Can 23.976fps be burned to DVD and played on standalone?

[videocheez]

This is driving me crazy. I have encoded an AVI three times twice with CCE and once with TMPGE and each time I burn to DVD I get a huge green bar across have of the movie. I loaded my m2v into Virtualdubmpeg to check out the file properties and it says that it has 23.976 for the framerate. I thought I read
somewhere that this will not work as DVD compliant. I'm using Spruceup to author and it accepted the framerate without giving me the invalid framerate error so I assumed that it would work when burned to DVD for standalone playback. Will this movie work if I convert frame rate to 29.97 and also then how do I convert the audio to 29.97.

Thanks in advance,

VC

[adam]

23.976fps will certainly work when burnt to DVD. Nearly all commercial NTSC DVDs are in fact encoded at this fps. You MUST, however, add the 3:2 pulldown flag to your video stream otherwise you will not comply with the DVD specs and you will run into playback problems on nearly all DVD players. Get pulldown and run it on your 23.976fps encoded file. By default it will apply the necessary pulldown flags.

If Spruceup accepted your 23.976fps video without pulldown flags than that authoring software is pretty worthless in my opinion. At the very least, a DVD authoring program should be able to tell you when your assets are non-compliant.

There really is no reason to convert to 29.97fps, it lowers quality greatly and increases artifacts, and makes your movie unsuitable for playback in a progressive scan dvd player (should you ever upgrade to a progressive tv.) If you did want to do this, however, your best bet would be to use TMPGenc's 3:2 pulldown filter. Note this is the actual filter located on the advanced tab, not the 3:2 pulldown while playback option on the video tab.

As far as audio goes, you do nothing. When 23.976fps footage is converted to 29.97fps new frames are essentially created from existing ones to increase the frames per second without changing the actual playtime of the movie. Since the playtime is the same, it still syncs with the audio.

[txpharoah]

SpruceUp is one of the earliest authoring sets, and isn't very picky about files. It can make bad discs.

Yeah, be sure to add the 29.97 playback flag to the film when encoded. I think pulldown.exe can help, as suggest by adam, but I'm not too sure. I never really use it. Outside of film, that's not used very much.

[videocheez]

I thought that 3:2 pulldown converts the movie to 29.97. If I am wrong and it sounds like I am. What exacly does 3:2 pull down do to the mpeg2 file to make it playable on standalaones? I 'm runing pulldown but it says that it's running 2:3 pulldown. Is this right? I t seems like it's backwards.

Thanks in advance,

VC

[txpharoah]

adam, you're up to bat. I'm sitting on the bench for this one.

[adam]

Ok, I think I may have confused you when I brought up the 3:2 pulldown filter, as opposed to the 3:2 pulldown flag. Film is converted to NTSC (29.97fps) through a process called a 2:3 telecine, for some reason TMPGenc calls it 3:2 but it really doesn't matter. What this process does, is it interlaces each frame, if not already interlaced, and repeats fields in a 2:3 pattern. This way, the number of frames is increased from ~24 to ~30 but since the duplication takes place in such small intervals, you don't notice the change. The 3:2 pulldown filter, located on the advanced tab in TMPGenc, will do what is called a hard telecine. It will physically create these new frames and they will become a part of your video stream. Your movie will now be 29.97fps.

The 3:2 pulldown flag, which can be added on the video tab in TMPGenc or by using pulldown.exe (yes it calls it 2:3 but its the same thing), is just a bit of information in the file header of the video stream, along with aspect ratio, progressive/interlaced nature of frames and stream etc... The flag does not convert the movie to 29.97fps, it tells the dvd player to convert the movie to 29.97fps as it plays. When the dvd player does the conversion it is called a soft telecine. There is an incredible advantage to doing a soft telecine instead of a hard one. Since those extra 20% of frames are not created until playback, you don't have to encode them. This frees up bitrate for your other frames, and eliminates many other problems inherent in encoding interlaced material.

So why is the flag required? The NTSC standard requires 29.97fps playback, period. If you encode at 23.976fps and do not include the pulldown flag then your dvd player may or may not perform the telecine; some just auto telecine all ntscfilm footage but most do not. So if you try to play 23.976fps encoded video at 29.976fps without performing the pulldown, you get incredibly jumpy playback and who knows what else. So the bottom line is that if you encode in mpeg2 at 23.976fps then just make sure and include the 3:2 pulldown flag.

Now, it seems that TMPGenc may not properly add the flag insofar as the dvd standards are concerned. For SVCDs it seems to work fine, but for DVD encoding, use pulldown.exe instead.

Hey, txpharoah did you get my e-mail?

[videocheez]

Thanks for the info. This is as good as taking a video encoding class

[Bondiablo]

what if you have VCDs that were encoded as NTSC Film (23.976) that you want to put on DVD? is there any chance they'll play correctly without re-encoding the video?

[McQuaid]

Yes, 23.976 works fine for vcd in dvd players. I've read that some dvd don't support this, but I've tried in about 6 friends players and all supported it as it's part of the vcd spec.

There is no 3:2 pulldown option with vcd as that usually requires fullframe (480 lines, ntsc). Tmpgenc has a vcd film template for this. What I've never understood exactly is what's going on with the dvd player to the tv to actually play something at this frame rate and not have vsync issues or some other problem crop up, but it works.

[adam]

As far as I can tell, the DVD standard does not support mpeg1 video at 23.976fps. I don't have the dvd specs obviously, but I am just using Scenarist to test compliancy, since it definitely supports all that the DVD standard does.

