pulldown.exe help follwing CCE m2v (23/24 fps to NTSC 29.97

[spidey]

Hi I have encoded alot of m2v files using avisynth and cce 264.

The only problem is is that some of them are 23 or 24 fps.

I know that I must run pulldown exe to get them ntsc/dvd authoring compliant.

When I run Pulldown form a command prompt, I have run it as the following

pulldown.exe movie.m2v newmovie.m2v -framerate 29.97

or

pulldown.exe movie.m2v


When finished, both state that it has made the conversion.

However, when I try to load the video files into DVDit or Maestro, it says they are still non-compliant ntssc streams. It states that they vcould be run for a cDVD project in DVDit.

When I look at the stream properties in Media Player, it says the one is now 19 fps, and it has a hard time scanning through it

Also, if I made an ac3 from the 23 fps source file will it be off synch if I do succeed in getting the pulldown to work ?

ANother issue too is since Pulldown is a DOS tool, how can you get it to run on a file which is over 4 gig ?


Any help would be greatly appreciated Thanks Guys

[spidey]

bump

[adam]

If all you are doing is adding the pulldown flags then there is a much easier way. Just take your m2v file and drag and drop it onto the pulldown.exe file. Let it do its thing and there will be a new file called pulldown.m2v located at you root dir ie: c:\ If your file was property encoded at 23.976fps than any dvd authoring program should accept it.

Adding the pulldown flags will have no effect on sync if you are using the original AC3 track, or even if you encoded the audio along with your 23.976fps video. The pulldown flag just instructs the dvd player to do a telecine in real time. This involves creating new frames from existing ones. So rather than actually speeding up the movie, it just adds new frames every second, so it has no effect on sync.

[spidey]

Adam,

Thank you very much for your help. THat is a much quicker option.

I did give it a go, but unfortunately, DVDit, or Maestro still will not take the file.

I have no idea why this isn't working, as after trying your way it looks to have worked again perfectly. However, when I look at the file properties in Media Player, and under Video Renderer's Prop's, again t is stating that it is now at 19 fps ????

The source m2v was at 24.48 fps, so I have no idea how or why the pulldown now dropped it to 19.....

If you have any other ideas, I'm all ears. Thank you again very very much

Otherwise, it looks as if I'll have to just re-encode the clips in TMPG since that enables the 3:2 right off the start and I can convert them over to 29 fps.

[adam]

Please let me know exactly what you are doing here. Is your source a DVD? It almost sounds like you are dealing with PAL sources, in which case pulldown won't work.

[spidey]

One source was an Xvid Screener .avi which had an original source of Video Codec: XViD
Video Bitrate: 1737 kbps
Audio Codec: MP3
Audio Bitrate: 128 kbps
Resolution: 608x336
Frame size: 23.976
Runtime: 113 mins
. I then had resized it and ran it through CCE via Avisynth (to get it 720x480). From the original avi I stripped the audio, and via TMPG, and SSRC created the Mp2, and then ac3'd that.

The Second source was another dvd DivX rip .avi which had an original source fps of 24 it looks like. I then had resized it and ran it through CCE via Avisynth (to get it 720x480). From the original avi I stripped the audio, and via TMPG, and SSRC created the Mp2, and then ac3'd that.

I don't believe that they were PAL, but I can not confirm that unfortunately.

I did just finish re-encoding one of them in TMPG, and it will accept the streams into the dvd authoring, but it is now more jerky.

On the Video Tab in TMPG, under the Encode mode I did have 3:2 playback, must you also enable the 3:2 filter under the advanced area too ?

Any ideas are turly appreciated. Thank you again very much

[adam]

Ok its not PAL then. The only reason I suggested that is because I thought you might be using a DVD source, and I the only other time I have seen someone get 19fps was when they used forced film on a PAL DVD, which obviously won't work.

Ok I can see one obvious problem in your method. Pulldown.exe is used, among other things, to insert the 3:2 pulldown flag into your video stream, but that is also what the 3:2 pulldown when playback option in TMPGenc does. You are attempting to add the same flag twice. If you are using TMPGenc to encode than just use the 3:2 pulldown when playback option and skip pulldown.exe and see how things work out. Never use the 3:2 pulldown option in the advanced tab. It is used to hard telecine 23.976fps footage to 29.97fps. I can't really think of too many practical uses for this.

