Need to convert 23,976 1080p to 25p PAL DVD

[JMantis]

I'm currently working on a short movie that we shot on a DSLR.

We shot the movie in 1080p with 23,976 fps to create a film look. We are now finished with the editing and need to create DVD's. Since I live in the Netherlands, the standard here is PAL so I need to convert the movie to 25 fps.

However converting straight to 25 fps causes a lot of stutter in the video and it looks quite horrible.

Anyone know what's the best way to do this without getting the awful stuttering issue?

It should be possible right? I mean how do they do it in Hollywood when creating DVD's for the European market.

Thanks in advance.

[poisondeathray]

Normally what is done is a "PAL speed up". So the movie (video & audio) is sped up to 25FPS , but there are no inserted extra frames (so no stuttering). The downside is audio is spedup (so running time is shorter)

The other options are combinations of either inserted dumb repeats, blended frames, or motion interpolated frames.

All conversions have pros/cons. For example, for a concert / audio oriented piece probably wouldn't want to do PAL speed up

[manono]

You can reencode it at 23.976fps but 720x576. Afterwards apply DGPulldown for 23.976->25fps. That's pdr's 'inserted dumb repeats'. That'll make it totally PAL compliant, and you can use the original and unchanged audio. There will be slight stutters that may or may not be noticeable during playback, but it's a heck of a lot better than repeating frames (which, apparently, your conversion program is doing). As pdr says, there is no ideal way to do this.

You couldn't 'film' it at progressive 25fps to begin with?

[johns0]

Its better to use tsmuxer and set it to 25 fps and demux,it won't re-encode,then use audacity with ffmeg addon to load the audio and effect/change tempo but not pitch with 4.096 percentage change and save as ac3,then remux the audio and video.

Will work good with progressive video.Then encode to pal dvd.

[AlanHK]

Using Avisynth, speed it up to 25 fps:

FFmpegSource2("myvideo.xyz",atrack=-1,fpsnum=-1,fpsden=1)
# or whatever source function to read the video

Assumefps(25,sync_audio=true)
SSRC(48000,false)
LanczosResize(720,576)

Feed into your MPEG encoder, eg HCenc.
You can add

Soundout()

if you want to encode audio to AC3 in the script.

[videopoo]

Youre best bet is create an NTSC 23.98 Progressive disc. It will play fine in PAL land

[poisondeathray]

I heard some older PAL players didn't play NTSC progressive 23.976 discs? I understand the majority of newer PAL players do.

Maybe that's why many production companies still do the conversion? They don't want the late night phone calls and headache?

Any PAL folks out there want to chime in?

[JMantis]

Thanks for all the replies so far, really useful!

And yes I've also heard the same about NTSC progressive 23.976 discs. They might play on newer PAL players but older models won't play them.

[videopoo]

Thanks for all the replies so far, really useful!

And yes I've also heard the same about NTSC progressive 23.976 discs. They might play on newer PAL players but older models won't play them.

98% of PAL players play NTSC discs. Its the older TVs that might not recieve the signal......VERY old TVs.

I personally have over a million NTSC units in Europe and never heard a peep. Hollywood releases millions of copies so even a small amount of gripes is worth the hassle and time for a conversion. If youre release a couple thousand, itll be fine. I just hate converting when its not necessary.