Mastering errors or telcine?

[Nitemare]

I own a DVD that appears to have a LOT of interlacing artifacts and generally looks like crap during certain scenes. Is this a mastering error or just a changing telcine pattern?

Either way, I was trying to correct this on my SVCD backup. When using DVD2AVI I used the "force film" option figuring this would fix the artifacting by grabbing only the progressive frames. For the first time EVER (for me) this did not work. I still had the artifacts in the crappy scenes.

I ran DVD2AVI again and turned force film off. I did an IVTC with TMPEG (flicker priority) and finally fixed my problem, making a pristine backup of the film.

Usually my backups look as good as the DVD (to my eyes anyway... I know that they're not REALLY as good), but in this case my backup looks far superior to the source material.

So... to the questions: Has anyone else ever come across a similar problem? Is there an easier/faster fix than the way I did it? What's up with that crappy looking DVD anyway? Is it my player failing to compensate for a changing telcine pattern or is it a genuine mastering error?

Similar subject... Disney DVDs... the aspect ratio on their DVDs looks all wrong on my player... anyone else? (My backups of these look corrected, naturally) Again, is this my player (Apex ad600a.... yes ...THAT one) or is it a problem with the DVDs? Is it time for me to upgrade?

Thanks in advance,
Nitemare

[adam]

What DVD is this and where did you get it? Some commercial DVDs are actually converted from Region 1 DVDs, which can present all sorts of interlacing problems. Its possible that you may see interlacing on any given DVD, during certain scenes, if you look very hard but generally you should never notice them unless you happen to pause on a field, and most dvd players even have ways of getting around this.

Forced film will never just select the progressive frames. Forced film works by simply disabiling the pulldown flags on the DVD. If your movie is stored as 23.976fps progressive, like most NTSC DVDs are, then you get only progressive frames. If it is stored as anything other than pure film than you get garbage. Whenever ripping an NTSC DVD you should always set the start point in dvd2avi to somewhere near the middle of the movie, hit preview, and look at the statistics. If it reports 95% or higher film than forced film will work. Anything else, and you must turn off forced film and either encode at 29.97fps interlaced or do an IVTC.

You pretty much did the only thing you could have done with such a messed up source. I would recommend IVTC'ing through avisynth with decomb.dll though, it does a better job of detecting patterns and is also much faster than TMPGenc.

I don't know why you are getting aspect ratio problems on Disney DVDs. I don't have any Disney movies, to test.

[Nitemare]

The DVD was "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" and I bought it at my local Blockbuster store the day it was released. Once I saw the "quality" of the DVD I figured I must have a defective one, but when I tried to exchange it they had no more in stock so I decided I'd "fix" it myself.

DVD2AVI had reported progressive frames and 99% film (opening "Mirimax" credits were interlaced). Still... when I used forced film, the artifacting remained. I didn't know that forced film disabled the pulldown flags, I just know that it worked provided I had a "film" source... you know... until this particular DVD.

The first time I checked out avisynth I was completely lost. (I had no idea what IVTC even was back then) I've learned a LOT since then so maybe I should stop being lazy and see if I can make sense of it this time.

Thanks for the response!
Nitemare

[adam]

First off, opening logos and ending credits are almost always pure NTSC (29.97fps interlaced) that's why I suggested setting the start point to somewhere in the middle of the film.

I have ripped this DVD myself and I can tell you that it is an extremely rare one. The first layer is pure film and the second layer is pure NTSC. This is an extremely bizarre way to encode a DVD and I can only conclude that Jay and Silent Bob must have decided to encode it themselves. The easiest way to rip this dvd is to rip it by chapter in your DVD Ripper. Load all the chapters that are on the first layer, preview them and keep adding them til they are detected as NTSC, and run forced film on just that half of the DVD and encode at 23.976fps. For the second half of the DVD, you will have to IVTC.

You still shouldn't be getting alot of visible interlacing when watching the original DVD. Sorry but I think this is just a hardware issue. I used to have that same Apex until it broke, and it had lots of issues with playing original DVDs.

[Nitemare]

Thanks Adam! I had originally bought that player for the MP3 functionality, but when I'd learned of the "secret menu" and discovered that I actually HAD it I was thrilled.

Of course, now that I make SVCD backups I don't really have any need of the secret menu. The player still works fine for me though. Maybe I'll try one of the firmware upgrades that are available on the net. If I break the machine in the attempt then I might be able to justify replacing the machine to my wife.

I knew one of you guys would know what was up with that DVD!

Thanks, as always,
Nitemare

[EddyH]

nitemare, adam, sounds like the trouble I had... looked fine first viewing on TV, but take it onto computer and suddenly it's 24-vs-30 smeared across a 25fps image.. ugly as sin. Could only ever get it down to ugly as sin's slightly prettier cousin for PC display, but when converted to VCD it looked perfectly fine, smooth and sharp.