Adaptive bidirectional time-recursive interpolation for deinterlacing

Summary form only given. There exists a need for finding a good deinterlacing (scan format conversion) system, since, for example, current available cameras are interlaced and the US HDTV Grand Alliance has put forward a proposal containing both interlaced and progressive scanning formats. On the other hand, over the next few years, the local broadcasting stations will find themselves in the position of receiving video material that could be HDTV quality, progressively scanned, while their news/commercials are still NTSC produced (interlaced scanning). We have developed a new algorithm for deinterlacing based on the algorithm of Nguyen and Dubois (see Proc. Int. Workshop on HDTV, November 1992). It interpolates the missing pixels using a weighted combination of spatial and temporal methods. The algorithm is self-adaptive, since it weights various processing blocks based on the error they introduce. Experiments were run on both "real-world" and computer generated video sequences. The results were compared to the "original" obtained as an output of the ray-tracer, as well as to the reference algorithm provided by the AT&T HDTV group.