Anyone want to scrutinize this conversation and give their thoughts?

[Asterra]

I got into a bit of a tiff with the seller of a bluray disc. It's an old serial which they somehow got their hands on a HD master of, making them the only ones offering the material in HD. (It really is better than NTSC, so fair enough.)

I'll just present the conversation in its totality because all the context is there.

A:
Anyone who buys the bluray of this set, which I did, will want to be aware of two things: First, the quality, while better than what you see here in this Youtube video, still isn't quite what it could be. The bitrate spared for the bluray is only 10Mbps with zero variability and this leaves the single 25GB layer of the pressing almost 20% unused, for no good reason. They really should have used two layers or multiple discs—this is four hours of material. The Blu-ray Disc Association recommends a minimum of 20Mbps for 1920x1080 content, but for challenging video such as a grainy black-and-white, 30-40 is the recommendation.

Second, unlike this preview episode, the video on the bluray is NOT mastered at the film's native 24 fps. The actual bluray video is 1080i at 29.97 fps for a temporal resolution of 59.94 fps. Worse, the cadence of the film's frames is this: 2:2:2:4. Meaning film frame #1 shows for 2 frames, #2 for 2 frames, #3 for 2 frames, and then #4 shows for 4 frames. If you think this would result in a playback that stutters, you would be correct. Best of all, because of the difficult frame cadence, it is not possible to rely on a media player to clean the judder up—no media player is going to know what to do with 2:2:2:4. And I'll add it's an extreme challenge to try to fix the problem manually and produce a result that flows like this Youtube video's 24 fps, and this also cannot be done without ultimately passing the entire disc through an additional layer of compression, further compromising the quality. Somebody made a rookie mistake when they set up the mastering project for this disc.

With any luck, some consideration will be put towards addressing these issues, including perhaps taking fuller advantage of a bitrate that the bluray standard is better known for.

B:
All this math is well and good but it doesn't really affect picture or sound quality at all in the presentation. There is no jitter in the image, what there is is sometimes a blurring effect on backgrounds that appears when a noise-reduction effect is used to take out artifacts. We've received nothing but rave reviews on this set from everyone else but you. Serial fans do not want to pay for 2-disk sets, either. This Blu-Ray remains the highest quality version available of THE PHANTOM CREEPS in existence, and it's the only one that will ever be released from Universal's original with the original titles. That's enough for most people, and the fans of serials who've never seen this one presented in such high quality and HD at all before.

A:
Let's ignore the bitrate discussion and focus on the framerate. Obviously, yes, 90% of folks will not notice the judder you get from bad pulldown, and most of the rest won't care. With respect, this doesn't matter. It is an ad populum fallacy. It would have cost absolutely nothing to tell Premiere Pro that your project is 24fps rather than 29.97fps, and then you would have had an essentially unassailable product that would never have run the risk of a buyer who takes issues with unnecessary mastering gaffes. Like I said, somebody missed this detail and thus the video on the final disc is needlessly stuttery rather than smooth like this Youtube specimen.

Every single bit of motion in the disc you currently sell is broken by a stutter which slightly pauses that motion 6 times every second. That isn't subtle. If you scan through the video frame by frame, you can see why: it's doubling every 4th frame, and every second of video is 30 total frames. 30fps video is poorly compatible with 24fps film. However, if you scan through the Youtube clip above (using the , and . keys while paused—try it), there are NO doubling of frames because every second of video is 24 frames exactly. This was, I am frankly putting it, the minimum expectation this video set for my eventual purchase.

Now I have to ask, what is the purpose in providing ad populum assurances that everything's fine, to somebody, a paying customer, who has made it clear that they've identified an easily-fixable issue and knows exactly why the video is what it is? If you're truly proud to be the sole provider of this program in the only above-NTSC presentation currently available, what is the actual problem with quickly addressing the issue? I could have it done in a handful of hours. Indeed I've been trying to retroactively fix the issue with the disc I bought, because that stutter is simply impossible to un-see.