Regarding your output fps, I'm guessing the problem is just that you are unnecessarily using pulldown.exe. However, you can't always "check" your fps after inserting pulldown flags. The output fps when played will depend on whether your decoder, hardware or software, is parsing those pulldown flags. Media Player, for one, won't do this. In any case you should get a reported fps of 23.976fps or 29.976fps, certainly not 19 Generally, just make sure your source is 23.976fps to begin with and encode to this same fps. If you then insert your pulldown flags, either while encoding in TMPGenc or after encoding via pulldown.exe, than you can rest assured that your mpg is DVD compliant, well at least as fps is concerned.

[spidey]

Hi Adam,

I think I may have not been as clear about things as I should have.

The clips I was trying to use the pulldown on, all were done in CCE, and each of them had a 23 or 24 fps value.

I had only brought up TMPG as an after thought, since the pulldown.exe seemed to not be working. Obviously this is my last option, as I really didn't want to re-encode the stuff. I was not trying to add the feature and perform it 2x, I was just trying to think of other ways to "accomplish" the same thing I guess.

Yes, after adding the flags through pulldown.exe, I do now understand that the value will not be shown as the 29 fps in the software. That is good to know. I was definately confused on that as to why it wasn't showing.

But, even after adding the Pulldown flags (with Pulldown onto the CCE produced m2v's), the m2v streams still would not be accepted into DVDit or Maestro.

So unfortunately it almost looks as if the Pulldown.exe will not work on any of these 3 movies, and they must be re-encoded in TMPG, using the 3:2 when playback flag. Thank you for your note on the Hard telecine. I didn't know whether I had to have the 3:2 options both enabled.

I can't figure why the pulldown.exe won't work on these but unfortunately it looks as if it just will not for some reason.

Thank you again very much for all your help. If you can think of any other options, I'd love to hear them. But it looks at this time that for some reason the pulldown just won't work.

Thank you again Adam for everything

~Spidey~

[DJRumpy]

Spidey, get the GUI for pulldown. It almost sounds like your simply putting a new framerate stamp on the MPEG. By default, PULLDOWN.EXE will add the pulldown flags, with no options specified. Save yourself some grief, and get the Pulldown GUI here: http://guiguy.wminds.com/downloads/pulldownbatchfe/down.html

You should also get MPEG Properties in the TOOLS section to the left. It will properly report the framerate/resolution/bitrate of your MPEG.

If your MPEG is 23.976 frames per second, you should just run it in PULLDOWN, with none of the options selected, other than an output filename if you want to specify it. If you don't specify an output filename, you'll get the default filename in the directory that pulldown.exe sits in.

Use the GUI. Much eaiser. Browse to the file, and leave all of your options unchecked. Also, check the specs on your MPEG to be sure what your working with.

[spidey]

I will give it a go DJRumpy, thank you very much for your help !!!!

After adding the pulldown flags is it normal for the clips to play in sort of a stutter in your Media Player ? You can almost see where the frame was inserted ...

Thank you again very much, I'll advise as to (hopeful) progress

Thanks !!!

[spidey]

Hey Guys,

After using the GUI interface, and enabling the pulldown, as well as checking the box to enable, and then specifying the fps of 29.97, all seems to be cool.

However, now when I play the clip in the media player it is only registering as 31 minutes, when it is actually 3.25 hours ?!?! It plays fine now wiithout the stutter, but the time reporting worries me a bit.

I guess though the most important part of all though is both DVDit, and Maestro now allow the clip to be imported.

Thank you again very much guys Do you think I need to worry of the mis-reported time though ?

[DJRumpy]

Spidey, leave the checkbox for 'framerate (fps)' unselected. Do not check this box. The Pulldown flags your adding will automatically set the proper framerate settings for your MPEG. In your case, you should have NOTHING selected on the OPTIONS screen . Try it again with nothing selected and see if your time problem clears up.

[spidey]

I will give that a go. At least now thanfully it is accepting them into the authoring program. I will try unchecking the framereate decimation box, and if that goes and it accepts them, I'll be one happy little guy

Thanks again Bud, and I will let you know as soon as I find out

Make it a great one

~S~

[Sully]

Are your time problems in media player before or after you burn the file to disc?

If it's after that's normal. For what ever reason (I THINK it's the data conversion from time to bits during burning) after it's burned to disc the file DOES show a different time, but still plays back just fine.

If you play your file back BEFORE you burn, something's up. Do you have an mpeg4 codec installed? If not try installing PowerDVD or WinDVD.

