need seasoned poster advice on "Pulldown" options

[defense]

Hi, I was just curious what the majority of people select within pulldown or the pulldown GUI when running it on an encoded .M2V file after CCE has done the encoding. Up until yesterday I was opening the GUI and simply selecting my .M2V file, changing the name to reflect "pulldown" and hitting GO.

I was told this was the correct way to run pulldown and that I didn't need to set the aspect ratio flags or fps or frame type, because CCE had already done all of those things. Until I was told that, I had always selected those options just by hunch and had never had a problem.

But when I was told to select none of the options and just hit GO, it was from a few different people so I figured I would try it and see, and it looked like it was working. But when I watched MANY of those movies which needed reencoding I found that MANY of them had some type of flickering/jumping/pulsating by the BOTTOM borders.

Basically the ENTIRE film itself was fine, but the bottom borders were jumping. It is VERY hard to notice initially, but once you see it, it's like a sore thumb..it just sticks out.


Anyway, my question is basically what options would technically be "correct" AND which MOST people that use CCE to encode, ultimately end up selecting in pulldown.exe? Because of this problem I now have to re-do about 10 movies or so that have this problem. When I run pulldown on the .m2v files with the problem and simply select the "16:9" aspect ratio, and re-author, the problem is completely gone. (THANKS A MILLION adam.) Obviously I will continue to select 16:9 within the pulldown GUI for ALL movies that are of 16:9 aspect ratio, but I am hoping someone can just tell me what "technically" the correct options would be to select in the pulldown.exe GUI in these instances. Thanks in advance

[damnim]

I've been putting CCE throught the motions and have discovered some things along the way.

If 16:9 is selected it will embedded into the stream.
If you select to use vertical filter it can cause a jumpy picture if the setting is wrong for pulldown or standard 29.97. On DVD high bitrates you should not have to use it.
Running pulldown on an entire program stream can cause a jumpy picture if the program stream has different field orders.
Due to a bug CCE will create a jumpy picture in a bottom field source video even if you don't select top field first. It still encodes it to top field.

Haven't had much success running pulldown so I just run a 3 pass vbr at 29.97 and end up with perfection unless the field order from the video is bottom field first then I just shrink the mess with DVD2One.

[defense]

thanks again damnim for the info. Seems like there are many bugs even with expensive programs. The info you gave may be why only some of the films I've encoded the same way with CCE have had the problems I'm referring to. I guess a "jumpy" picture would be a good way to describe the problems I've gotten, but the picture itself isn't jumpy, just the very bottom border on "SOME" of the films i've reencoded. When running pulldown with the aspect ratio set to 16:9, it has corrected this issue, giving me backups that look exactly like my original. I have done many tests and I personally cannot tell the difference between a 1 pass VBR to a 2 pass VBR. Generally, for movies that need little reencoding or that have few high action scenes/high bitrates, I use 1 pass VBR. For movies that have high action, I use 2 pass VBR. Each time I get incredible results which look identical to the originals. Because of this, I never use 3 passes or more, and I've done a lot of research on this, and using any more then 2 passes may actually cause video degradation.

Although if you have been using 3 pass, then I guess it works fine for you. Sometime you should try 2 pass on a RW and 3 pass on your DVDR and I will pretty much guarantee that extra pass won't yield you any noticeable better quality. Anyway, as far as DVD2ONE goes, I have my concerns about that software from some tests I've run, but If it works for someone in certain situation, then I think it's great. Anyway, thanks again for the info and your help.

[damnim]

I've run some encodes at a 2 pass vbr and agree that there isn't much difference between 2 pass and 3 pass.

Since I do my encoding on a dedicated computor time really wasn't a concern. The encoding would complete while I snoozed for the night.

8)

[defense]

I've run some encodes at a 2 pass vbr and agree that there isn't much difference between 2 pass and 3 pass.

Since I do my encoding on a dedicated computor time really wasn't a concern. The encoding would complete while I snoozed for the night.

Very true, and I just re-read what you wrote and being that you are probably one of the few who encode at 29.97 fps and don't run force film, I guess it is smart to do 3 passes. If that works, then hey, stick with what works, that is what I do. I may end up trying to endeavor upon encoding at 29.97 fps and see how the outcome is compared to now. I will try and see if I can see any noticeable difference either way. 8)