B:
I don't see these issues and no one else has said anything at all about anything like what you are saying about the presentation. People have said nothing but good about it and yes it is the best quality presentation of the serial in existence. The Serial Squadron is a library, not a billion dollar video production company. The transfer was done from an original print on a new million dollar Rank Cintel by a professional transfer house, edited using DaVinci Resolve and burned with Toast. If you are suggesting that the fps of the files should have been 24 instead of 29.97 I tested that out on that and other transfers and doing THAT is what created stiff motion so I have not used it. I have never heard the word "judder" before and don't think it's even used in the United States. Possibly the problem here is you are using a Blu-ray player in the UK and experiencing issues because of the way it works with the video system used there. I don't guarantee the disk will play perfectly on all types of regions of players. It's region-free but I do know that different countries' video systems have different image sizes and frame rates and would suggest you try the disk on another player and see if some of these effects you are experiencing mightnot occur if you do so.

A:
No, friend, you use 24fps because that is the framerate of the original film, which in turn means it's the framerate of the digital file which the professional house created from said film. Whatever "stiffness" you experienced by playing the video back was some nebulous fault of your own software or equipment—24fps was nonetheless the correct framerate. This sense of stiffness didn't stop you from uploading the first episode to Youtube as a 24fps clip, clearly. This Youtube video IS 24fps. Does it play "stiff" to you?

It really isn't my problem if you simply don't understand the facts I'm laying down even when I take the time to explain them. A rudimentary understanding of standardized film framerate, and how the bluray format supports it, takes 60 seconds to learn from a Wiki. The disc was mastered badly, does not live up to the promise of this Youtube preview because of it, and no matter how many times the point about happy customers is brought up, those facts won't change. Fixing the problem would be gobsmackingly easy and cost nothing to accomplish.

For the record, no, I don't even use a bluray player to play this disc. All of the scrutiny I've given this disc has been done on PC, where things can be put under the magnifying glass and there is zero room for doubt as to what went wrong. There's no way to handwave the literal data on the disc revealing the duplicated frames which are causing the judder.

B:
THE DISK DOES NOT PLAY WITH "STIFFNESS" on ANY Blu-ray player here or computer I have played it on and NO ONE BUT YOU who has brought up this issue, ever. I suggest you play your Blu-Ray disk on a Blu-Ray player as that is what it's made to be played on. Disk drives for computers are notoriously weak sometimes and simply cannot handle the amount of data that they are asked to read.

This issue is confined to YOU and whatever you are trying to play the disk on. If the drive you are using can't keep up, that is the problem and not the frame rate or any of the other of multiple problems which don't exist you are trying to blame on the disk.

GO PLAY YOUR BLU-RAY DISK IN A BLU-RAY PLAYER please and leave me alone. If you are so smart you should understand that you can't play a Blu-Ray disk effectively in your toaster or microwave oven either.

GET A BLU-RAY PLAYER please. If your drive cannot keep up to the stream of content the disk plays, which does not "judder" or "stutter" any more than the video you see here on YouTube which is the SAME FILE THAT IS ON THE DISK.

A:
I do have a Playstation like most folks. That was the first thing I stuck the disc in.

Can we at least agree that a person who can tell you exactly what is wrong with your disc knows more about what they're talking about than somebody who doesn't even understand the importance of aligning the disc image's framerate with that of the source video file? Are you going to ignore that I pointed out that the video itself duplicates frames? I repeat: The video data... itself... repeats... frames. Repeated frames = stuttering video. You have already admitted that the video is 29.97 fps. This is the wrong framerate for film.

B:
Play the Blu-Ray in a Blu-Ray player, not on a playstation or computer drive.

What you are calling "stuttering" is a drive not being capable of streaming data fast enough to get it to look right on the video system you are trying to play it on.

NO ONE ELSE BUT YOU reports any such problem with this BLU-RAY DISK which is supposed to be played on a BLU-RAY PLAYER and includes the SAME FILE THAT IS POSTED HERE AS CHAPTER 1.

You can try to invent the idea that there's "something wrong with the disk" all damn day long if you want to but that won't solve your problem if WHAT YOU ARE TRYING TO PLAY THE DISK ON ISN'T A BLU-RAY PLAYER.

NOT ALL BLU-RAYS WILL PLAY ON GAME MACHINES, COMPUTER DRIVES OR EXTERNAL DISK DRIVES.

YOU NEED TO PLAY THE DISK ON A BLU-RAY PLAYER, PERIOD.

---

What do you think? I've tried hunting their testimony for merit but I can't find a single scrap. The disc in question is exactly as I took multiple pains to elaborate, and they seem determined to insist it simply can't be so.