Probably not much help, but food for thought!

[spidey]

Hey Guys,

I did give it a go without enabling the flag for 29.97 fps. It worked the same. It has seemed to insert the pulldown finally, however with or without that 29.97 fps flag on, the clip gives an erroneous time in the M$ Media Player.

Either way the clip to get accepted into the DVD authoring programs without issue.

I am going to try to render out the compilation tonight, as that now seems to be the only way to "test" that they all worked.

Thank you all very much !!! I'll drop back another status report as soon as I can test and view the disc.

Make it a great one Guys !!!

~S~

[DJRumpy]

This is strange. Is the M2V file a virgin, as far as pulldown was concerned, or have you been experimenting on the same mpeg over & over? I'm wondering if the timestamp has been messed up due to a previous run through pulldown. I'm not totally concerned about media player though, as it's support of MPEG-2 seems to be poor. You can't even get basic MPEG info from the properties dialog in media player, and often can't even move the timeline slider through the mpeg without stalling it.

Let me know how your import goes, and if the weirded out timeline messes with your final project.

[spidey]

Hi DJRumpy,

The test is done.

The video streams are fine. It has not mattered whether I forced that 29.97 fps or not, (I tested one of each - just to cover my bases). The batch pulldown gui somehow has worked whereas the stand alone command wouldn't ?!?! So that's 50 % of the battle won.

As far as the clips being virgin, no, they probably weren't which could explain as you mentioned on the time code being messed up.

The issue now is the fact that the ac3's I encoded from the orignal Mp2's from the original (23/24 fps) M2v's, do not match up at all. By the end of the movies, it is almost a minute out of synch. ALthough the time durations of both the ac3 and m2v's are the same, just that the audio needs to be re-adjusted for the 29.97 fps.

Is there any way to "re-time" it to a 29.97 fps audio timing from the 23 fps Mp2 basis it was made from ? I had simply used ssrc to convert them to 48 Khz, then used Scenarists AC3 engine to encode them out. THis has never given me any synch errors before, so I am sure the frame adjustment on the vid stream has caused the mis-timing.

So, I have made it thus far, and now the audio is the dillemma. LOL

Any ideas are more than appreciated Bud. Again, thank you again very very much for all your help

~S~

[DJRumpy]

When you put PULLDOWN flags into your MPEG, the frame rate doesn't actually change on your source MPEG, and your audio length doesn't change either. These flags simply tell your DVD player to telecine the MPEG on playback. It does this on the fly. The length of the movie stays the same, but more frames are displayed per second during playback. These extra frames are generated by the telecine process from existing frames by blending two frames to produce a third. The length of both your audio and video stays exactly the same.

If you are experiencing audio sync problems, then there must be some corruption in your source audio, causing it to lose sync. How did you extract your source audio initially, and what type of audio was it (ac3, mp2, vbr/cbr mp3, etc)?

[spidey]

HI DjRumpy,

I understand and follow everything you've said, that's what's making this more perplexing.

The original source was a vbr/mp3 for the audio, but I had rendered that out, and as I finally got it to a 48khz mp2, I tested it in Vegas and it lined up perfect all the way through.

It wasn't until after the frame rate conversion that it did not line up as you watched it on the stand alone player.

I had thought, as you had said, that the frame rate would have no effect upon it all, but somehow something is not right.

I used DVDit to render it out, and maybe that is having an issue with the flags, etc.

I'll keep monkeying with it and keep you aprised. Thank you again very much Bud Hope you're having a great one !!

~S~

[spidey]

Hey All,

Another update, I have gotten the m2v (had to dvd2avi - d2v into Vfapi) and the mp2 (had to ac3 to mp2 via Headac3he, then rename to mpa for Vegas) to open in Vegas Video 4.

As fas ar audio it looks as if the audio is lamost 10 minutes longer. THan the 3:2 m2v stream.

In looking at it and listening to it, I believe if I can move it's end points in to line up under the beginning and end points of the video track, the re-render it out to ac3, all will be done and synch'd.

I did line it up in the beggining of the tracks as I seperated them in the layouts, but as time goes by they get out of synch again. So I believe that I must "compress" the audio tracks duration to match that of the m2v.

However, when I grab an end point of the audio line, and drag it inwards, the whole track simply deletes the part I am draging in, hence it doens't "compress" it, but it just drops it off.

