strange frame rate, 14.993fps

[oldhippy]

I have searched all the site and have not been able to come up with anything like this.
a friend asked me to convert a divx .avi file to mpeg so he can watch it on his dvd player, tv
loaded it up in VirtualDub and checked the file info - the frame rate is 14.993.
did the usual, through VD and MPEGen and the result was a very slow blocky film
how do I increase the frame rate to a more normal rate?
can it be done without causing the film to be unwatchable?

[Craig Tucker]

That is half of NTSC framerate which is 29.97, so whoever encoded it has dropped half the frames to keep the filesize small. Use the NTSC vcd template in TMPGEnc, but it will always look a bit stuttery because half the frames are missing.

[secretagent]

what I do is frameserve the file from vdub to tmpgenc and get great reulsts on odd framerate movies

[Gazorgan]

A lot of old low-res vhs captures are done in 20 fps (LP) and 15 fps (SLP). Typically it porn or anime (never seen one that wasn't :P ). It never looks very good when put on DVD, it's just missing toomuch. 15 fps is always noticeably jerky. 20 fps is marginally jerky.

Don't try too hard, no matter what you do it will be jerky.

[macleod]

there is a guide that talks about converting low frame rates back to the original.

You are going to be in for more work when you do the conversion as the audio will have to be converted outside of the conversion process. The audio was made to sync with 14 fps and the resulting file will be 23.976 or 29.976.

On my comment for 23.976 or 29.976, make sure when you do your conversion to use 23.976, it will be less stuttery (is that even a word :P ) The template in TMPGENC is film.

I am sure that someone will post not to do it this way, but given that the video you are wanting to convert isn't a family heirloom, you may just want to through it into nero and let it convert it for you. Its not going to look the greatest, but I have done both (convert with TMPGENC and nero) and the time and crap aren't worth the extra steps. Nero, for whatever reason, actually keeps the sync between the video and the audio, at least in the ones I have done.

[oldhippy]

thanks for the advice, will try all suggestions and let you know how they turned out