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I can check the resolution of a video by Right Clicking -> Properties -> Details -> Video.

Is there a way to see if the video is progressive or interlaced?

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    You'll not be able to find it with Windows explorer alone. From my Windows days i remember a tool called GSpot, if it's still around look for it, i'm sure it'll tell you what you need to know about the file.
    – v010dya
    Commented Nov 9, 2014 at 11:58

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You should be able to tell just by looking at it. When you watch for motion and see a comb-like horizontal pattern, the video is interlaced. You could also try pausing the video at several points and looking for this pattern, but not every frame will look interlaced. Pause the video at points where there is quick motion, and step forward one frame at a time. Make sure the video is displayed at %100 zoom. If you find a frame which exhibits this pattern, the whole movie is interlaced. Once you know what to look for, you'll recognize it instantly. enter image description here

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    If not every frame of motion has combing, and the pattern is 3 progressive, 2 interlaced, you probably have a video that was telecined to 30fps from 24fps, with a 3:2 pullup. Normally 24fps video just gets stored on DVDs as 24fps progressive, and the decoder can telecine if needed (soft telecine). But sometimes you see video that was hard telecined, and the 30fps TC output was sent to the encoder. Star Trek DVDs had mostly progressive mode, but their effects shots were done with 30fps NTSC TV equipment, so segments of each show are hard TCed.
    – Peter Cordes
    Commented Apr 16, 2015 at 8:40
  • How do you differentiate between an interlaced video or a progressive video badly converted from interlaced source material? While helpful, this should not be the accepted answer.
    – summerrain
    Commented Apr 9, 2023 at 21:08
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Windows won't help you with this. There are several file info programs available. I use MediaInfo, which I like especially for the context menu entry "MediaInfo" that allows you to quickly open video files and view their meta data in the program.

It shows mostly anything there is to know about the video file. The information you are looking for will be found under "scan type".

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    Note that the flags in the file don't necessarily reflect what's in the video. Badly-chosen encoder settings could for example encode progressive content as if it were interlaced. Output looks the same, but the encoder would be assuming that odd/even lines are from different times. (small loss in quality per bitrate.). Or, interlaced content encoded as progressive. Probably a large impact on quality per bitrate in this case, the encoder would see the combing as detail that it had to preserve the normal way. (I doubt any encoders auto-detect combing and enable interlaced mode.)
    – Peter Cordes
    Commented Apr 16, 2015 at 8:35
  • Also, DVDs can switch from soft to hard telecine mid-stream (e.g. the Star Trek DVDs do this, since the effects shots were done with video equipment, but otherwise the show was filmed at 24p.) If Mediainfo only looks at the beginning of the video stream, it would miss this.
    – Peter Cordes
    Commented Apr 16, 2015 at 8:46
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I use VLC Media Player. It will play most any format and will play DVD straight from the disc. Play the video and slow it way down during a motion sequence using the little double arrows next to the time line. It will clearly show the interlace if it is present.

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If you have ffmpeg installed you can use the idet tool. Here is a guide on how to use it: http://www.aktau.be/2013/09/22/detecting-interlaced-video-with-ffmpeg/

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Install MediaInfo, right click on video file, click "MediaInfo" and follow below path.

[Video_file] -> MediaInfo -> Options -> Preferences -> Change 'Output Format' to 'Text'. If 'Scan-type : Interlaced' flag is present, then video is interlaced.

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If you want to be able to check it for several files at once, here are the arguments you could use with the "CLI" (command-line) version of Mediainfo, or with ffprobe (which comes with ffmpeg).

mediainfo --Inform='Video;%ScanType%,%ScanOrder%,%ScanType_StoreMethod%' "$Your_File"

Sample output with different files:

Progressive,,
Interlaced,TFF,
Interlaced,TFF,InterleavedFields

Or with ffprobe, with some additional info, and the (not so clear) "field_order" info last:

ffprobe -v quiet -select_streams v -show_entries stream=codec_name,height,width,pix_fmt,field_order -of csv=p=0 "$Your_File"

prores,1920,1080,yuva444p12le,progressive
h264,1920,1080,yuv420p,unknown              # some progressive files show unknown
prores,720,576,yuv422p10le,tb               # tb = interlaced, TFF, interleaved
mpeg2video,1920,1080,yuv422p,tt             # tt = interlaced, TFF
dvvideo,720,576,yuv420p,bt                  # bt = interlaced, BFF
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  • What's the v on the ffprobe line, is it a typo? Doesn't seem to work anyway with 4.3.1, stream= parsed as input filename
    – Antti Rytsölä
    Commented Jun 1, 2023 at 8:34
  • @AnttiRytsölä: v is the argument to the -select_streams option to select the video stream. The error you had was because my command was missing the -show_entries option before "stream=...". Thanks for pointing it out. It is corrected now.
    – mivk
    Commented Jun 8, 2023 at 13:17

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