Pulldown question...

[Roveer]

I've started the ROBSHOT method of bringing the bitrate down on a few DVD's that won't fit on a single DVD-R. I'm not trying to pack 2 on a DVD, just lower things below 4.33 so I can get it on a single disk. I've using DVD2AVI then frameserving into CCE then into DVDMaestro for authoring.

In DVD2AVI I'm using FORCED FILM. After CCE, do I need to do a PULLDOWN.EXE? I'm an old DVD2SVCD guy, and that's how it was done there. I did a pulldown of a recent CCE encode and I noticed when looking at the resulting mpg with bitrate viewer that it was showing as 'interlaced'. Shouldn't it be progressive? I know this can be set on the pulldown command line, but there are two differenc choices, mark the file, or each frame as progressive.

So,

1. Should I be using FORCED FILM in DVD2AVI?
2. Should I be using PULLDOWN.EXE after CCE?
3. Should I be setting a parameter in PULLDOWN for Progressive file, or all frames?

Thanks,

Roveer

[Atlantis]

1. Yes
2. Yes
3. Yes, use only -prog_frames p

[Haywire]

Wow! I was just about to post a thread very close to this. The question might be answered but I'm not sure...

Lets say I have a 24 fps progressive mpeg (ie. The Phantom Menace) And I used DVD2AVI, then vafpi, then CCE (Making sure I used progressive) then pulldown.exe -prog_frames p -prog_seq p I can NOT use this file in scenarist!? Why?

If I use just pulldown.exe, it converts to an interlace file. Will the "pulldown.exe -prof_frame p" that Atlantis mentioned keep the mpeg progressive, convert to 29.97 AND be usable in scenarist. I will try it tonight, but could I be doing something wrong? Is there any other program besides pulldown.exe?

Haywire

[Roveer]

DVDMaestro took my 'pulldown' file that has frames marked as interlaced. I was able to combine it with a AC3 audio file and output a VIDEO_TS folder. In brief time that I played with it this morning, it would play in Windows media player, but seemed very jumpy with audio choppy. PowerDVD XP wouldn't even start to play it, so I'm sure I've got something wrong. Tonight I'll take another stab at it.

[Inwards]

By default, pulldown.exe will create an m2v stream with every GOP/sequence marked as interlaced, and every frame with an RFF flag marked as interlaced. This is a perfectly legal DVD-compliant stream. The flags "-prog_frames p -prog_seq p" should work just fine in Scenarist (as this is the format that most movies seem to use). I haven't actually tried this in Scenarist but it seems to work just fine in Maestro.

According to the MPEG-2 specs, setting the frames to progressive while leaving the sequence type as interlaced (or vice versa) is not legal. This isn't to say that it probably won't work fine (I'm willing to be that it will), just that I wouldn't be surprised if some picky programs whined about it.

As far as the video looking jerky on your PC, this has more to do with your playback software than anything else. Some mpeg-2 decoders do a forced bob on frames marked as interlaced while others (like PowerDVD) are smart enough to recognize such streams as progressive.

[Atlantis]

Haywire, yes, do what I said and it works in Scenarist. If you use -prog_seq p, it is not going to be accepted by Scenarist. That's your problem.

[talman]

Make that one more person who was coming to the forum for the same answer---this place is the BEST! Show your support to Doom9 people!

Thanks to all for the pulldown information.

[Haywire]

Atlantis,

Okay I tried "pulldown.exe -prog_frames p" and it produced a file that was accepted by Scenarist (Thats a good thing) I then wanted to check the .m2v through bitrateviewer and it showed progressive 29.97. I looked at it through DVD2AVI and it showed progressive 24. AUGH!! Okay, I'm thinking maybe a glitch, so I finished authoring in Scenarist and then used vStrip to rip it again and check it with DVD2AVI and again it showed progressive 24. I thought that maybe Scenarist would fix it, thats why I did that last step. Now I viewed it with powerdvd and it looks great but I'm a little worried about burining a coaster if it doesn't play on the settop player.

Wiered? The orginal is 29.97 progressive and mine is 24 progressive. Do I have to force the -framerate command on pulldown.exe? I thought it was automatic. I mean bitrate viewer shows 29.97 but DVD2AVI doesn't... what gives? It would be so much easier if Scenarist would accept -prog_frames p AND -prog_seq p since BOTH bitrateviewer and DVD2AVI then show it as 29.97P

[Inwards]

@Haywire

As I said, using "-prog_frames p" without "-prog_sequence p" produces an illegal stream format, so I'm not surprised that you get wierd results in DVD2AVI. The framerate is definitely 29.97fps, though. The final MPEG will probably play fine on your standalone. Still, I can't think of any reason not to just leave the -prog_frames flag alone.

And a final clarification:

Using pulldown.exe with its default settings does not "make the mpeg interlaced" -- it merely marks the stream and certain frames as interlaced. Your MPEG itself is still progressive. Most any DVD player worth its salt will decode the video progressively.

[Atlantis]

Haywire, that’s no problem. It’s normal. Bitrate Viewer ALWAYS shows an NTSC MPEG2 stream with 3:2 flag as 29.97. I don’t see any problem. Everything you said is normal!

[Haywire]

Atlantis ,

You are correct! The movie imported just fine and I did a burn and tried it on my set-top box. Perfect picture and frame sequencing. Finally no more picture flicker (I did one project without FILM mode in DVD2AVI and no pulldown.exe and it looked horrible on my TV)

Thanks...