NTSC 23 fps to PAL 25 fps problems...

[3dcandy]

Hi,
I've got a fairly good idea about converting formats, but I can't seem to get 23 fps NTSC to 25 fps PAL smooth. The picture always jerks around. I'm using TMPGenc to encode the video, does anyone know what I need to set to get an acceptable smooth video stream???

Cheers!

[Baldrick]

Did you select Do not frame rate conversion under Settings->Advanced?

[3dcandy]

If I choose that, the audio is out of sync....

[FulciLives]

If I choose that, the audio is out of sync....

Well that is the correct way ... and the reason for the audio being out-of-sync ... well that's because the conversion from 23.976fps to 25fps is speeding up the video ... by approximately 4%

So you also need to speed up the audio by about 4%

BeSweet can be used for this. The BeSweet GUI has a built-in option for NTSC (23.976fps) to PAL (25fps) conversion.

It seems to work best when you give it a WAV file and convert to a new WAV file.

So I would convert the audio to WAV file ... then do the FPS change in BeSweet to a new WAV ... then convert that new WAV to MP2 or AC-3 or whatever you want (and the new WAV can also be used but will take up a lot of space hence the reason for formats like MP2 and AC-3).

If the original audio is AC-3 and only 2 channel then I would still convert to a WAV first but if the original AC-3 is 5.1 then you can go from 5.1 AC-3 to 5.1 AC-3 using BeSweet while doing the FPS change but for that I would use AC3Machine as a front end instead of the BeSweet GUI

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[3dcandy]

OK.....will give that a try - thanks for your help!

[Arval]

OK I've messed around a fair bit trying to encode 23.98fps movies into 25fps ones for encoding in PAL onto a DVD-R. The problem I have is simply that when I do the conversion it speeds up the video for obvious reasons. What I want is the film at the original speed without creating jerks every second (where I presume the 24th frame is repeated by the program to make the 25th frame). I know it seems like I'm asking the impossible but consider this: I can use the video out on my graphics card to put the videos onto PAL VHS just fine without the jerk, so why can it not be done digitally?

[FulciLives]

OK I've messed around a fair bit trying to encode 23.98fps movies into 25fps ones for encoding in PAL onto a DVD-R. The problem I have is simply that when I do the conversion it speeds up the video for obvious reasons. What I want is the film at the original speed without creating jerks every second (where I presume the 24th frame is repeated by the program to make the 25th frame). I know it seems like I'm asking the impossible but consider this: I can use the video out on my graphics card to put the videos onto PAL VHS just fine without the jerk, so why can it not be done digitally?

If done correctly the original speed of 23.976fps is simply speeded up to 25fps ... no duplicate and/or missing frames.

This does decrease the running time by 4% but this is how all NTSC is converted to PAL ... also FILM and NTSC have the same running time so all movies shot at 24fps are simply speeded up to 25fps for PAL

This is how it is done. You shouldn't be getting "jerky" movement ... if so you are doing something wrong.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[Arval]

So if I bought a film on DVD from the US and the same film on DVD from Britain then I would find that the US film was 4% longer than the UK one in running time? If that's true then I'll be happy but what I've been trying to do is convert 23.976fps to 25fps WITHOUT shortening the running time and without the jerky 25th frame. If the professionals themselves don't do this then I'll be happy to accept the shortened running time I'm getting but if not then it will niggle at me - that's the type of guy I am lol.

Is it so then that all NTSC films are 4% longer than their PAL counterparts?

[FulciLives]

So if I bought a film on DVD from the US and the same film on DVD from Britain then I would find that the US film was 4% longer than the UK one in running time? If that's true then I'll be happy but what I've been trying to do is convert 23.976fps to 25fps WITHOUT shortening the running time and without the jerky 25th frame. If the professionals themselves don't do this then I'll be happy to accept the shortened running time I'm getting but if not then it will niggle at me - that's the type of guy I am lol.

Is it so then that all NTSC films are 4% longer than their PAL counterparts?

You got it.

Film is 24fps

NTSC DVD can be 23.976fps or 29.97fps but either way the running time is the same as Film is ... roughly 24fps

PAL is 25fps so it is common for PAL DVD discs to simply have the playback rate increased from 24fps to 25fps thus making the PAL run slightly shorter than the Film/NTSC version.

This is how it is done.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[SatStorm]

The true proffecional convertion from film to PAL needs a proccess called 2:2 Pulldown

Speed up a film so to match PAL's framerate, is the "easy" and "cheap" (faster) way. It is not the proffecional convertion, but it is what we - the simply users with mainstream hardware - can do.

