A-B field dominance in DV to interlaced MPEG2 using TMPGenc

[Panash]

I'm experimenting with a borrowed a Sony DCR-TRV110E PAL D8 camcorder to capture analogue 8mm & Hi8 using a 1394 Firewire card.

I've used both VirtualDub and Ulead Studio 4 Basic edition to capture to AVI.

(TMPGenc will read the Microsoft AVI produced by Ulead, but I have to frameserve TMPGenc using Avisynth.)

Ulead gives control over A-B field dominance but VirtualDub doesn't.

When burned as a SVCD, I get one of two effects, depending on how I set filed dominance in TMPGenc. These effects are observed on an Ariston 2000 DVD player. This player has played SVCDs created by my WinTV-PVR capture card without problems (except for the already documented shortcomings of this card)

When field A is dominant, I get a near perfect picture, except when there is movement. Then the picture appears to be split into two half, the upper half remaining "perfect", the lower half then strobes.

When field B is set dominant, the entire picture strobes badly and breaks up into the usual MPEG block motion artifact.

It feels, intuitively, as though field A and field B are swapped in the DV stream (ie even preceeds odd or vice-versa).

Any ideas? Anyone else seen this? Is there an Avisynth filter that will cure this?

As a further observation, if I capture to MPEG2 at a high bit rate using the WinTv-PVR, and then down sample to SVCD complient MPEG2 using TMPGenc (and Avisynth as a frameserver),

using the A-filed dominant setting produces acceptable result (within the limits of the original PVR capture) whereas B-field dominance produces the split screen effect.

Is this the so called anime effect?

Anyone know of any simple DV capture programs? I've downloaded DVIO from
http://mcarr.eecs.umich.edu/dvio/
I'll try it tonight. Anything better?

Anyone know of DV Type1/type2 conversion
pure motion seem to have removed their free converter (typeConv) from
http://www.puremotion.com/downloads/supporttools.htm.

Rgds

PN

[av-freak]

Although I work with Premiere 6 nowadays I have used Ulead in the past with d8 and it worked just fine.

This is basically what you'll have to do:

- Capture the movie with Ulead
- Export avi with (either field A first or B)
- Run TMPEGEnc and choose interlaced as source
- Choose field order
- Choose interlaced for output stream too!

If video jerks then swap the field order in TMPEGEnc.

This should do it all.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: av-freak on 2001-10-05 07:44:50 ]</font>

[Panash]

Yep, did this in all combinations of "A" field first in U-lead, "A" first in TMPGenc, "B" first/"A" first TMPGenc, vice-versa, and "B" first for both, diddn't seem to improve things, seems as though software is taking "B" field from the same frame first rather than "B" field from the previous field. Effect in pans is to make objects appear as though they shimmer back & forth. understandably produces lots of block.

rgds

PN