repeat frame after 4?

[dvdrules]

I am about to give up! I have spent 3 weekends now trying everything and reading all I can to try to resolve this problem without any sucess. I capture NTSC live tv using Video Blaster Digitla VCR and export the captured video to an mpg file. Next, I import the mpg file into My DVD and preview the project. The video plays fine and smooth. Upon DVD burn, playback on my DVD player is jerky when the camera pans. Further investigation shows that when I use the ultra slow motion, it is apparent that 4 frames of action play and the 5th frame is a copy of the 4th frame. In other words, every 5th frame is a "freeze" of the previous 4th frame. This gives the jerky look. This 5th frame repeat happens through the video, just more noticeable on camera pans. I have tried using Ulead VideoStudio 7 with similar results. Ulead isn't every 5th frame but instead is something like - play 2 frames 3rd is copy of previous frame then play 5 frames and 6th is copy of previous frame. Again, the entire video is subjected to this "freeze frame" effect making it appear jerky. Playback of the original video on the PC does not show this "freeze frame" effect. Playback of the DVD on my computer does show the problem. Any ideas?

Thanks in advance

[DJRumpy]

You probably getting the field order wrong. It will make the playback jerky, especially on high motion scene's. It's most noticable on smooth pan effects, as the entire scene will 'jump'. Check your encoder, and try reversing the field order. Field order is device dependant, meaning that once you know what it is, you should always use that setting for video captured through that device (in other words, anything you capture with your Video Blaster should always use that setting).

You should also consider performing inverse telecine on your video, if it's telecined. You can find more information here: www.lukesvideo.com

It can help to remove odd artifacts in the final encoded product.

[dvdrules]

DJ,

Thanks so much for the reply. The link you posted was very informative and usefull. I will investigate this more and post my results.

Thanks again!

[dvdrules]

Ok, so the results are that I DO have a telecine issue. I have acquired two different progs that are supposed to inverse telecine (VirtualDub and Pulldown). When I try to run Pulldown (using the gui) I load the file and as soon as it starts the conversion, it give me a pop-up for about a micro-second (can't read what it says before it closes) and end result is nada. VirtualDub doesn't seem to be able to open an mpeg2 file. I did convert the mpeg2 to mpeg1 (loss of quality) and it did open that file. Preview did appear to remove the telecine. However, it appears the only avaiable output from VirtualDub is AVI. I want DVD mpeg2. When I run the AVI output from VirtualDub through Ulead VideoStudio 7 to author a DVD, I can convert the AVI back to DVD mpeg2 but it reintroduces the telecine issue on the final DVD.

In general, here is what I want to do:
1)Record 24fps cinema movie from TV via video blaster digital VCR
2)Export recorded movie to Creative propriatary mpeg2 file - (this file does not appear to have telecine issue but I could be wrong on this point)
3)Ulead VideoStudio 7 can convert the Creative file to DVD compliant mpeg2 file - (seems to introduces telecine).

I am reading and learning however, I am confused about what the next steps would be to inverse telecine the DVD compliant mpeg2 file and then author/burn the DVD so that telecine is not re-introduced into the video?

Thanks

[DJRumpy]

In order to use Pulldown.exe you must first demux your mpeg into it's component video, and audio streams. You then feed the .M2V into Pulldown. If you try to feed it an actual MPEG, it will simply pop up the dos box for a fraction of a second, and then close again. This sounds like the problem your experiencing. Use TMPGenc to DEMUX your produced MPEG into the M2V, and audio stream.

Your still sounding a little confused about telecine. When a DVD is produced, and the movie is NTSC, and the framerate for the original movie is 23.976 frames per second. The movie is telecined to convert it to 29.97 frames per second. This is the necessary framerate for the old NTSC TV to display it. Since you captured something off of Television, it is going to be 29.97 frames per second. Although I'm sure there are hardware capture cards out there that will remove the telecine process during capture. I don't think the creative card does. Your going to remove that telecine process (Inverse Telecine, or IVTC), converting it back to the original 23.976 by removing the duplicate fields used to increase the framerate. You do this with VirtualDub, or AVISynth, and an IVTC filter. To do this with VirtualDub, simply open your MPEG (You'll need the VDub Mod version capable of opening MPEG-2). Under the VIDEO menu, select FRAME RATE. Select the following settings:

Source rate adjustment: No Change
Frame rate decimation: Process all frames
Inverse Telecine: Reconstruct from fields - Adaptive

Save your output as either AVI, or frameserve it to your encoder of choice.

