Would this be my doing, or not?

[ndjamena]

http://www.otca.com.au/boards/showthread.php?t=19748

Did Madman Field Blend the Remastered G1 DVDs?

I have all 5 sets of the original MadMan DVD releases of Transformers G1 which I've had for years but am not at all happy with, or in fact with anything Madman released at the time. I've attempted to re-encode the things using AVISynth and X264 into something I could play on my WDTV but it turns out at the time of release Madman had a habit of converting the frame rates of all their animation series through a process called field blending. They even used the worst imaginable kind of field blending which winds up blending every single frame with one of it's neighbours.

It's not noticeable throughout most of each of the episodes which were mostly animated in 12p (meaning each field is blended with a duplicate of itself), but every now and then (generally during action sequences) the frame rate will shoot up to 24p and suddenly there's not a single unblended frame to be found. There's no way of undoing that kind of damage using any kind of filter I'm aware of, so I want to replace my Transformers DVDs and was wondering if the remastered versions are free from field blending or if I should commit to ordering an NTSC version from Amazon instead.

Anyway, I didn't complain about the frame rate conversion used in Ben 10: Omniverse, actually I said it was my preferred method, but the entire thread was me lampooning MadMan Australia's frame rate conversion methods.

So I bought the latest MadMan Australia's Ben 10: Omniverse DVD today and ripped it with MakeMKV. When I played it the picture looked kind of blurry so I looked at it with MediaInfo to check if maybe it was being deinterlaced and saw this:

Video
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : MPEG Video
Format version                           : Version 2
Format profile                           : Main@Main
Format settings, BVOP                    : Yes
Format settings, Matrix                  : Custom
Format settings, GOP                     : M=3, N=12
Codec ID                                 : V_MPEG2
Codec ID/Info                            : MPEG 1 or 2 Video
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : 4 919 Kbps
Maximum bit rate                         : 9 800 Kbps
Width                                    : 720 pixels
Height                                   : 480 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate mode                          : Variable
Original frame rate                      : 23.976 fps
Standard                                 : NTSC
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Scan order                               : 2:3 Pulldown
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Time code of first frame                 : 00:00:00:01
Time code source                         : Group of pictures header
GOP, Open/Closed                         : Closed
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : No
Forced                                   : No

The back of the case definitely says PAL format...

I'm hoping they just got lazy and stuck a MadMan logo on an unaltered American disc to save a bit of hassle... but I have to remember, I just told a bunch of obsessive Transformers fans that their precious DVD collections were utter garbage...

What are the chances that these two events are related?

[DB83]

If you have a 23.976(film) frame rate, 2:3 pulldown applied creates 29.97 fps for NTSC playback.

Of course 'down-under' you can play NTSC video on PAL equipment - Region4 or Region-free. A Region1 disk would give other problems.

[ndjamena]

I forgot about region coding, according to DVD Decrypter it's both Region 1 and 4. I guess they must have pressed their own discs to add the 4, unless the US discs are R4 too.

Maybe I'm being paranoid, but as far as I can tell of all the DVDs I have only Dilbert and TMNT are in NTSC format. Should I take it as coincidence that MadMan Australia, a company that I've bought plenty of DVDs from (none of which are NTSC) just happened to decide to release the latest instalment of a well known animated series in NTSC format right after I bitch about their frame-rate conversion methods on a Transformers forum?

Not knowing if I'm responsible is a pain.

[DB83]

Take it as a coincidence. Many disks are released as NTSC for PAL countries since they know that the equipment is compliant. The reverse is not so true.

By the same token many releases, especially music ones, which are released for PAL countries are actually encoded as NTSC/Region0 so they play world-wide.

And many companies have issues if they attempt to convert NTSC to PAL. They know they need not bother to attempt it.

Region1&4 is an oddity. I would more expect 1,2,3&4 or 2&4.