What should I look for?

Horizontal comb teeth along the moving edges of the pan. A working deinterlacer removes them and leaves clean edges; a missing or misconfigured one leaves a striped, torn look on anything in motion.

Why does it look fine when I preview it in my browser?

Because the browser already deinterlaced it. Interlaced video has to be deinterlaced somewhere before it reaches a progressive display, so a preview shows you that player's result rather than the file itself. Download it and open it in the tool you actually want to test.

Why isn't this on your YouTube channel?

YouTube deinterlaces everything at upload, so the version served back would be progressive and useless as a deinterlacing test. This one is download-only on purpose.

Is it really interlaced, or just tagged that way?

Really interlaced - the two fields per frame are sampled at different points in time, which is what makes the combing appear on motion. Checking with ffprobe reports the file's interlaced field order rather than a progressive stream.

Deinterlacing Test – 1080i Interlaced Sample File

A true interlaced 1080i file for testing deinterlacers. Download it rather than judging it here: almost every player, this page included, deinterlaces on the way to your screen, so what you see in a browser is the deinterlacer's output and not the source.

deinterlacing-test.mp4

MP4 · 2.3 MB Resolution: 1920x1080 interlaced (1080i) Field rate: 60 fields/s (30 frames/s, upper field first) Duration: 1m 8s Format: MP4 (H.264, interlaced, silent) VirusTotal report

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Are these files safe to download?

Every sample file is generated by us — no executable code, no macros. Files are served over HTTPS from our CDN, each with a SHA-256 checksum so you can verify your download and a link to an independent VirusTotal scan report.

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Common use cases

Comparing deinterlacing filters

Run the same file through yadif, bwdif and estdif in ffmpeg, or through VLC's deinterlace modes, and compare the panning detail for combing left behind.

Checking a TV or capture card

Feed it to a TV, capture card or set-top box to see whether the device detects interlaced content and deinterlaces it, or passes the combing straight through.

Testing an encoding pipeline

Confirm a Handbrake or ffmpeg preset actually deinterlaces its input instead of encoding the fields as-is, which is easy to miss until the output is on a real screen.

Frequently asked questions

What should I look for?: Horizontal comb teeth along the moving edges of the pan. A working deinterlacer removes them and leaves clean edges; a missing or misconfigured one leaves a striped, torn look on anything in motion.
Why does it look fine when I preview it in my browser?: Because the browser already deinterlaced it. Interlaced video has to be deinterlaced somewhere before it reaches a progressive display, so a preview shows you that player's result rather than the file itself. Download it and open it in the tool you actually want to test.
Why isn't this on your YouTube channel?: YouTube deinterlaces everything at upload, so the version served back would be progressive and useless as a deinterlacing test. This one is download-only on purpose.
Is it really interlaced, or just tagged that way?: Really interlaced - the two fields per frame are sampled at different points in time, which is what makes the combing appear on motion. Checking with ffprobe reports the file's interlaced field order rather than a progressive stream.