You then encode your IVTC'd file (which should now be 23.976 frames per second) to MPEG. After you've encoded to MPEG, you then run PULLDOWN.EXE on the file. This does not actually convert the framerate of your movie back to 29.97. It remains 23.976 frames per second. What it does, is add Pulldown flags to the MPEG stream. These flags, when encountered by a DVD player, will tell the player to telecine (convert to 29.97) the movie on the fly, during playback. It does this by flagging which fields need to be duplicated to produce extra frames. These extra frames in the output increase the framerate to the necessary 29.97 frames per second.

[dvdrules]

What is the difference between playing back the captured movie with the repeat frames to make it 29.97 and the DVD playing back 23.976 and duplicating frames to show 29.97? Why would it matter whether the DVD player generates the extra frames or if the extra frames were captured from NTSC stream? Why would one be jerky because of the extra frames and the other not be jerky if extra frames are in both? Just want to smarten myself up!

OK. I've spent more than 3 full weekends STILL trying to get a handle on this. I'm posting to give an update on what I have tried - someone else might benefit from my experience(read as failure). I have tried every combination of virtualdub, tempgenc and pulldown with minor success. It takes too long to work with full length movie files for experimenting so, I only exported the first 4 minutes of the movie video to work with. If I use tempgenc and tell it it is film (23.976 fps) and use the expert settings of inverse telecine with 3:2 pulldown on playback, the DVD generated is absolutely perfect. Slow motion shows NO repeat frames and the panning and action is perfectly smooth! If I repeat these settings and do the entire movie, back to jitter and choppiness. It's like some of the movie is telecine and some of it is not - or the telecine effect is not consistent. Also, I can't get any audio out of tempgenc. The mpg file I am working with plays in WinDVD fine with audio - when I tell tempgenc to output the audio and video to seperate files, the mp2 file has size but playback is silent. If I take the same mpg file and save it as avi via virtualdub and then use the avi file in tempgenc, I get audio output fine. Anyone have any suggestions on this?

I have not given up yet - primarily because I have seen a 4 minute clip that makes me believe it is possible. IF I figure it out, I will post my results so that it may help someone else. If someone has already figured this particular problem out, please save me from the funny farm!

The Info
----------
Creative Video Balster Digital VCR
Captured cinema pay per view movie from satellite
Export movie to mpg file
?????
?????
Author DVD
DVD without jerky telecined playback

[DJRumpy]

You experience isn't all that uncommon. Don't give up the ship. The pulldown pattern in any video can change at any time. This happens due to edits, special affects shots, ect. In order to IVTC (inverse telecine) a video back to 23.976 fps, you should be using an adaptive filter. These types of IVTC filters will examine the pulldown pattern, and adapt if it changes. If you want to verify any particular part of your video, then open it in virtualdub. Use the double-right arrow to advance through your source one frame at a time. It should repeat a patter of 3 Progressive frames, followed by 2 interlaced frames. You may notice the pattern simply changing at odd points. Thats where the adaptive filter comes in. Sometimes there is no easy way to get back to 23.976 due to these odd changes, and the filter will simply chop out a frame to meet the framerate.

What method are you using to IVTC your video?

[dvdrules]

The only success I have had is letting tempgenc perform the IVTC. But again, it worked for a 4 minute clip at the beginning of my movie. Full processing (8 hours for 2+ hour movie) did not accomplish the same result. I tried virtualdub but got weird results. If I opened the file and used the "file information" tool, the number of frames and time duration were not correct. I verified this by:

Opened the mpg file in WinDVD and noted the playtime
Opened the mpg file in ULEAD videostudio and got the properties
WinDVD and ULEAD time duration matched but vdub shows less time
Opened the mpg file in tempgenc
number of frames matched ULEAD but vdub shows fewer famecount

Tried
IVTC with vdub and saved as avi
tempgenc to split audio and video
pulldown on video from tempgenc
ifoedit to dvd author

This didn't work and I'm not sure what to tell you it did because I have tried about 937,192 combinations and they are all starting to blur!

I have had some of the results:
play the audio at what seemed 2x
audio played faster than video (I think audio=29.97 and video 23.976)?

Only one combination played the video correctly and the audio was in sync. I had to get the audio by using ULEAD to strip it from the original mpg file because tempgenc won't give me audio for some reason. This would make me believe I got everything right because 1) I know the audio is going to play at 29.97 2) The video was in sync with the audio making me believe I got the framerate correct with 3:2 pulldown on playback 3) there was no jerky playback in critical action shots that was clearly noticeable before making me believe I got rid of the telecine.

I am here to learn - thanks for taking the time to coach me along!

[DJRumpy]

I'm glad I went back and read your original post. If you have a video, where the 5th frame is a repeat of the 4th frame, then you have the making of a video, that was improperly converted from PAL to NTSC. How this happend is a mystery to me, since you captured an NTSC broadcast. Is it possible your capture settings were incorrect?

