ghosting on ntsc dvd (possibly originally PAL)

[spiritgumm]

I have an interlaced 29.97fps (according to Gspot) NTSC dvdr of a movie that was originally broadcast in UK and recorded to tape. There's annoying ghosting and the slightly incremental look to motion. Not being an expert (just trying to get results), I experimented twice with TMpgenc Express 4: I reencoded with display mode set for "progressive" output, and 2nd time with display set for "inverse pulldown" (filter also set for that). Both results got rid of the ghosting, but there's still that slightly incremental look to motion. I'm assuming a dvdr was made in UK, then someone tried to convert it to ntsc with software. However, if the ntsc dvd was made by playing the PAL dvd in an ntsc player and recording that, then I would guess the incremental motion is permanent.

My questions: can the incremental motion be smoothed out for ntsc playback? Were either making it progressive or inverse pulldown correct, or should I have done something else? I'm using Tmpgenc Express, Videoredo, and freeware (but not Avisynth so please no advice for that).

[jagabo]

Use DgIndex to extract about 10 seconds of the DVD video (a section with motion that displays your problem) as an m2v file then post it. Open a VOB, mark-in, mark-out, Save Project and Demux Video.

If you're not willing to use AviSynth you may not be able t fix the problem.

[spiritgumm]

edit:
I'm posting two samples from the original dvd - one with noticeable incremental motion, one with noticeable ghosting.
I'd still like to know if my de-ghosting methods were appropriate (probably not, if the frame rate needed to be changed back to 24 or 25 fps). I can post samples.
I searched but was unsure what's the typical upload method here, so I finally decided on megaupload. If there's a more convenient video posting method for all concerned, let me know:

ghosting
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=W2WWR1PX

incremental motion
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=6L7PXNZU

[jagabo]

I'm not sure if any of the tools you are willing to use can handle this but...

The first video is an interlaced PAL broadcast of a progressive film source that was captured with the fields out of phase. Then every 5th frame (except every 1000th) was duplicated to create 29.97 fps. In AviSynth this can be restored with:

MPEG2Source("VTS_01_1.demuxed.d2v")
AssumeTFF()
TDecimate(mode=2, rate=25) #discard duplicate frames
SeparateFields().Trim(1,0).Weave() #get fields back in phase

The second video is similar to the first except the fields were not captured out of phase. You can restore it with:

MPEG2Source("VTS_01_4.demuxed.d2v")
AssumeTFF()
TDecimate(mode=2, rate=25) #discard duplicate frames

Those scripts will leave you with 25 fps progressive film frames that can be encoded to MPEG 2 for NTSC DVD then 3:2:3:2:2 pulldown flags (25 fps to 29.97 fps) added with DGPulldown.

With both of these you could restore the original running time by adding AssumeFPS(23.976). You would then use normal 3:2 pulldown flags to make an NTSC DVD. But you will need to adjust the running time of the audio to match the new running time of the video.

I saw no ghosting or field blending in either video.

Below is a quick/dirty xvid conversion of VTS_01_4.m2v using the above script.

vts_01_4.avi

[spiritgumm]

thanks for figuring out those fixes. Since the video samples are from the same dvd, it's odd they have slightly different symptoms (capture out of phase in one).
If it were still Pal, FAVC does a decent job of making a Pal-Ntsc conversion. Tmpgenc Express has several features that you suggest but I'm unsure if does Decimation. Another thread seemed to describe the hiccuping video (noticeable in first sample) as ghosting but I guess I was mistaken in that terminology. From other threads, it sounds like this botched pal-ntsc conversion might have been done with Tmpgenc.

[jagabo]

It's not unusual for PAL caps to sometimes flip field phase. I appended the two samples together and used the following script:

MPEG2Source("sample.d2v")
AssumeTFF()
ConvertToYUY2(interlaced=true)
TFM()
TDecimate(mode=2, rate=25)
ConvertToYV12()
Deblock()
RemoveDirt()
Crop(12,4,-16,-8)
AddBorders(16,8,12,4)

and got the following result:

fps25.avi

There are a few jerks but it was smoother than 24 fps. So I think 25 is correct and the automated TFM() and TDecimate() just made a few mistakes.