How Progressive Players Work
How The Information is Stored on Disc
Its important to understand at the outset that DVDs are designed for interlaced displays. Theres a persistent myth that DVDs are inherently progressive, and all a DVD player needs to do to display a progressive signal is to grab the progressive frames off the disc and show them. This is not exactly true. First of all, a significant amount of DVD content was never progressive to begin with. Anything shot with a typical video camera, which includes many concerts, most supplementary documentaries, and many TV shows, is inherently interlaced. (Some consumer digital video cameras can shoot in progressive mode, and a handful of TV programs are shot in progressive, particularly sports events.) By comparison, content that was originally shot on film, or with a progressive TV camera, or created in a computer, is progressive from the get-go. But even for such content, there is no requirement that it be stored on the DVD progressively.
DVDs are based on MPEG-2 encoding, which allows for either progressive or interlaced sequences. However, very few discs use progressive sequences, because the players are specifically designed for interlaced output. Interestingly, while the sequences (i.e., the films and videos) are seldom stored progressive, there's nothing wrong with using individual progressive frames in an interlaced sequence. This may sound like a semantic distinction, but its not. If the sequence is progressive, then all sorts of rules kick into place which ensure that the material stays progressive from start to finish. Whereas if the sequence is interlaced, then there are fewer rules and no requirement to use progressive frames. The encoder can mix and match interlaced fields and progressive frames as long as each second of MPEG-2 data contains 60 fields, no more, no less (or 50 fields per second for PAL discs). The progressive frames, when they are used, are purely for compression efficiency, but the video is still interlaced as far as the MPEG decoder is concerned.
The input to a DVD encoder (the instrumentation that is used to author a DVD) is almost always an interlaced digital master tape, even if the original material was shot on film. The video transfer is typically done at a different facility, and the output of the transfer is interlaced. Since the DVD encoding software doesn't even have access to a progressive master, it must rely on the same kinds of algorithms that a deinterlacer uses to put the proper fields together. Since there is essentially no requirement that it actually always put the proper fields together, other than compression efficiency, many encoders are conservative about using progressive frames. If the encoder cannot be sure that a frame is progressive, it will typically mark it interlaced, because the only real loss is a few bits of disc space.
When the mastering engineers view the disc for quality control, they view it on an interlaced monitor. They don't necessarily care how well it deinterlaces, because that's not part of the DVD spec. Some mastering houses do pay attention to the flags produced by their encoder, and some do view the disc on progressive players just for quality control, but that's not at all required.
In short, the content on a DVD is interlaced conceptually, and is stored in interlaced sequences. Frames can be marked "progressive" to help compression, but are not always marked that way, even when it would be correct to do so. In interlaced sequences, the encoder can either keep the fields separate, or combine them together into one frame, whichever is best for compression purposes. There is a flag on each image stored in the MPEG-2 stream called picture_structure that can be either frame for a full 720x480 pixel frame, or top field or bottom field for a single 720x240 field. (Well learn about top and bottom fields later.) And it is allowed, but again not required, to set a flag called progressive_frame as a hint to the decoder that the fields in that frame were taken from the same frame of film. This allows for better pause and slow motion modes, and better down-conversion of 16x9 images for 4x3 displays. But this is again, purely optional. The content will play fine whether the data is structured as fields or frames, and whether the flag is present or not.
In fact, the encoder is allowed to combine fields that are not from the same film frame together, as often that produces better compression, even for inherently interlaced video. In such cases, the encoder is not supposed to set the progressive_frame flag, but again, if it does happen to get set, it will make no difference for normal playback on an interlaced display. And since interlaced displays are the only thing DVD was designed for, sloppiness with flags is more common than youd think.
The flags on the disc, and the structure of the frames, are purely hints. Interlaced video can be stored on the disc as frames, and progressive frames can be broken into fields. The progressive_frame flag can be there or not. It doesnt make any difference for interlaced playback. As we will see, though, it can make a big difference for progressive playback.