Pulldown, Telesyne, Sefy and TMPGEnc

[kiNg0r3ad]

Ok, here's my story. I'm trying to rip "The Mexican" to my hard drive right now. I like to have all my DVD's with me on my laptop when I travel without having to carry around a lot of DVD discs. Here's the thing. I've read up on the whole pulldown and Telesyne (or Telecine, whichever) business and I'm having trouble deciding the best method of doing this.

I'm using TMPGEnc, and there are like 4 different places for these options. Is it better to set the Encode method under general settings to "3:2 Inverse Telecine" or is it better to go onto the Advanced tab and set things from there. I tried using the advanced tab and using the Automatic Telesyne, but I have no clue which of the 3 Automatic 24fps ones to use. I tried all 3 on a small section of the movie and I still got interlacing artifacts in the rips (possibly because I had it set to Even field on the Advanced tab). After I changed the field to Field A, the artifacts went away but then I couldn't tell which of the 3 was better. I'm really confused here as to what should and shouldn't be done. Any help on using TMPGEnc to do this would really help.

Oh yah, and the reason I put Sefy in the topic is because I'm doing this using Sefy's guide and he seems like he knows what the hell he's talking about =)

[Sefy]

geesh, for a second I thought somebody names a program after me , anyway, i'm really not the expert when it comes to those specific things, but basicly, you only use them when doing a movie that is FILM based as far as I know.

That is atleast what i've heard from all the experts on the subject of Force Film and NTSC Film, I could be wrong, but we'l let the better experts answer this one

[adam]

You forgot to give us the most important piece of information. What are you making a vcd or a svcd? (I assume its one or the other since your using Sefy's guides.) Also I would recommend ripping to divx since you apparantly are only going to be watching these on your laptop.

Rather than explain the telecine process let me just tell you what to do. The great thing about dvds is that for the vast majority of them, they store the film in its original content on the disk and use flags to telecine the movie as it plays. You can use dvd2avi to process your movie and keep it in its original format which is 24fps which is the absolute best format to have for your encode.

So what you do is load your vobs into dvd2avi and preview them. Let it get past the intro and into the movie. If it says %95 film or higher and holds steady at that then that means your movie is stored as film, 24 fps. So what you do is enable force film and save the project. Now your movie is stored in ntscfilm so in TMPGenc just pick the appropriate template. Pick the ntscfilm type template for either vcd or svcd.

If you want to do it manually enable the 3:2 pulldown when playback if your making a svcd. Note this is the setting on the video tab not the advanced tab. If your making a vcd these settings are not available so don't mess with any of them.

Now about the inverse telecine setting in the advanced tab. This is for material that is not stored in film format. If your dvd doesnt stay at %95 film or higher than you must uncheck force film and use the inverse telecine setting in TMPGenc. The different settings are used for different priorities, like better motion, less flickering etc... I always just use the default settings. Tell it to enable while encoding and encode as usual. If you still see interlacing artifacts then you may need to do a manual inverse telecine or if all else fails you can just use a deinterlace filter in TMPGenc but don't worry about that unless it comes to it because for almost all theatre released movies on dvd, this is not necessary.

[kiNg0r3ad]

I did everything just as you said and then loaded the SVCD Film Template in TMPGEnc but I can't change the pulldown thing. It's greyed out. It only shows up if I choose the SVCD NTSC template and not the film one. The film one is the one that I want, right?

[stanwebber]

pulldown is greyed out in the svcd film template to prevent you from disabling it because it is mandatory. it is optional in the svcd ntsc template because you can opt to perform a manual-ivtc on telecined sources or encode straight ntsc

[poopyhead]

stanwebber, i believe the 3:2 pulldown can be unlocked....so i don't think it's a requirement, but quality is hella better....wonder wut's the point of having 3:2 pulldown in video output and as a filter???

[dizidave]

Of course evryones needs are different but heres what works for me on TMPGEnc (when the thing doesnt crash!!)

What am I ripping?
----------------------
Reservoir Dogs
16:9 anamorphic
UK region
25 fps PAL

What am I making?
-----------------------
SVCD
4:3 (losing some of the edges)
25fps PAL


What are my settings?
--------------------------
I load the SVCD template for PAL
First tab(general i think) I set to Automatic VBR
& Change the Motion search to High Quality (slow)
In teh advanced tab I set Field order to Top Field First
Source aspect ration to 16:9 PAL 625 lines
Set video arrange to No Margin



And thats it, this produces a nice looking picture for what i want.

Like i said this chops the edges and is PAL so its probably only any good for UK/Europe.

[stanwebber]

3:2 pulldown is NOT inverse telecine. if you encode 23.976fps, whether by forced film(dvd2avi) or inverse telecine(tmpgenc), you must enable 3:2 pulldown for svcd compliance

[Sefy]

dizidave, you need to set like this:
16:9 Display (or your PAL specific, i just prefer the Display)
Full Screen (keep aspect ratio 2)

this will fix your edges being cut, it's because you told it not to have any margins.

[poopyhead]

stanwebber, really...i've heard some people have encoded SVCDs w/o 3:2 pulldown, but the quality was not that good

[stanwebber]

again you are confusing 3:2 pulldown with something else. pulldown has nothing to do with quality in and of itself. it simply adds software flags to a 23.976fps stream to enable dynamic 29.97fps on playback. no actual frames are added nor altered