For example, if you check both "Print thread name" and "Print component name" the component name is printed.

Line number

"Line number" and "File name" refer to the source code file. "Label" is the position where the code jumps to in case of error (usually the end of the current subroutine).
File names may be abbreviated. The ellipsis character (three dots) is encoded in UTF8!

Error name

Error name and comment are the standard name and comment used by the Mac OS.

Verbosity

Higher verbosity = more messages.
Level 0 suppresses per frame messages.
Set to 1 to get messages for each frame that is processed.
Set to 2 for per line messages (remove jags only currently, not recommended for anything but very short movies).
Set to 3 for per pixel messages (don't even try this).

Call chain length

Subroutines call subroutines which in turn ... This setting limits output to a certain depth.

Threads, components

Standard threads are read, write, color correction etc.
Project threads are deinterlace, reinterlace, etc.
Some of the components are Proj = Project, StdC = Standards conversion, Pref = Preferences, ProD = project dialog, etc.