Interlaced PAL DVD's

[pingles]

I'm trying to backup a PAL DVD, I've done a few before and they've worked fine but with one I recently tried in a standalone player on my TV no picture appeared -- just the audio (despite it testing ok on my PC).

I'm now attempting a new disc, and think that the past problem may be an interlaced picture and not choosing the right settings in CCE? I've been following the Robshot based guide here on Doom9, and have a question.

Bitrate Viewer is showing the Scan Type as ZigZag, Frame type as interlaced, Pic structure and DCT Type as Frame -- according to the guide that would indicate an interlaced picture?

However, using the guide it said to change the field operation settings in DVD2AVI to Swap Field Order -- if I preview playback with Swap Field Order set to None then the picture plays fine. If I use Swap Field Order then I get the horizontal lines (indicating I should leave it as none).

I've got CCE setup to use Progressive, ZigZag and Non-linear (as well as field-top first -- since BitRate viewer reports its top-first). Is this right? Or have I misunderstood something?

Thanks for all the help you guys give,
Paul

[Matthew]

Lots of PAL DVDs (in region 4 anyway) are marked as interlaced even though they are not. In fact I think more than half the progressive DVDs I've come across are like this. Usually zigzag would indicate that the disc is progressive (alternate is usually used with interlaced material).

The one interlaced DVD I've come across - a tv show compilation - was obviously interlaced because when viewing the frames in DVD2AVI, each frame exhibited "combing" (little lines around objects etc, rather difficult to miss). I simply left the content as interlaced (and alternate) in CCE. To maintain quality it requires higher bitrate than de-interlaced content, but average bitrate was a bit above above 4000 average so that was okay. Also, less hassle :)

Going by what you have said it would appear that your DVD is not interlaced. Even if you did get the video encoding settings wrong, I wouldn't think it would result in a failure for the disc to play at all.

Just one thing, there's no need to check upper field first in CCE (this is covered in previous posts). The output will be top field first anyway. If you had a lower field first source, you would just change the field order by running pulldown on the encoded video.

[coona]

Originally posted by Matthew

Just one thing, there's no need to check upper field first in CCE (this is covered in previous posts). The output will be top field first anyway. If you had a lower field first source, you would just change the field order by running pulldown on the encoded video. [/B]

Isn´t it better to check if the source is tff or bff before encoding?? The output *.m2v is always tff but you can safe some time with right CCE setting instead of pulldown. It takes only little time to check in *.d2v file if it is tff or bff and then check (or not) upper field first ;).