PAL to NTSC

[twinegar]

I have done this operation hundreds of times over the last ten years but I have a PAL movie with a bottom field order that is giving me a problem. I have Used Canopus Procoder 2 for years and have had excellent results so maybe they inserted some code into the movie to throw me off. Because the field order is bottom I set the output to the same and when I ran the resulting DVD-R the typical shaking and jerking of a field order problem was pretty bad, bad enough to make a person sick to the stomach. Any ideas?

[dragonkeeper]

How did you determine the field order? Sounds like you have the field order incorrect.

[manono]

You say it's a movie so the field order shouldn't be important as it should be progressive. Perhaps it's another example of a poor NTSC to PAL transfer. Or maybe it's field-shifted. Both would appear to be interlaced when they can fairly easily be made progressive again (using simple AviSynth scripts). Care to provide a sample?

Otherwise I agree with dragonkeeper.

...so maybe they inserted some code into the movie to throw me off

Not a chance.

[twinegar]

As in the past, when I opened the file into Procoder I check the field order panel and if it is upper or lower I set the export to the same. Here are screen caps of both the input and output settings:

[poisondeathray]

Probably procoder has made a mistake in identifying the field order. Perhaps it assumes all SD is BFF, when some are actually TFF. All HD is TFF => that is a safe assumption, but SD can be either

If the export played back goes fwd, back , fwd, back, etc... => thats very likely the wrong field order as mentioned above

You can determine the actual field order easily if you examine the fields separately (e.g. in avisynth)

As manono pointed out, there are other rare bizzare cadences as well. Some DVD's have swapped field order , there is a transition point where it is TFF and later it's BFF. If you can't figure it out, post a native sample

[jagabo]

Use DgIndex to extract a short (10 seconds?) sample of your source (with motion) so we can see exactly what you have.

File -> Open (select VOB file)
Mark in
Mark out
File -> Save Project and Demux Video

Upload the m2v file.

[twinegar]

I wasted two discs trying to correct things and the person wanting the conversion let me off the hook so I am ending this. A nice lady in Canada has a multi-region DVD player but still sends PAL titles to me to convert so I don't argue.

(The rest of this post is just me prattling so don't waste your time reading it unless you have absolutely nothing else to do)

I am pretty obsessive about everything and I see no need to convert something that my player plays just fine. In 2004 when I laid out the $$$$ for Procoder and then Procoder 2 it was fun to play with all the different software available and being able to move impossible to get 1950's and 60's Sci-Fi & Horror titles from PAL to NTSC helped to fill my now vast collection of oldies. As of today I can't think of but a handful that haven't been moved from 35MM to DVD so my obsession has pretty much been ended for me and with a 50% hearing loss I don't have to tell you guys the impact that has on the editing process. Have you ever just relied on the sound graph in the software to try to synch a video? For transfering PAL VHS in early 2000's I invested in several pieces of equipment that I wouldn't even remember how to set up now and paid thru the teeth. When Pioneer came out with the DVR5000 or whatever it was called I added it and eventually wore out four of 'em. When 16MM films started rolling in I tried the cheap'o telocyne projectors and video camera set-up which produced shit not worth watching so I moved up to the RCA TP66 studio projector with an add-on digital camera to do direct to DVD transfers and that worked as good as anything.
Since Procoder 2 doesn't except ac3 I use the Pegasus editer to change the audio to wave as it combines into a single file before opening it into Procoder, once finished I just use the Pegasus encoder to convert the wave back to ac3. The titles I do are so old that they rarely come close to today's standards so its not hard to actually improve on the source while converting. My interest is in 1950's and 60's Sci-Fi & Horror so up until fairly recently few of the studios bothered to invest in adding them to their DVD catalog and I spent the years from 1980 until about five years ago collecting VHS & 16mm TV prints from all over North America and Europe and these software tools came in real handy for getting them to disc.
Thanks for the responses!