Using simply framerate convertion (with TMPGenc or virtualdub or whatever) **** up for good the result. Some times this is very noticable, some times is less (and some people don't even "see" it). IMHO, this kind of proccess is a bad choice. Or I would do a 2:2 pulldown to my film, or I would simply boost the source (an easier / faster but "inferior" proccess).
But who am I anyway, to suggest those things.... Anybody else seems to know better...

[Hardcoreruss]

The true proffecional convertion from film to PAL needs a proccess called 2:2 Pulldown

Or 3:2 even

[SatStorm]

3:2 pulldown, is for the NTSC
2:2 pulldown, is for the PAL

Only rarelly people mention the 2:2 pulldown. Just another proove that the internet is full of USA (NTSC) references, and not PAL ones.

[Hardcoreruss]

I stand corrected, I had never heard of that.

Cheers Satstorm

[Arval]

OK then SatStorm, how would you convert a 23.976fps avi into a 25fps video? Is there any software capable of the 2:2 process you mention?

[KBeee]

I had to re-encode my copy of "Hero" from NTSC to PAL, because it wouldn't play on my old TV except in B&W.
I only re-encoded the actual film part of the DVD, which was pure 24fps. Only the trailers, warnings etc. were in 23.97, so I cut them out.
I used BeSweet to alter the soundtrack to PAL 25 fps standard, and muxed them together.
My biggest problem was getting English subtitles onto the PAL disk, cos Hero only came with Cantonese, Mandarin and Thai soundtracks, so English subtitles were essential for me.
The quality of the final PAL disk was as good to my eyes as the original, being able to compare both on my new TV now. No shudders, no pauses every 1 second, no problems.

[Arval]

Yes but how did you re-encode them? It sounds to me like you re-encoded by interpreting the 24fps as 25fps thereby shortening the film as that is what BeSweet assumes you have done when it does its NTSC>PAL rutine (which incidently isn't brilliant as it increases the pitch and occaionally creates crackes in some modes, needing the pitch to be reduced to 95.92% in yet another program, sigh). If that's the case then you've not solved the problem, just comprimised like we have.

[adam]

When you convert 23.976fps to 25fps in TMPGenc, or any other encoder, you ARE performing a 2:2 pulldown.

A 2:2 pulldown does nothing more than speed up the playback rate by 4% and split every frame into two fields. That's where the 2:2 comes from. Its just doubling the effective framerate through interlacing. You accomplish the same thing thing when you encode to mpg at 25fps (DVD and SVCD program streams are still tagged as interlaced even if you use frame pictures, aka progressive).

Converting film to PAL is an extremely simple process. You just speed it up, that's it. This is how professional conversions are done. Just make sure you encoder is actually changing the speed rather than using frame duplication/decimation. In TMPGenc you do this by enabling the do not framerate conversion option. Pretty much all other encoders just do this by default.

The audio is the only tricky part. Speeding it up is simple enough, but the pitch is also raised when you do this. The question is whether you should offset this by decreasing the pitch or leave it as is. Depending on the nature of the source it depends, and sometimes there is no good option. Ever listened to the R2 release of "The Wall?" It sounds terrible because the music has such odd tempo's.

Most commercial PAL releases have a higher pitch than their NTSC counterparts. Its generally unnoticable except with some music. As mentioned already, all PAL releases have a runtime that is 4% shorter than their NTSC counterparts. You can verify this by looking at the runtimes on IMDB.com.

[Nokiaman1978]

Think this is the way, converted 120 + films using this method, simply run the 23.976 avi through virtualdub and change the framerate to 25 fps direct stream copy with no audio.
Now encode the file with tmpgenc with a pal template once it is encoded go back to the original file and save the audio and use besweet to convert it to 25 fps. Total time taken roughly one and a half hours. with this method i have converted loads of films and not one stutters or jumps. Probably best to run the avi through divx repair to check the original for bad frames before doing the above.

[adam]

That works too but its no different than the method already mentioned, it just requires an extra step and double the hard drive space. It also only works with an avi source.

[Arval]

It's good to finally have a conclusive answer, thanks. It makes you think though that practically the entire European perception of America is 4% fast! All the car chases are 4% faster, the actors voices sometimes 4% higher pitched and Beyonce Knowles 4% more Crazy in Love! It sounds stupid but on a serious note it is an interesting point.

