Picture Judder/Pulse on Panning and Zoom Shots with DVD Rips

[Sunshine Superman]

Hi, I am pretty new to all this ripping lark so any help would be much appreciated.

I want to rip my Pal DVD collection to my PC hard-drive to then stream to my DLNA LCD TV using Serviio or XBMC. I can do the rips OK but I am getting a problem with the resulting files. Basically, whenever there is a lot of motion in a shot, like a pan or zoom, I notice that the picture jerks along at a regular pulse of about one second. I have tried ripping to H.264/MP4 and .avi also Xvid but either format gives the same problem. I have tried different bit-rates as well but it makes no difference. I am using ImToo DVD Ripper Platinum which seems to give me the best overall results. I have tried Handbrake but with that I can never get the resulting movie to fill my screen, even though the resulting aspect ratio/size is the same as the original DVD and the same as hwat comes out of the ImToo program.

I initially thought it might be a frame-rate issue so tried different settings such as keeping it the same and changing it but neither seemed to make any difference. I then thought it might be a streaming issue, so downloaded a couple of rips other people had done and they play absolutely fine on my system. The one thing I also notice with those is that the quality seems better for the same file size. There is obviously something I may need to do in the 'advanced settings' but that is way out of my league at the moment, hence my post on here.

Any suggestions please?

[jagabo]

23.976 fps material played at 25 (or 50) fps? Or vice versa.

[Sunshine Superman]

According to the DVD info in the ripper the DVD's I have tried so far are all 25 fps so I have been ripping to keep the same fps.

[jagabo]

Try a different player? VLC, MPCHC, etc.

[Sunshine Superman]

The player is the media player built into my TV.

Anyway, I have been doing some more experimenting and have realised that the problem actually doesn't exist when I make an .MP4 file with Handbrake (tried so many different options I must have got confused), BUT, the problem with Handbrake (which I remember is why I gave up with it) is that whatever settings I try I cannot get the resulting .MP4 file to play full-screen on the TV like the .AVI files do. In Handbrake it shows the DVD size as being 720x576 and the display size as 1024x576, same as when I make an AVI file, but the resulting MP4 will not play full screen??

[Hoser Rob]

If your hardware spec is up to date I'd try a different player like jagabo said. Never really used xbmc much but it seems resource heavy.

I've gotten the best playback performance in both windows and linux with smplayer.

If you try it, set the local file stream cache to 8192.

And go to advanced settings -> mplayer options and add:

-cache-min 50

Which will slow down loading time but definitely give better video performance.

[jagabo]

Anyway, I have been doing some more experimenting and have realised that the problem actually doesn't exist when I make an .MP4 file with Handbrake (tried so many different options I must have got confused), BUT, the problem with Handbrake (which I remember is why I gave up with it) is that whatever settings I try I cannot get the resulting .MP4 file to play full-screen on the TV like the .AVI files do. In Handbrake it shows the DVD size as being 720x576 and the display size as 1024x576, same as when I make an AVI file, but the resulting MP4 will not play full screen??

Your TV isn't respecting aspect ratio flags in the video stream. Unfortunately, that's quite common with the players built into TVs.

[Sunshine Superman]

Thanks for the replies guys but surely this is an encoding issue??

As I said, other (pro) rips are fine and as I have now discovered the handbrake rips are good apart from the display size issue.

I am using Serviio at the moment as XBMC does seem a little bloated for what I'm using it for.
Just to make sure you see what I am doing, I have my DLNA LG TV connected to my home network and am using Seviio to make my PC into a media server and streaming to the TV but using the TV's built in media Player.

[jagabo]

Thanks for the replies guys but surely this is an encoding issue??

No. It's a playback problem. Handbrake has encoded your video with a 720x576 frame and flagged it for 16:9 display. It's the player's responsibility to display the picture with the correct aspect ratio. I don't think Handbrake will let you resize the frame to a square pixel resolution. Try XMediaRecode instead. Resize to a square pixel 16:9 frame size like 1024x576 or 720x404.

[Sunshine Superman]

thanks will try that tomorrow.

Just as an update I just tried making an H.264/Mp4 but in ImToo Ripper and it fills the screen, which is what I want, but has has the motion artefact that the AVI's made with that program had, which is what I don't want. Maybe it's an issue with ImToo.

Now if I can find an encoder that does both the things I want, I'm laughing!

[Sunshine Superman]

Well I am trying to use XMedia Recode but not having a lot of success.
It just keeps crashing at the encode stage!

