TV shows vs movies on TV

[lpn1160]

If anyone has any knowledge on this let me know please.
Movies shown on TV, we know are telecined(24fps->29.970fps).
when encodeing for vcd we can ivtc to get our original frame rate.
this works well enough. They also play well in my standalone dvd player.
But what about TV shows? The ones that are made just for TV???
Those 30min shows or 1hr. shows. Are they strictly 29.970fps??
if not can we or should we ivtc them as well?
would we miss frames??
and what about TV specials?? Made for TV movies Etc....

Thanks in advance

[vhelp]

lpn1160,

well, I have learnt that you can't always depend on IVTC in every "movies
shown on tv" that were telecined. It's sort of hard to swallow that fact
that those entities that air MOVIES on tv purposely jimmy even IVTC, in
addition to, the source quality (ie, filter the color space to look kind
of chalky, especially in dark scenes - look at ST-Enterprise shows, ..those
are the WORSE so far) Anyways.. TVS** like to throw in an interlace, either
one frame early or to late, which throws off IVTC pattern ie, 3,2; 3,2; 3,2...
For example, I've seen how they (TNN) airs ST-NG w/ IVTC patterns:
3,2 3,2 3,2 3,2 3,2 3,2 2,2 3,2 3,2 3,2 3,2 3,2 3,2 2,2 .. .. ..
Unfortunately, I haven't ben able to figure out how to apply this in TMPG's
IVTC filter page, else perhaps it would come out correct, using the above
as the "template" pattern for TMPG - it's a bit cryptic, but if anyone
know how to apply the above pattern in TMPG (I doubt) please aid.

Anyways, so, you have to watch out for this. Just you try an normal IVTC
on ST-NG, SG-1, Farscape to name a few, and see for yourself. AVIsynth
doesn't help on patterns such as the above - you'll get jumppyness.

Made for TV specials/movies, etc. can be IVTC but the above also does
apply as well. You just have to try THEM ALL. The one that comes out the
smoothest, is the one to apply for THAT program.

TV shows, like Cosby Show, (i use this show in most of my comments)
This show does all threee jimmies. It can be a perfect IVTC, or a broken
IVTC (see above ST-NG example) or Interlaced (every frame interlaced)
but NEVER seen this show Progressive. They don't like showing this show
w/ perfect IVTC for MOST of them that airs. But, it pretty much depends
on the year as well. As every year, quality got better, so to speak.

TV shows, you have to do just what you were doing, test, test, and more
tests. apply every routine you know of on those that give you trouble,
till it is smooth. But, bare in mind (as above) NOT every show will come
out smooth (or resolved) and you'll have to live with it, or just do the
show at 29.970fps interlaced, and HAVE smooth video.. if all else fails,
just use this and move on.

30 minute shows, same applies to above. If the show is not Interlaced
(every frame) then it is IVTC but usually, those are broken IVTC's as in
the ST-NG example - no getting around it unless you use full 29.970fps
and encode w/ Interlace on.

You can still get great quality of these encodes at full 29.970fps, but
that is dependant on YOUR skill in mpeg encoding, which format you use,
etc.
When all else fails, I would use the full 29.970fs and encode w/ Interlace
turne ON - assuming your goal is MPEG-2. If you are divX'ing them, then
that is another issue. You'll have to de-interlace them if you want to
see no lines (combing) in your video monitor during play.

All this issue with IVTC is pendant upon the TVS airing them. The ball is
in their hands, and you have to have the right glove to catch it properly.

TVS-tv stations

That's about it for now.
-vhelp

[sterno]

Also remember that some TV shows use a mixture of pure NTSC and telecined FILM material. I think I've heard that Star Trek: The Next Generation and Babylon 5 are both done this way - the live-action scenes were shot at 24fps and telecined, but the computer-generated sequences like space scenes were rendered directly to 30fps. You can't really IVTC things like that because the 30fps material was never telecined, if you try all the computer-generated sequences will be jerky because they're missing frames that really did exist in the original.

On a related note, sometimes the live-action sequences are widescreen to begin with and cropped for broadcast while the computer-generated sequences are rendered directly to a 4:3 TV frame. The "widescreen" Babylon 5 that Sci-Fi Channel shows has all the computer-generated sequences cropped at top and bottom to fit a widescreen aspect ratio because they were done that way. The pilot wasn't even shot widescreen, they altered it to make it look widescreen for Sci-Fi's broadcast (it is fullscreen on the DVD release, though).

[lpn1160]

Thanks all very much for your help. I think for a rule of thumb I will adhere to the following just to simplify my life

1) TV shows 29.970fps
2) films on TV with computer gen anim 29.970
3) older films and films with no computer gen stuff 23.976fps
4) caps from vhs 23.976fps
otherwise I could could spend days testing & testing

Thanks again to all

[solarfox]

I'm probably missing something here, but... what, exactly, is the point of inverse-telecining? Your DVD player is just going to duplicate frames to convert it back to 29.97fps again when it plays the disc, because there is no such thing as NTSC-Film! Not from a TV-set standpoint, anyway; all NTSC television sets sync at the standard NTSC rate of 29.97, and only at 29.97; no standard NTSC TV set can sync at the so-called "NTSC-Film" rate.

Don't believe me? Hook up an oscilloscope to the output of your DVD player and see for yourself. I have never yet seen a player which outputs 23.97 frames/sec, or any NTSC TV set which would accept it if it did. So why bother?

[sterno]

2) films on TV with computer gen anim 29.970

Just to clarify, I was referring only to made-for-TV stuff. TV shows and made-for-TV movies, but not theater movies being broadcast on TV.

I'm probably missing something here, but... what, exactly, is the point of inverse-telecining? Your DVD player is just going to duplicate frames to convert it back to 29.97fps again when it plays the disc, because there is no such thing as NTSC-Film! Not from a TV-set standpoint, anyway; all NTSC television sets sync at the standard NTSC rate of 29.97, and only at 29.97; no standard NTSC TV set can sync at the so-called "NTSC-Film" rate.

That is correct, the DVD player will telecine the stream and video playback will always be at 30fps. Where NTSCFilm (and IVTC) comes in is for video storage. With a VCD, you get 1150k/s. With NTSC you spread that 1150k over 30 frames, and with NTSCFilm you spread it over only 24 frames. It's a more efficient way of storing the video digitally, which essentially means that you have a little more space available to store each frame so you can have a little higher quality. That's part of why the video on most DVDs is stored at FILM (the other part is that they don't have to bother with a telecine or frame rate conversion so it's less work).