Upper field or lower field?

[olobay]

Hi,

I have checked on this forum and with Google and still haven't come across a clear answer so I am posting here. If you are encoding to mpeg or m2v to make a DVD, should you use upper field or lower field? If your footage is PAL or NTSC DV, and you want to encode for DVD, should you use upper field? Is all NTSC or PAL DV lower field? What if you have a PAL mpeg and want to convert to NTSC? Do you select upper field?

Thanks.

[redwudz]

DV is usually BFF. Some MPEG encoders or capture cards may be different. One easy way to spot wrong field order is to make a short video clip with the wrong field order and you will see that you have a very jumpy video.

This guide from lordsmurf's site may help: http://www.digitalfaq.com/dvdguides/capture/atimpeg/restream.htm

[olobay]

DV is usually BFF regardless of PAL or NTSC? Also, when encoding BFF DVfor DVD, should you use BFF or TFF?

[FulciLives]

DV is usually BFF regardless of PAL or NTSC? Also, when encoding BFF DVfor DVD, should you use BFF or TFF?

DV should always be bottom field first video. When you encode to MPEG-2 you pick BFF for the source.

Most other video formats will be top field first video. When you encode to MPEG-2 you pick TFF for the source.

If you are encoding progressive video then it doesn't make a difference really although it seems that selecting TFF for the source is the common approach when the source is progressive.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[olobay]

Thank you for your replies. They help a lot. So if I am encoding PAL mpeg2 to NTSC mpeg2, I should use TFF. Am I correct?