[SatStorm]

From what I know, 2:2 pulldown doesn't simply speed up the source. It is a pattern which ad frames (in a field form), so to convert 24 to 25fps. When you do 2:2 pulldown, the audio remains as is and there is no ~4% speed up results.
If the pull down proccess for PAL (2:2) was simply a "speed up" proccess, then why 3:2 pulldown is not?
Speed up the film source is an alternative mostly used for fast and near perfect results.
TMPGenc does 3:2 pulldown, also does Inverce Telecine from 29.97 to 24 fps. But it doesn't do 2:2 pulldown. It has from the other hand a option called "do not frame rate convertion". This indeed speed up (or lower down) the source but it is not a 2:2 pulldown!
Plus, when you use this option, you have to manually adjust the audio your self to the video again. How you preview this with TMPGenc? It is impossible.
For characters like mine, it is more practical to use virtualdub and avis for this proccess, because you can do a preview on this. An alternative is to load a converted mpeg 2 to virtualdub mpeg 2, load the audio and do the match that way, but I prefer to encode them together using TMPGenc at one step. I hate waiting the multplexxing proccess to finish (those 2 - 4 minutes never ends!!!)
Of course this is a temporary solution, which can be used only when you do rarelly those kinds of convertions. If you do them systematic ( or you convert DVDs) there are other ways, better, mostly based on avisynth scripts.
About 2:2 pulldown, there are lot references on dscaler

[adam]

A 2:2 pulldown does not add any frames to the source. It simply speeds it up and interlaces it. This is why all commercial PAL releases are 4% shorter than their NTSC counterparts. If frames were simply added the runtime wouldn't change. Yes what you do yourself in TMPGenc or any other encoder is no different, which is why there is no point adding an explicit 2:2 pulldown filter. Like I said, converting to PAL is a ridiculously easy process.

Just do a google search on 2:2 pulldown.

http://www.kozco.com/3_2/3_2.htm

In a normal 24-frame movie theatre, each film frame is projected twice to make the flicker so fast that you don't see it. There's a rotating shutter in the lamphouse allowing light to go through 48 times per second; two flashes per frame. This is 2/2 pulldown.

http://www.dvdmadeeasy.com/glossary/special.html

The process of transferring 24-frame-per-second film to video by repeating each film frame as two video fields. When 24-fps film is converted via 2-2 pulldown to 25-fps 625/50 (PAL) video, the film runs 4 percent faster than normal

http://robertk.com/source/yuv32pulldown.c

24 frame/sec Movies encoded as PAL using 2-2 pulldown (a fancy way of saying they're played 25/24% too fast - audio too)

Obviously with NTSC frames are added because if you sped video up by 20% (24->29.97) than everything would look like you were high on speed, and everyone would sound like a chipmunk.

NTSC came first. It was a very poor standard with inherant limitations. Since it has a framerate so far removed from film, a complex telecining process had to be developed. PAL came later, and for the most part they got it right. Since 25fps is so close to 24fps, you can simply speed it up with no noticable difference most of the time.

[Mrsash]

Ok my two cents. I have converted 24 to 25 no problem with tmpeg. Now i have only converted from dvd to vcd via dvd2avi and when i choose the option do not frame rate convert it used to screw up. So then i simply used the pal vcd template and it works fine. I have used one of the guides here for Goldwave but same sync issues with a video i downloaded which was XVID and ac3 sound. so just extracted the sound to a wave with goldwave and encoded using the standard pal template.

[SatStorm]

@Adam: Interesting.
But it is not what I know for 2:2 pulldown.
In the Greek National TV station I use to work for a short period, we had a hardware "made in Germany" machine, that was for PAL "pulldown".
What that machine did, and I read a lot about it because I was the one who controled it, was to add a pattern to any film source, so to make it PAL without the need to speed up the source.
From what I remember, that machine add frames, in a 4 minute pattern and the result is PAL with a lenght same as the source...
I don't know if this method is too Pro or they replace it totally with the other method, which speed up the source so to match PAL's framerate. But I do know that 2:2 Pull down with that machine wasn't a speed up proccess. And it was a 2:2 Pull down machine (this is how the papers describe it, any technician in the station called it and what the buttons said on it). So, for this specific thing, I don't need to do a google search...
The only thing I can imagine, is a Terminology issue here: maybe, the internet community, start calling 2:2 Pull down the speed up proccess. But it is not true 2:2 pull down.