[Alwyn]

Hmm, I'm not familiar with BD, but I have a couple of NTSC DVDs here (29.97). They have 2:3 (or is it 3:2) pulldown: 2 interlaced frames in very 5. Playing in VLC, I can probably see the stutter, but gee, it's pretty weak. When I IVTC it to 23.976, it's not a lot better.

They probably have a point that many people would be overcome by the quality and miss the lack of 24fps.

Besides, don't players remove the TC interlacing?

I'd just rip it, IVTC it and enjoy. Life's short and there no point in wasting time arguing with...

[_Al_]

If original was true 24p, then they messed up, it is needlessly converted to other frame rate. They change fps for no reason. One wonders, why people do that, instead hey, "sorry about that", we mark your point, the terms like, "no one complains but you" sound kind of immature

Some folks have problem to watch 24p and for some reason they need "flow enhancements" of any sort, whatever they can get hold of, so maybe they figured out, it performs better. Maybe it performed better in DaVinci Resolve (guess). But that does not mean fps should be butchered for that reason, the way they did.

[poisondeathray]

1) Cadence -
Some setups have 2:2:2:4 cadence detection, and pulldown removal - so you can see if they pass/fail on reviews . Also, displays have various cadence detection - so it's often not that simple what you "see" at the end result

Just as a random example, they will list variance cadences like 2:2, 2:2:2:4, film 3:2, etc...
https://www.audioholics.com/blu-ray-and-dvd-player-reviews/toshiba-bdx2700-blu-ray

So actually, you do need to check on a BD player, proper TV setup. . Technically, what has been done is not necessarily "wrong" , it just less ideal.

Unfortunate situation, because 24000/1001pN, or 24/1pN are supported. Not only that, he's encoding 25% more frames, it's going to be worse for encoding efficiency. Look at every high budget film blu-ray released - it's 24000/1001, or 24/1 . End of story. That's the best choice for film.

2) Bitrate - yes, they should have made better choices . A true fan would have done a better job, and 20% empty is just wasteful

[hello_hello]

Hmm, I'm not familiar with BD, but I have a couple of NTSC DVDs here (29.97). They have 2:3 (or is it 3:2) pulldown: 2 interlaced frames in very 5. Playing in VLC, I can probably see the stutter, but gee, it's pretty weak. When I IVTC it to 23.976, it's not a lot better.

What's the refresh rate of your display?

If it's 60Hz, a 24fps video can only fit by displaying a frame for two refreshes, the next frame for three refreshes, then two refreshes and so on....
So there's still a 2:3 pattern, only it's refreshes rather than frames.
Converting 24fps to 60fps by repeating frames should look the same.
Converting progressive 24fps to progressive 30fps looks more jittery as every 4th frame is repeated. On a 60Hz display it means 3 frames display for 2 refreshes while the 4th frame displays for 4 refreshes (as the 5th frame is a duplicate of the 4th).

[Alwyn]

If original was true 24p, then they messed up, it is needlessly converted to other frame rate. They change fps for no reason. One wonders, why people do that, instead hey, "sorry about that", we mark your point, the terms like, "no one complains but you" sound kind of immature

It's 29.97 maybe because they probably used the NTSC TV version and didn't IVTC it?

If it's 60Hz, a 24fps video can only fit by displaying a frame for two refreshes, the next frame for three refreshes, then two refreshes and so on....
So there's still a 2:3 pattern, only it's refreshes rather than frames.

Fair enough. I'll watch it on my 200Hz TV. That should smooth it out!

[jagabo]

If it's 60Hz, a 24fps video can only fit by displaying a frame for two refreshes, the next frame for three refreshes, then two refreshes and so on....

That's the usual method (3:2 pulldown). But 2:2:2:4 is entirely possible. Especially with a source that was prepared that way.

[SaurusX]

TLDR, but my initial thought is you should expect janky results from a non-professional product.

[poisondeathray]

"Playstation" - You didn't mention which model - I hope you don't have a PS4 - it fails at ALL the cadence tests
https://www.hdtvtest.co.uk/news/ps4-201312173519

    2-2 (30fps inside 60i): Fail
    2-2-2-4: Fail
    2-3-2-3 PF-T (24fps inside 60i with MPEG metadata): Fail
    2-3-2-3 (24fps inside 60i): Fail
    2-3-2-3: Fail
    2-3-3-2: Fail
    3-2-3-2-2: Fail
    5-5: Fail
    6-4: Fail
    8-7-8-7: Fail
    Time-adjusted: Fail