So I guess the question now would be if anyone knows how to accomplish the "compression" of an audio file in vegas. Not compression in terms of format, but in terms of time duration. I want the same clip, but rather than 3'18" long it'd now be 3'5" long for example.

If anyone has any ideas, I'd really appreciate them. Thank you.

[spidey]

Got it

Page 92 / 314 in Vegas Manual

Looks to be the key

Hold down control while dragging it in.

Thanks.

////This unfortunately did not solve the synch problem - it is however how to readjust a clip's duration ////

[spidey]

All thanks to DJRumpy, Adam, and Sully !!!!!

I am happy to report with much help from you, SUCCESS !!!!

I did re-d/l the source clips, and after first trying to redo them in TMPG, which unfortunately took alot of time, and for my first time, I actually had rather poor results (I got alot of block noise somehow in the re-encode, which was really surprising, as I did it at a 1700 cq vbr, and the source clip was 704 x 480, and I was only resizing it to 720 x 480 ?!?!)

Anyhow, I then redid it in CCE.

It was a 3 part DivX'd avi. I encoded each part seperately at the same spec's. in CCE

One pass vbr 1700 max 1600 min - 40 Q factor, 5 image priority, Ultra Low Bitrate Matrx, etc.

It turned out great. I then loaded each of these into the Pulldown Batch, and redid them all with no other options checked.

Then to test, I multiplexed the new CCE m2v's with the ES streams I had made in CCE for the Mp2's. They matched up great in each of the 1 hour plus segment System files.

So, I then tried to merge all the individual (3) System/ mpg files together.

No go. THis for some reason threw all the sound off, as well as timing in the video.

So I took a step back. I then merged all the video tracks (m2v's) in TMPG. Worked and played great.

I then took the Mp2's into Vegas Video 4, lined them all up, end to end, and then rendered it ou from Vegas as a new Ac3 stream.

Multiplexed the new ac3 stream to the new m2v stream, and it all looked, sounded and played great.

So I then simply used those source ES' (joined m2v's and the full ac3) and authored it all out. Played it on the player to make sure and SUCCESS !!!

I wanted to give you an update since I'd finally been able to test it, and everything is great

Thank you again very much for all your help Hope you're having a great one !!!!!

~S~

[mcmse1]

It looks like I'm jumping in late for this topic discussion but I have a question on what was previously said. My question is in regards to this quote...

If your MPEG is 23.976 frames per second, you should just run it in PULLDOWN, with none of the options selected, other than an output filename if you want to specify it.

I've seen many posts on this forum which say to run pulldown.exe with no options enabled to create a 23.976 fps film movie with 3:2 pulldown but this doesn't make any sense to me. The way I see it, your 23.976 fps video clip starts off as progressive (non-interlaced). By default, with no options enabled, pulldown.exe marks the 23.976fps source as interlaced. You can verify this by running the outputted file through DVD2AVI and using the preview option. The video source rapidly alternates between "progressive" and "interlaced". Shouldn't we at least enable the "Progressive" options in pulldown.exe? Is there something going on here that I don't understand?

-Dan

[spiderman2k1]

One Spider to another spider I had the same problem with the pull down with DVD2DVD-R with CCE 2.50 they is a guide on how to do NTSC with CCE But I lost my book mark's if I find it I will post it

[DJRumpy]

mcmse1, Pulldown.exe simply adds the pulldown flags to your mpeg stream, making it appear to be interlaced. It doesn't actually add any frames to your mpeg. When a dvd player encounters these flags during playback, it telecines the video on the fly, which increases the framerate from 23.976 to 29.97 frames per second. The extra frames are generated from seperate fields from adjacent frames, making the extra frames interlaced. You can find a good example of the telecine process here ( http://www.lukesvideo.com ). Thats why, when you preview an mpeg with pulldown flags in DVD2AVI, it appears to flicker between Progressive and Interlaced. It will hit 3 progressive frames, followed by two interlaced frames. The two interlaced frames were added because the mpeg had pulldown flags telling it to create those two frames on the fly. You can observe it directly steping through a telecined mpeg or avi, one frame at a time (virtualdub is very good at this). The combing/interlaced artifacts are immediately obvious on the telecined frames. You should see a 3 2 3 2 3 2 pattern by stepping through one frame at a time. Almost all NTSC DVD's are encoded at 23.976 frames per second, leaving the telecine process up to the dvd player. This saves space, and bitrate for your video.

Setting additional options is not a requirement, since the pulldown function is all contained within the flags that are added.