[adam]

SatStorm the 2:2 refers simply to the outputting each frame as 2 fields. Whether you speed it up or duplicate frames, I suppose its still considered a 2:2 pulldown. The point though is that virtually no material is converted to PAL via frame duplication. Its actually lower quality and it would really only be useful for those extremely rare occasions where the audio would be noticably affected, ie: The Wall. Perhaps your television station had a specific reason for wanting to keep the runtime the same, or perhaps this is a common method used in Greece, I don't know. But this is not the industry standard, it is by far the exception to the rule.

Pretty much all professional conversions to PAL are done by simply speeding it up.

Mrsash you probably didn't use forced film in dvd2avi, which willd definitely give you horrible output if you simply change its speed. You are now going from 29.97fps down to 25fps, rather than from 23.97fps up to 25fps.

Your method uses random frame decimation/duplication (If you aren't using forced film you are just randomly throwing away 4 frames every second, and if you do use forced film you are just repeating 1 frame every second) This will result in a pause every second or generally choppy playback. Maybe you can't see it, but its there. If you can get a 23.976fps progressive source (which you can get from almost all NTSC DVDs if you use forced film or IVTC correctly) then the correct way to convert it to PAL is to just speed it up. If you are using TMPGenc than you can only do this by enabling the do not framerate conversion option.

[SatStorm]

I see...
I think you covered me, I never thought it that way:

Whether you speed it up or duplicate frames, I suppose its still considered a 2:2 pulldown.

So, a 2:2 pulldown is a general term to describe a variety of methods to convert 24 to 25ftp, with one of them, the " speed up " method, to be the most usual of all and the most widely used.

Just for the story: That machine I'm talking about, was German and we used it to archive film material, so to keep them in perfect shape! So, I wouldn't say that it is an inferior method. From what I know, it was the best non speed up method existed at the time (early 90s) to convert film to PAL. Most TV stations in Europe used those machines the pre-PC years.

[Vandorsolyom]

hey men. so many people mention the capability of besweet that it can do an NTSC -> PAL conversion. Well, if I do so, the peopkle in the film would speak like mice. I dont what is this called in english, but speeding up is really a speeding up, and the film gets completely unenjoyable.
When I tried 29.97 to 25 fps preset people were speaking as the had been very sleepy, so... 2 or three level below norlam tempo of speaking. I had wav source and wav target. I have the latest besweet gui. The situation was the same with several files and films.

So the only thing I can say according to my experiences that this feature of besweet is fucked up. I'd rather use Steinberg Wavelab to strech the file, since I had the feeling it works smooth.

[adam]

Vandorsolyom please read the whole thread plus the regional format guides on this site. You don't convert 29.97fps to 25fps by changing the speed. You would first have to inverse telecine to 23.976fps and then speed it up to 25fps. You only speed up NTSCfilm to PAL. You changed speed by 20%, and you slowed it down no less, which is backwards and definitely noticable. If you perform the conversion correctly you only change the speed by 4%, and you speed it up rather than slow it down, which is not going to be noticable on 99% of all sources. Trust me, this is simply how it is done. Follow some of the NTSC to PAL guides on this site that use BeSweet and the conversion will come out perfectly. If you use the latest version of BeSweet there is absolutely nothing wrong with its regional format conversion options.

[Arval]

@Adam: You seem really bitter about that Pink Floyyd DVD! Is there not one available using the alternative 2:2 process? I have another couple of mysteries that I wonder if you can solve. Firstly, BeSweet seems to be unable to handle mono sources which is creating a real problem as when I try to import the soundtrack to Love Story (it's great, really it is) into another program prior to using BeSweet it doesn't seem to pick up the entire file so I can't stereoise (lol) it. Why this is I don't know, but I was wondering if there is any way to get BeSweet to accept mono imput (1 track audio, not dual mono)?
Second mystery - and this one really has me flummoxed (our Greek friend looks for the dictionary) - is that when I try to reduce the pitch of Airplane's soundtrack to 95.904% so as to reverse the effect of the film>PAL speedup the audio goes out of sync! The very same process worked fine for The Last Starfighter (another classic criminally unavailable in region 2, lol). Maybe I've made a mistake in which case ignore the second 'mystery.' Are there any programs designed to do the pitch reduction?

[adam]

I'm not at all bitter about the PAL release of the Wall, I live in the states and my NTSC version looks and sounds just fine. I just brought it up multiple times because it is one of the very few instances in which the 4% speedup to PAL actually is noticable. With almost all other sources its a non-issue as long as you do it correctly.

As for your questions sorry I can't help. BeSweet is fantastic for a free audio encoder but I use mostly commercial software for audio editing/encoding. For pitch changes and things I usually just use Adobe Premiere. To encode I usually use Soft Encode.