Now I tried using pulldown.exe to apply pulldown flags to an mpeg1 file @23.976fps and Scenarist now accepts it as compliant so who knows. I'll try and find time to burn a test disk and see how it plays.

[adam]

McQuaid I think he meant taking a VCD compliant mpg and authoring it as a DVD.

The VCD standard requires that all VCD compatible dvd players auto telecine ntscfilm VCDs. The player is doing the exact same thing that it does with ntscfilm DVDs and SVCDs, it just does it automatically without having to be instructed to do so by any flag in the video.

[Longdin]

I hope my question here fits in with this topic. Forgive me if not. I've been reading what's said in this topic as it is what I am facing now. From what I have read in this and another topic my problem (poorer than expected video quality) is due to my authoring app, MovieFactory 2, re-encoding the video to make the source files, at 23.976fps to the 29.XXX fps spec. Now from what I read I should be able to put the source files on a dvd and have them play fine at 23.976fps

So my question(s) are: Can, and how do, I get MF2 to NOT convert the video to 30fps?

If MF2 can't be 'shutdown' in conversion what apps will burn at 24fps? I also have ReelDVD and DVD Workshop for the record. WS is just the trial from Ulead's website though so I don't know if some options are limited/missing.

If I need to do some conversion myself outside of an authoring app, what would need to be done? I don't mind doing whatever it takes, spending time, etc. I just want to do it right. Thanks for any and all help.

[tww1]

Reading all this still dont dont see how to convert AVI's so can put the movie on a DVD and make it work have the problem with the FPS also.

HELP PLEASE Have ton's of AVI Want to convert and put to DVD for better quility.

THANKS (

[adam]

Longdin and tww1: Encode your video at 23.976fps and only set the encoder to output the video stream alone. This will give you an m2v. Get pulldown.exe. Drag and drop the m2v file onto the exe and let it do its thing. You can now delete your old m2v file, and go to c:\ and there will be a new one. If your authoring program accepts a video stream directly, then import this. If not, then multiplex this video stream with your audio and then import it.

The DVD standard does NOT support 23.976fps footage unless you add the pulldown flags. With the pulldown flags added the dvd player will telecine your movie to 29.97fps which is required for NTSC compliancy.

If you import a 23.976fps encoded file without pulldown flags into your authoring program than it will either reject it, re-encode it, or accept it and create a non compliant DVD.

[Longdin]

Adam thanks for the help. I have done what you said but am running into problems. Let me recount what I've done:

1. I used Virtualdub to extract audio from the divx source to a wav (at 48khz).

2. Used TMPEGenc to encode divx source to mpeg-1 320x240 at 23.974fps - ES(Video Only) setting. I wasn't sure if I should use ES or System.

3. I took resulting m1v file and dropped it on pulldown.exe and let it do it's thing - resulting in an m2v file.

4. I opened TMPEGenc and went to MPEG Tools/Simple Multiplex. Chose m2v file and 48khz wav. Had an error about it being in 48khz.

5. Took orig. divx file into V-Dub again and extracted audio to a 44.1 wav.

6. Reattempted simple M-plex but it said it was an illegal mpeg stream when I inserted the 44.1 wav.

7. MP3'd the 44.1 wav to a 224kbs MP3 file in Audiograbber using the Lame encoder.

8. Reattempted simple plex but again was told "illegal mpeg stream" when inserting mp3 file.

So beyond what am I doing wrong... I'd also like to know what khz I should extract audio too and if I should mp3 it or not. As well as if I should encode to ES or System streams.

Thanks for your help thus far and in the future.

[adam]

I seriously doubt it is even possible to make a compliant DVD at mpeg1 23.976fps. With pulldown.exe you may be able to get the authoring program to accept it, but all that matters is how it plays so I really don't recommend doing this. Though it is still non-compliant, you'd have better luck encoding at 23.976fps mpeg2 at 352x240.

It was probably just a typo but don't encode at 320x240, use 352x240.

Yes encode the video separately by selecting video only in TMPGenc.

Don't use mp3, encode to mp2 and keep it 48kHz.

If you multiplex in TMPGenc set the type to mpeg2 Program (VBR).

If you want to try mpeg1 then you'd probably have to multiplex in bbmpeg instead of TMPGenc.

[bugster]

7. MP3'd the 44.1 wav to a 224kbs MP3 file in Audiograbber using the Lame encoder.

Encode your wav to mp2 audio, not mp3. If its for DVD, use 48khz audio, if for (S)VCD use 44.1

[DivXExpert]

HELP PLEASE Have ton's of AVI Want to convert and put to DVD for better quility.

Converting to DVD will NOT make the files higher quality.
It will be the same quality as the source if not worse.
You can't put back whats not there.

[Longdin]

I thought I'd just drop a note to say I succeeded in getting my 23.976 files to play without video re-encoding (seemingly... it may still do so but just to the pal resolution of 352x288 I'd imagine). It still spends time re-encoding audio to 48khz though naturally.

What I did was simply switched the TV Standard in MovieFactory2's Preferences to Pal/Secam. This allows it to accept the fps rate. The ensuing disc is of course a PAL-format DVD and it won't play correctly in my Pioneer player. It is B&W picture only and misaligned on the TV (picture starts 1/3 down the screen from top and goes out of picture at the bottom). However it looks good and plays fine - sound is synced, etc.

But in the family Apex player, which handles pal discs as well, it plays perfectly fine - correct placement of picture, in color, looks and plays fine.

So I'd fathom that if you have 23.976 (film) fps video and have a pal-capable player you could try changing the authoring app to Pal format. Just thought I'd post this for reference/food for thought.