If your video was shot with a camera that was produced before 2005, there is a good chance it records video in the interlaced format. The interlaced format can produce interlacing artifacts that look like a thousand annoying little horizontal lines, that can be easily removed with the AI filter Deinterlacer.

Here is what the interlacing artifacts look like:

Interlacing artifacts appear when we want to display an interlaced video on a progressive screen. As most modern screens are progressive, interlacing artifacts often appear when watching old interlaced videos.

The interlaced format was heavily used up to mid-2000 because it had lower bandwidth and was thus cheaper and easier to broadcast. With the advent of faster internet speeds and cheaper digital video, the interlaced format was slowly replaced with the progressive format.

Modern cameras shoot in the progressive format, which is free of any artifacts found in interlaced formats.

It can also be the case that the video has already been de-interlaced. De-interlacing means the video was converted from the interlaced to the progressive format. In this case, you don’t need to apply the Deinterlacer filter.

The best way to find out if the video is in the interlaced format is to play the video in your favorite video player and see if there are any interlacing artifacts.

They usually appear when objects are moving quickly around, e.g. cars moving, people running… Make sure to disable the de-interlacing in the video player as most of them automatically have this option enabled.