PAL video field order changing?

[dphirschler]

I am having a problem converting a PAL video tape to progressive. It should be a piece of cake, but the field order keeps changing. Anybody have any experience with this?


Darryl

[SatStorm]

That needs a TBC
(and better drivers than pinacle ones...)

[dphirschler]

Actually, I am using btwincap drivers.

I don't think it's dropping fields, if that is what you were implying. The capture looks perfect. But when I do a bob, some scenes look normal if I set TFF, others look normal if I set BFF.


Darryl

[SatStorm]

TBC also locks the field order (from what I know)

What are you using for capture?

[Sartori]

I had this problem a couple of years ago , I used a filter in VirtualDub to sort it out - "Dynamic Field Order Correction" by Shaun Faulds

http://www.hlinke.de/Vdub-Filterlist/vdub-filterlist.html

Direct Link to download it .

http://www.hlinke.de/DFOC-v1.0.zip

Its cheaper than a tbc if it works .

[dphirschler]

@Sartori
Thanks I will try that filter.


Darryl

[dphirschler]

OK, here is my report after trying out the Dynamic Field Order Correction filter. The filter did not fix the problem. But I found it useful nonetheless.

That being said, I did find my solution. Changing from PAL_B to PAL_H within my capture device settings completely solved my problem. Now if I only knew why...


Darryl

[SatStorm]

PAL H? I never heard off! Or you mean PAL N/M ?
Hmmm.... Maybe your VCR output NTSC50?

[johns0]

PAL H? I never heard off! Or you mean PAL N/M ?
Hmmm.... Maybe your VCR output NTSC50?

quote:
Pal-B, G, H, I and D as far as the actual video is concerned, are all the same format. That is: they are all PAL. There is no difference. All use the 625/50 line/field rate..... scan at 15,625 h-lines/sec and use a 4.433618 color subcarrier frequency. The only difference is in how the signal is modulated for broadcast. Thus the B, G, H, I & D designate broadcast variations as opposed to any variation of the video format. PAL-I for example, has been allocated a wider bandwidth than PAL-B, necessitating that the sound carrier is placed 6Mhz above the picture instead of 5.5 MHz above the picture carrier. Thus a PAL-I TV (the United Kingdom for example) will get no sound if taken to the Netherlands for example (PAL-B) if all the TV's tuner is able to decode is PAL-I. (Fortunately, most European tuners support most of the broadcast variations ).

This is why for example, you won't find a standards converter that will convert a video from PAL-B to PAL-I. There's simply nothing to convert.....They are already the same PAL format. There are major differences between PAL-M and PAL-N however, that would require conversion, as the line/field rate and color subcarrier frequencies are different from standard PAL.
:unquote

[SatStorm]

Thanks...
I know about PAL B/G/D/I and also PAL-M (Brazil) and PAL - N (Argentina).

I never heard of PAL H though. Which country actually use this?

[Sartori]

http://www.videoequipment.com/access/formats.html

For fuller table see above , but its apparently Belgium , Gibraltar , Liberia and Malta .

[SatStorm]

Oh, yeah! Right! It's a broadcast variation for UHF frequencies!

Thanks again

[dphirschler]

I don't understand it, but I am glad it worked. MY first capture was using PAL_B and I was getting progressive mixed with interlaced. Upon close inspection, some frames repeated, some frames dropped, some fields were dropped, and some fields were out of order. This was revealed by doing a bob-deinterlace and inspecting the video frames. I was completely unsure how to handle this video to restore it to progressive. According to the capture software, no frames were dropped.

Changing it to PAL_H and recapturing solved it completely. The missing frames were back, the repeating frames were gone, and the out of order fields were in the correct order. I don't know why, but PAL_H fixed it. I am not sure where my tape is from, but I didn't think it was Belgium, Gibraltar, Liberia, or Malta.


Darryl

[SatStorm]

It's a mistery of life my friend!