[Sunshine Superman]

So, downloaded H.264/MP4s play beautifully and fill the screen on my HDTV, any that I rip myself with Handbrake don't fill the screen, ImToo pulses along on panning/zoom shots and Recode crashes like a bitch, surely, if it was the media player on my TV's fault the downloaded stuff would also be shite, but it's perfect, what next??

[jagabo]

Well I am trying to use XMedia Recode but not having a lot of success.
It just keeps crashing at the encode stage!

I have no idea what the problem is there.

surely, if it was the media player on my TV's fault the downloaded stuff would also be shite

Not at all. Most people resize to square pixels for upload.

what next??

Try another video or another program. Also, upload a small sample of the converted video that isn't filling your screen.

Are you aware that many widescreen movies are wider than 16:9 and shouldn't fill the screen of a 16:9 HDTV?

[Sunshine Superman]

I have no idea what the problem is there.

I tried an older version and that worked but then the resulting Mp4 couldn't be played by Quicktime, or anything else for that matter. The latest version just crashes when I hit encode. Strange.

Not at all. Most people resize to square pixels for upload.

OK, that's the PAR settings I take it, I have a bit of reading up to do on that one.

The Mp4 clip I created with the ImToo Program is attached, hopefully you can see the 'pulsing zoom'.

[jagabo]

It looks to me like that video was originally 25 fps and converted to 23.976 fps by dropping every 25th frame. The frame size is a 16:9 ratio (1024x576) and the pixels are square.

[Sunshine Superman]

The movie inspector says that it is 25fps but hey, ??

Anyway, here is one where I set it to 25fps rather than auto, seems to still do it but now with a different 'pulse'

[jagabo]

I think the 25 fps to 23.976 fps conversion problem is in your source. By converting that bad source to 25 fps all you've done is added occasional duplicate frames, making the problem worse.

To replace missing frames you can use a filter like InsertFramesMC(). But that will require you go through the entire video, locating the missing frames, then adding the filter for each missing frame.

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/352741-Frame-interpolation?p=2226119&viewfull=1#post2226119

import("C:\Program Files (x86)\AviSynth 2.5\plugins\ReplaceFramesMC.avs")

ffVideoSource("Title 01 - Segment1(00_23_13.350-00_23_20.774).mp4") 
InsertFramesMC(23,1)
InsertFramesMC(47,1)
InsertFramesMC(72,1)
InsertFramesMC(96,1)
InsertFramesMC(121,1)
InsertFramesMC(145,1)
InsertFramesMC(169,1)

This type of motion interpolated frame replacement often generates artifacts (see frame 145 of the attached video). It worked pretty well on this clip though.

[poisondeathray]

If the source is screwed up, why would handbrake produce a smooth result ?

Maybe you should upload a sample of the source.

I think there is a way to force handbrake to use resize and using square pixels

[poisondeathray]

OK I had a look at the sample - the "pulsing" you're probably referring to is "Keyframe popping" - there is a visible quality change between P=>I frame transition points - and it's from low quality encoding . For that, bump up the bitrate and use a different profile instead of "baseline". The encoder you're using probably isn't very good, and definitely the settings are poor for compression (baseline, no cabac, no b-frames)

Note, this is a separate issue than the one jagabo is referring to (there are 2 things going on here)

[Sunshine Superman]

Thanks for the help on this.

I just tried upping the profile from 'baseline' to 'high' and the bitrate on the ones already uploaded is 2400, still did it. As far as b-frames go, I can see a a setting for that but wouldn't know where to start.

I used DVD Decrypter to rip the DVD, could this cause a problem with the source material?

[jagabo]

The keyframe pumping in Title 01 is at 1/2 second intervals (12 frame GOPs, I and P frames only). The missing frames are at 1 second intervals.

Post a sample of your source. Use DgIndex or Mpg2Cut2 to extract a short segment.

[poisondeathray]

I used DVD Decrypter to rip the DVD, could this cause a problem with the source material?

Unlikely, but if it's using a copy protection that is newer (DVD Decrypter hasn't been updated in years), then it's possible it might be contributing

If you can upload a sample of the source we can have a better look at what is going on

[Sunshine Superman]

I wouldn't know how to edit out a section of the original but in the meantime...see what you think of this.
Converted with Avidemux, to my un-trained eye it looks good, whadya reckon? The pan of the building is near the end of the clip.

[jagabo]

I didn't see any missing frames in that one.

[Sunshine Superman]

Thanks for your guidance on this folks, learn't quite a bit.

Now using Avidemux which works great.