Adjusting frame rate on a slient film

[fred3f]

Without really knowing what I am doing I seem to have taken on a project that is advanced. I am converting a DVD of a movie called Mickey 1918 to avi. The frame rate is 29.97 and it is filled with duplicates. Using Virtualdubmod I went frame to frame and noted where the duplications were. The pattern is 00101 with 1 being a duplicte. As you may know, silent films could have frame rates that are anywhere from 16 to 26fps. So counting the duplicates in 30 (close to 29.97) frames, there are 12. Subtract 12 from 30 and you get (about) 18fps as being the source of the DVD. I noticed that VirtualDub has a frame rate control but when I opened it I did not know how to use it. It seems to be easy if the pattern had been 001001001 or 010101 but when it alternates, I do not know if VirtualDub can handle it without killing good frames and leaving duplicates. I had hope for the box that says decimate but don't know how to fill in that field. Assuming I can use this program to accomplish what I am trying to do, can someone tell me in idiot detail how it would be done?

[jagabo]

VirtualDub uses simple decimation to remove frames. It doesn't remove duplicate frames preferentially. Try using AviSynth with TDecimate(mode=2, rate=18).

[redwudz]

Try decimate by '3' and see if it works. Problem is if it's been edited afterwards that may not work correctly. I usually convert to a lossless codec for doing this, Lagarith or HuffyUV so I can do frame accurate cutting. That also minimizes quality loss if you need to convert back to a different final format. I also frameserve the output directly to a MPEG-2 encoder to eliminate a second large edited file, especially if I need to add filtering.

EDIT: jagabo's method sounds like a better solution.

And welcome to our forums.

[manono]

If there are really 2 duplicate frames in every 5 frame cycle, then I'd go with:

TDecimate(Mode=0,Cycle=5,CycleR=2)

in an AviSynth script. The resulting framerate will be 17.982fps. You can forget about VDub doing the job, The only way to get the correct framerate is with an AviSynth script.