AGKnot request: Now how bout those pesky PAL DVDs

[phozz]

Is it possible to include an option (all it takes is a single tickbox) that'll convert 25fps films to the original and correct 24fps? Yes, this requires lowering the audio pitch, that's the hard part. But it does bring the movie back to what it's supposed to look and sound like (and yes I DO notice it and it IS annoying).

I'm just tired with BSPlayer - which should be able to play at lower speeds without having to re-encode - losing aud/vid sync when trying to play at 96% speed (with Xvid/Divx, or both, not sure which). And standalone players will never factor for this.

And no I don't even want to THINK about doing this process manually!

Anyway, thanks for AGKnot, this is something I've been looking for for a long time.

-phozz

[len0x]

thats probably the most bizarre request I have ever seen :) I'm not even sure that's possible to achieve...

P.S. I'm not really asking how to do so, coz I'm not gonna :D

[manono]

Hi-

Aha! A PAL person mentioning the higher pitched audio. And I've also read of people objecting to the 4% video speed-up as well. Your objection is a nice rebuttal to the PAL people all the time gloating over their higher resolution DVDs.

I don't know if you'll ever get what you want in AutoGK. But it's not hard to do yourself, if you can use GKnot. You just have to use BeSweet to convert the audio from 25fps to 24fps. It actually has a Preset to convert from 25fps to 23.976fps, if that's good enough for you.

As for converting the video, it's real easy. Just edit the .avs by inserting a line at the end:

AssumeFPS(24)

or:

AssumeFPS(23.976)

I see that len0x responded while I was writing. It's not a bizarre request at all, I don't think. That doesn't mean that I think it should be implemented in AutoGK. I can provide samples of a PAL .vs NTSC version of the same scene, and the audio difference is all too noticeable when you can hear them side by side. And I understand that people with good ears can hear just the PAL version and know that it's not pitched right.

[len0x]

Question is: ideally if its all that easy to convert - will all PAL stuff have to be converted to 24fps?

[phozz]

Hmm.. I see that we have both lenox's attention AND a simple method to do it. So..? nudge nudge? How bout it?

This should be a tickbox, off by default. Let the user decide on this. For movie (film) material - even, surprisingly, computer animated films - it seems like this option is always necessary. But for video-sourced material (such as live concerts) it is not.

As a side note, I've just converted Shrek 2 using AGKnot (first time I used it). The end result was 500MB rather than the 700MB I requested tho :/ [Update: Ok. I should have read the FAQ. Sorry]

[smok3]

the questions are:
1. - how would you know how the audio was handled? (maybe it was corected)
2. - film can be shot at 25 fps as well
3. - there are (at least) 2 ways to telecine 24 fps to 25 fps - only one would require slowdown. (ok, i guess one would just compare running lenght from ntsc version)

[phozz]

Originally posted by smok3
the questions are:
1. - how would you know how the audio was handled? (maybe it was corected)
2. - film can be shot at 25 fps as well
3. - there are (at least) 2 ways to telecine 24 fps to 25 fps - only one would require slowdown. (ok, i guess one would just compare running lenght from ntsc version)

1. I strongly doubt that, I have compared PAL-NTSC in many situations including movies and filmed TV series (scrubs, buffy, etc) and the audio is always high pitched in PAL.

2. I guess so, but I'm pretty sure movies worldwide are shot at a standard speed (24) or else you'd have LOTS of problems.

3. Are there? As far as I know they just bump up the speed to 25fps, and everything I've seen has been consistent with this. I've never heard of a different method. Enlighten me. (I refer to film and not video! If video is converted from NTSC to PAL, while it looks crappy, the speed is correct.)

Again, I stress that this should be an option left to the user, you cannot assume that *any* PAL DVD has its audio wrong.

[manono]

1. I understand that the audio can be pitch corrected, but usually isn't.
3. There are 3 ways I know of to convert from 24->25fps. The "best" and most common is just to speed up the audio and video.

The other 2 keep it the same length, so the audio stays the same, but the video is severely screwed up. One involves field blending to convert a telecined 24->30fps source down to 25fps. The result is similar to converting NTSC video to PAL. This results in a soft, blurry, mess. The other takes a 24fps source and adds a frame every second, usually in the form of a field every half second. This results in a field shift every half second, and a slight "judder" in the motion. When looking at it in GKnot, it appears that half of every second (12 or 13 frames out of every 25) is interlaced. The former is difficult, but not impossible to fix (Restore24), and the latter is easy to fix (Telecide().Decimate(25)).

But smok3 brings up some good points why this option shouldn't be available in AutoGK. You have to know what you have before choosing to "fix" it, and since AutoGK is mainly for rookies doing this, they might blindly choose to check the box, and proceed to mess up the movie.

[len0x]

moreover despite the fact that probably many (but not relatively to total video users) ppl noticed pitched sound (I actually haven't and I deal with PAL sources in 95% of cases) - until today I have never seen any bothered with this so much they would want to restore 24fps... So as an option this will never be available in AutoGK.

[phozz]

Is there perhaps a way to "trick" AGK into doing this by editing files at some stage of the encoding process? (similar to the way you can for example encode the credits differently, as a "hidden option"?)

Or, can this be added as a *hidden* option? Pretty please?

(anything to save me from going back to Gordian Knot, heh)

Thanks anyway tho

[len0x]

hidden option are of two types:

- either requested by many many ppl
- or necessary for correcting AutoGK screwups in some rare cases

Your problem doesn't belong to either category. I'm obviously not gonna make it just for you (otherwise I would have already million hidden options).