Are you certain the 5th frame is always a duplicate of the 4th, and that the pattern is always the same (i.e. 1,2,3,4,4,1,2,3,4,4) ?

[dvdrules]

Like I said in an earlier post - this is all starting to get blurred. I have tried soooo many things. Yes, most (but not all) of the resulting projects show a repeated 4th frame 1,2,3,4,4,5,6,7,8,8,9,10,11,12,12...

Here is what I tried last night that shows promise: remember I said vdub was not showing the correct frame count and run time when I load up the mpg file? OK, if I load up the mpg file into vdbu and go to Video->frame rate-> and select change so video and audio duration match to generate an avi file. Then process the avi file in Tempgenc as film 23.976 fps and 3:2 pulldown on playback. Authoring this video seems correct and the audio is synced. It seems like vdub only recognizes the true frames in the mpg file and ignores the replicated frames (pulldown). Here is the weird part though - I split the movie into little 3 minute clips to reduce project time for testing and each 3 minute clip seems to generate a different frame rate according to vdub. For example: the first clip may load and vdub shows that changing so video and audio duration match will generate 24.7 fps. The next 3 minute clip vdub may indicate that changing so video and audio duration match will generate 23.97 fps. In a nutshell, all the clips seem to hold different values for the converted frame rate (is there such a thing as variable framerate????). I only processed the first 2 3 minute clips and was happy with it - now the real test to convert the whole movie this way and pray it works. I have to set up frameserving first because the 2+ hour movie would generate toooooo big an avi file from vdub. I will give it a go tonight and post back my results.

I did look at the raw mgp video a frame at a time in vdub and can confirm that at least the beginning of the movie is 3:2 telecine - I had 3 progressive frames followed by 2 not so obvious interlaced frames then repeat of this cycle.

[DJRumpy]

It sounds like you used the adaptive 3:2 pulldown filter in VirtualDub. As you surmised, it will detect the duplciate frame and remove it. This is the correct path, since your source is telecined. Strange that the frame appears to repeat though. Even telecined material should appear to flow smoothly from frame to frame. Someone must have gotten the pattern wrong. The adaptive 3:2 pulldown filter in VirtualDub should handle it though.

No idea why your shorter clips would report wierd framerate. X number of frames per second should always be a constant. Especially since their all from the same source. It could be due to the funky pulldown pattern in use. Try the adaptive filter to see what result you get.

[dvdrules]

Still working on combos to see what will/will not work. I have determined this fact though. The exported mpg file from Creative is not an mpg compliant file. If I try to use the simple demux option in tmpgenc, it tells me the mpg file is not compliant. I can still work with it though. If I open the file in three diff programs here is the result:

Program framerate frame count time (minseconds)

Ulead 29.97 3655 2:01
Tmpgenc 29.97 3655 2:01
VDub 29.97 2939 1:38

frame by frame in Ulead shows 1234412344... repeat after 4.
processed video in DVD player shows 123455123455122...
frame by frame in Tmpgenc shows 1234412344... repeat after 4.
processed video in DVD player shows 1234412344...
frame by frame in VDub shows 3 progressive followed by 2 interlaced 3:2 pulldown.
processed video in DVD player wont sync with audio (incorrect framecount and playback time)

NTSC 29.97 * .8 ==> Cinema 23.976
3655 frames * .8 ==> 2924

It appears as though VDub is close to seeing the clip as cinema even though it reports framerate of 29.97(header info?). If I try to IVTC this, I get even fewer frames and the audio is way out of sync and the video is choppy. If I use Tmpgenc to simply render the clip without doing anything to it and open the resulting m2v file in VDub, it reads the same as the others - 29.97 3655 2:01.

I can get terrific results if I do this:
1. Open the Creative mpg file in Ulead and generate audio file (mpa).
2. Open the Creative mpg file in Tmpgenc and re-render to valid m2v file.
3. Open the valid m2v file in VDub perform IVCT and frameserv back to Tmpgenc with output of 3:2 pulldown during playback.
4. DVD Author using step 1 audio file and step 3 video file.

Perfect smooth motion on pans with audio sync and correct playback time. This is only for 2 minute clip.

Tmpgenc generates an error half way into the full 2+ hour movie (I think because of the non compliant mpg file exported from Creative).

I'm going to figure this thing out!

Current attempt - Kicked off Ulead this morning to generate a valid mpg video only file. Will use this Ulead mpg file in VDub to IVTC and frameserv back to Tempgenc to 3:2 pulldown on playback. Hopefully, this will work.

