VCD 23.97: what's the advantage????

[depeche101_Brazil]

What's the advantage of converting a movie to VCD using 23.97 as fps? Would it make a better quality? And what about the compatibility with standalone DVD players? Does it happen of some player accept VCD 29.97 and do not accept 23.97?
Thank you all.

[Nelson37]

Search for TeleCine and Inverse Telecine. Answered hundreds of times.

[sterno]

You can get better quality at 23.97fps because you're encoding a smaller number of frames in to the same amount of space.

A DVD player that properly supports NTSC VCDs should play it just fine. I have heard that some players manufactured for parts of the world that use PAL will only play NTSC discs if they're at 29.97fps, but I can't personally verify that.

[Sosua]

I agree with your point of view. I have bought a dvd player last week, a JVC XV-N40 and it is vcd and svcd compatible, also is NTSC and Pal compatible if there is a region in the Pal file, but it seems that it only plays 29.97 NTSC. I did convert different files and the one that are 23.976 just dont want to play on my standalone. By the way, if i have a file that is 23.976, what can i do to change it to 29.97 so it can do the conversion and burn it after.

[depeche101_Brazil]

About the difference of quality, is it big?
I don't think there's a reason of making these kind of VCDs if you can find this problem of compatibility then. I just wanted to know it because I've heard something that if I convert some 25 FPS Divx to VCD, the best I can do is to make this kind of mpeg.
Thaks for everyone's help.

[adam]

You will get a 15% to 20% increase in quality using ntscfilm versus NTSC. In my opinion that is HUGE. Compatibily is really a non-issue because if your in a PAL region, where some players don't support ntscfilm, then just convert to pal instead. You are not going to gain anything by taking a pal divx and converting it to ntscfilm. Whoever told you that was very wrong.
If you are in a PAL region than always try to convert to PAL, period. If you are in an NTSC region than always try to convert to ntscfilm, period.

There is simply no reason to encode a VCD or SVCD at NTSC instead of NTSCfilm. You lose tons of quality and gain nothing.

[depeche101_Brazil]

You will get a 15% to 20% increase in quality using ntscfilm versus NTSC. In my opinion that is HUGE. Compatibily is really a non-issue because if your in a PAL region, where some players don't support ntscfilm, then just convert to pal instead. You are not going to gain anything by taking a pal divx and converting it to ntscfilm. Whoever told you that was very wrong.
If you are in a PAL region than always try to convert to PAL, period. If you are in an NTSC region than always try to convert to ntscfilm, period.

There is simply no reason to encode a VCD or SVCD at NTSC instead of NTSCfilm. You lose tons of quality and gain nothing.

Yeah, you're right.
I'm in an NTSC region. I'm only worried about the compatibility, not with my standalone player, but with my friends ones.

[Cornucopia]

Look, NTSCFilm VCD's are for titles that originated on "FILM" and NTSC VCD's are for titles that originated on Video, as in Camcorder-HomeVideo-TVSeries-Industrials-Commercials. (That's why they made upt the standard in the 1st place) If you try to convert those to 23.976fps, you're going to mess up the original content. They were all shot at 29.97 Interlaced and changing the frame rate or deinterlacing will just lessen the quality. For those it's better to leave it alone.

Rule to go by:
Always know where your source ultimately came from, and where it's ultimately going to be seen, to determine how to encode and store your stuff.

Scott

[txpharoah]

Rule to go by:
Always know where your source ultimately came from, and where it's ultimately going to be seen, to determine how to encode and store your stuff.

Amen.

[Nelson37]

Where it came from is MEANINGLESS. The ONLY important factor is WHAT WAS THE ORIGINAL FRAMERATE? Many TV series, such as Buzz Lightyear which I am recording right now, are TELECINED. ANYTHING which has been converted from 23 to 29 FPS will benefit from removing the duplicated frames.

Do the search I suggested earlier for a complete explanation of the relevant terminology.[/quote]

[Cornucopia]

@Nelson37:

It's not meaningless. Since what you're doing was telecined, it originated on film--therefore is very likely to be originally 24fps and progressive not interlaced. Something like that should have inverse telecine done on it as part of encoding to 23.976NTSCFilm VCD--just like you said.

But something that supposedly was "converted" (in terms of frame rate) could just as easily have been sped up (e.g. what is often done in Film-->PAL). That certainly isn't the "correct" or even standard way of doing things for NTSC, but you do see it happen. Then you would be losing valuable unique frames that weren't meant to be removed.

BTW, this stuff is part of my job and I see all kinds of this $h!t.

Scott