Deinterlacing - The real meaning

This is a complex subject, and there are many aspects. I will try to explain the important parts as simply as I can.

Field order

This is whether the lower (even lines) or upper (odd lines) field comes first in the frame.

DV cameras are almost all Lower field first (there are some exceptions with PAL video), while most other codecs use Upper Field first.

If you get this wrong, the output video may look jerky

Deinterlace methods

Weave - this is also called None - keep both interlaced fields in the frame. The resulting video may have horizontal 'comb' artifacts.

Discard even field, discard odd field - use only 1/2 the height and resize. This loses some details and some motion from the original footage, but eliminates the comb artifacts.

Resize by duplicate - results in blocky edges.

Resize by linear interpolate - smooths blocky edges.

Resize Bicubic - restores some of the details with a better guess, but takes longer.

Resize Lanczos - does a better guess than Bicubic, but takes even longer.

Edge Detect - Same as discard and interpolate, but tries to detect edges to interpolate along.

Blend - average the 2 fields - this blurs the motion to some extent.

Smooth Blend - does a lowpass filter on the blend to smooth the image, losing fine details.

Bob - Double frame rate, resize each field to full height. This maintains all the motion from the original footage, but loses some details.

Motion Compensation - analyze motion in the movie and recreate progressive frames based on analysis of the objects - this is the best method, although it takes significantly longer.

Double frame rate - improves quality by maintaining all original information from the interlaced video.

Interlace Detection - also known as Deinterlace Type.

Deinterlace all - apply deinterlace to all frames, even those that aren't interlaced.

Deinterlace interlaced - The program will try to detect interlaced frames, and deinterlace only those frames that are interlaced.

Deinterlace moving - The program will try to isolate moving areas of frames, and deinterlace the moving areas of frames only.