By the way, any idea about why tmpgenc won't give me my audio output? It generates an mp2 file with substantial size and when I open it up with media player, it shows the correct play time - just plays silence. Maybe has to do with the non comliant mpg Creative file??????

[dvdrules]

No good! No matter what I do, the audio won't sync with the video and the video time duration doesn't match what it should be. I have come to this conclusion, the audio I stripped is correct. The movie played for 2 hours 17 minutes 31 seconds on TV and that is exactly what the audio duration is. My last attempt will be to try and convert the video to the correct framerate to match the audio. Somehow, Virtualdub shows the framerate needs to be something goofy like 24.219 for the audio and video durations to match. This isn't 29.97 or 23.976. Don't know how it will turn out but I am attempting to use VDub to convert video only to the 24.219 framerate and frameserve to Tmpgenc. Settings on Tmpgenc are for film (23.976) with 3:2 on playback. I will try to author the full length audio with the transformed (hopefully) video and see what happens.

This will be my last post unless I am sucessful because if I don't get it figured out in the next few days, I will give up. I have spent about a month now trying to get this right - that's enough for me. My dreams at night begin with the opening of the movie now!

[DJRumpy]

Talk about preserverance! If VDub is showing a 3:2 pattern, then use the adaptive filter under the VIDEO | FRAMERATE menu. Leave your audio seperate, since the time seems to be correct in that stream. Changing the framerate should not cause a loss of audio sync, assuming the video length is not changed. You may need to force the framerate to 23.976 after using the adaptive 3:2 pulldown remover. Note that forcing a framerate will change your output length, but it may also be necessary. The video output, after this filter is run, should be all progressive, with no interlaced frames. Do at least 2-3 minutes of the clip to verify that the filter is giving you good output.

You can always try AVISynth to remove the pulldown, and sync your audio. It's a bit more flexible, allowing you to stretch your video/audio while retaining audio sync.

[dvdrules]

I've just come across an article that suggests the Creative Digital VCR card adjusts the framerate frequently to obtain the best quality recording. I guess this means a 2 hour recording might be something like 10 segments of 23.976 and 15 segments of 29.97 framerate all alternating at random spots. This would explain why the framerate was reported as something weird like 24.14 by VDub. With this type of recording, it would be impossible to sync the audio to video. How is it that the original mpg file keeps the audio and video synced perfectly - but when you demux it and mux it back together into a VOB, they get out of sync. What does the original mpg file contain that the remuxed VOB doesn't? I did notice that when I demuxed the original mpg file in Tmpgenc, there was a stream called pad or padding. What is this padding stream and how would you use it?

[Gazorgan]

Video Blaster uses proprietary schemes. It's specs look great on the box, but you have a lot of issues re-encoding anything. It's audio is non-standard as well. It works okay as a digital VCR, but I remember numerous posts last year about it, and no one reccomended using it for more than a DVR.

[DJRumpy]

I used to own one (it was my first capture device ). I don't know it varies the capture rate. It wouldn't make sense to do so, but then again, neither does NTSC standards

I never experienced audio sync issues, but I didn't keep the capture card too long due to non-standard output. You might think about getting a different capture card if you plan to spend any time putting your output onto DVD/CD-R.

[dvdrules]

Thanks for the replies. I think that is exactly what I will do. Have spent enough time with this card. What would your recommendations be? I know there are other posts debating the best capture cards - but sounds like you've already "walked in my shoes" and I would appreciate your suggestions. Would it be worth looking at something like a replaytv unit? Been a lot of posts recently boasting about the ethernet connectivity.

Thanks in advance for your opinions.

[DJRumpy]

Shop around. Be prepared to return to the store MANY times. Makes sure that the place where you buy it will accept returns (or exchanges). I would suggest you avoid the MPEG capture cards, and just get one that will capture using any codec. They require more work, but the output looks better. NOTE: If you just plan to capture the occasional show, and aren't interested in the gory details of conversion, then stick with an MPEG capture card. If you have the time to learn how to convert, then you should definately look at one that lets you capture in AVI as well. In either case, get one that supports all of the standard frame sizes (352x240, 352x480, 704x480, 720x480). Any other framesizes are just gravy. The ATI cards are good, as are the nVidia capture cards (I use nVidia Personal Cinema). If your MPEG capture card doesn't capture to a standard audio frequency like 44.1Khz, or 48Khz, it's not a big deal. The video frame size is.

Last but not least, do some research. If you find a card that sounds appealing, read the forums here on it, and search GOOGLE on it. Specifically the GROUPS section for user feedback (www.deja.com, or www.google.com). Read the feedback and experiences that others have had with the card. Just remember to take everything you read with a grain of salt. Not every good or bad experience may happen to you.