which is better? 29.976FPS or 23.976 fps ?

[Beautiful Alone]

just courious.

[adam]

23.976fps. This is essentially a slightly modified version of film, which is how the source originated. NTSC requires 29.97fps playback, so you have two options. You can either hard telecine the movie to 29.97fps by physically repeating fields in a 2:3 pattern, or you can encode at 23.976fps and let the dvd player do the telecine as the movie plays, which is called a soft telecine.

By only having to encode ~24 frames every second, instead of ~30 frames every second, your bitrate is spread out over less frames. Factoring in the very redundant nature of those extra frames (they are just copies of other frames) this yeilds you an increase in quality of about 15%.

Also, 23.976fps is progressive, and a telecined 29.97fps source is interlaced. Very few software encoders encode interlaced material as fields, and instead encode as frames. This is not nearly as high quality so keeping your source progressive gives you extra quality benefits here as well.

[Beautiful Alone]

SO..is it better to enbable force film in dvd2avi everytime i frameserve?

[cdcox]

So adam, are you saying that my quality will increase if I encode to 23.97fps from a source that is dv at 29.97fps? And would you also have to make sure the 23.97 fps encodeed movie is 3:2 pulldown. I use Tmpgenc and mostly do home movies. I'm always looking for away to increase video quality.

[adam]

No and no.

First off everything I said only applies to NTSC. Secondly, you can only encode at 23.976fps if that is how your source originated.

So Beautiful Alone, the vast majority of NTSC DVDs are in fact progressive 23.976fps and if you use forced film on them, you preserve this and be able to encode at 23.976fps and achieve optimum quality. You still need to double check and make sure forced film will work though, because some DVDs are just abnormal and some things on DVD don't originate as film ie: anime, some tv shows. So drag your slider so that you are a little ways into the movie, basically just skip the opening credits which are almost always 29.97fps. Hit preview and see if dvd2avi reports 95% or higher film. If it does, like it almost always will, then use forced film. If making a VCD simply encode at 23.976fps. If making a SVCD or DVD than encode at 23.976fps and enable the 3:2 pulldown flags. This is required to instruct the dvd player to do a telecine of the movie as it plays. DVD players are supposed to do this automatically with VCDs that is why no pulldown flags are required.

cdcox. DV is not film. There are some ridiculously expensive cameras that can record at 24fps, but for the average NTSC user you are stuck at 29.97fps. When dealing with a film source, it is filmed at 24fps and telecined to 29.97fps by adding new frames. This is not how dv works. It actually records 29.97 different frames every second. There is no way to reduce the fps to ~24 without seriuously messing up the source.

[cdcox]

Ok thank you for your help. Now I won't waste time trying it.