trouble with encore's handling of dgpulldown

Anything related to video and my tools that is not a support request.
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tramvai
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Joined: Fri Apr 11, 2014 6:07 pm

trouble with encore's handling of dgpulldown

Post by tramvai »

First of all let me thank you for putting dgpulldown into the world. I'm working on a project to release some beautiful Soviet Era documentaries onto NTSC DVDs, and to be able to introduce them stateside at the speed they were meant to be shown (25fps) feels truly important.

So here's the impasse I'm at. Please bear with me as I'm very much new to this.

I am working from PAL Betacam sources that were digitized into 720x576 AVI files. After doing a little color grading on Premiere CS6, I transcoded the files to MPEG-2 PAL. I'm away from my work computer at the moment, but as for the specs I remember, I rescaled to 720x480, left the framerate at 25fps, put whatever the field order section was to 'progressive', and ran a one-pass CBR at 6.5. I think for PAL the GOP Structure is set at 15-3, but I've tried 12-3 as well. I also put the quality settings at their highest, did maximum rendering and maximum bit depth, and demuxed the video and audio into m2v and PCM respectfully.

Anyways, afterwards I ran my films through dgpulldown at 25 --> 29.97, and it worked great, only Encore could only output a bright red screen in my preview window when I imported them. I thought I found a solution in Restream, after deselecting the 'progressive' option for picture coding extension. Encore now could show the films in the preview window and allowed me to the author the DVDs without forced transcoding. I built a disc though and got varied results.

On a PS3, the films looked great. Crisp images and barely perceptible motion alteration, if any. That said on most players the video had serious stutter problems, and on one player played the films back at 30fps with chipmunk audio and all.

So here's the context to what seems to be the strange, hopefully fixable problem at the source of it all. When I went back to the Encore timeline I noticed that my films were condensed as if read progressively at 30fps (25/29.97x shorter), and then it put a black tail/slug at the end to account for what the runtime was supposed to be. Is that normal? Perhaps there's another setting I could check off at any one of the previously mentioned stages, or in Encore itself, that would read the videos and pulldown flags appropriately.

Thanks for your help in advance. I want to try any and all options to play these films at their original frame rate.

Best regards,
David
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admin
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Re: trouble with encore's handling of dgpulldown

Post by admin »

You shouldn't change anything with restream after applying dgpulldown.

It is not guaranteed that all players and applications will accept the irregular pulldown. You have to test it for your environment and use case. You would need to consult with the application maker about it.

You can try doing a slow-down to 23.976 and then applying regular 3:2 pulldown. This will keep the progressive video intact but the audio will need to be altered.
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tramvai
Posts: 3
Joined: Fri Apr 11, 2014 6:07 pm

Re: trouble with encore's handling of dgpulldown

Post by tramvai »

Thanks for the quick response.

Not to take up too much of your time or to lead this into un-dg terrain, but would you recommend DVD authoring software that works well with your 2:2:3:2:3 pulldown?

I'm not beholden to Encore, just want to make a DVD that gives consistent playback across devices. If it's just a matter of players struggling with the unusual flagging, I guess I'll settle for 3:2 pulldown and the speed change.

Very much grateful for this resource!
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admin
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Re: trouble with encore's handling of dgpulldown

Post by admin »

Due to my ignorance I can't make any recommendations about authoring tools. I don't author DVDs. I suggest posting about it over at Videohelp. There be Gods there.
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tramvai
Posts: 3
Joined: Fri Apr 11, 2014 6:07 pm

Re: trouble with encore's handling of dgpulldown

Post by tramvai »

Thanks -- I'll send my prayers to that forum and hope the gods respond!
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