3:2 pulldown detection fixed in 2.66.01.07

[jfcarbel]

Is 3:2 pulldown detection fixed in versions after 2.66.01.06?

The VBR 3:2 problem had been fix in 2.66.01.06 BUT people have said the encoding looks worse like there are bugs causing macroblocks in some areas.

Has anyone tried the 3:2 detection in the newest 2.66.01.07 and does it work now?

This would be great for hybrid DVDs rather than using avisynth+decomb since CCE will actually use the embedded RFF flags.

[wmansir]

I've used it with a couple of sources with fairly good success. I did the entire first season of "Larry Sanders" and got the worst results of the bunch. The Film parts were pulled down very well, but it seemed to be a bit agressive on pulling down the video segments. So there would be a small amount of stutter during the video segments with very low movement.

I also have encoded several episodes of Cowboy Bebop and The Simpsons and these came out perfect.

[jfcarbel]

Thanks wmansir
It was your post about 3:2 pulldown that got me interested in this. I have been researching all possible ways to approach this hybrid solution. See my post in GKnot titled "hybrid poll..." I have found that either decomb mode=1 or mode=3 is best for NTSC hybrids. PAL hybrids are a different story.

Were all your shows done using the same version of CCE. Your prior post made it look like Cowboy Bebop was done using 2.66.01.07 but others were done using earlier versions.

Also, if its trying to do pulldown on video sequences, then it sounds like either CCE is not working correctly or the video did not have the correct RFF flag.

Now that I am thinking about it more, if these RFF flags (which I am not too familiar with) are supposed to indicate if its film or video, then I would think decomb could just use these flags as well. So either my understanding of these RFF flags is flawed/wrong or the flags are sometimes coded wrongly on some material. Can someone clear this up.

[wmansir]

I played around with eariler versions, but all the encodes above were done with 2.66.01.07.

Just to clear things up CCE doesn't look at the RFF flags when attempting to inverse pulldown. Just like Decomb and other IVTC filters it examines the video and tries to detect a pulldown pattern. It probably does this by looking for repeat fields, but to account for analog sources it has to allow some differences in the repeat fields. So, low motion video may be mistaken for telecined material.

Basicly, what RFF flags do is tell the player how to handle the fields of the video. For Video, it tells the player to show each field 1 time. But to save space with telecined material some fields can be flagged to be shown twice. (to see why this is needed read this). Sometimes material isn't flagged correctly, for instance I just encoded a NFL Films DVD which was 95%+ telecined film, but was encoded as 100% video.

[Andykard]

when your using the pulldown feature of CCE what settings do you have. Do you create your d2v project in DVD2AVI as 29.97 fps and then do u set CCE framerate as 29.97. I cant seem to find any mention of settings for using CCE pulldown on a hybrid movie. I had one this weekend that was 64% film and I checked off pulldown, but I dont know if it used it or not?

[wmansir]

When you create the .d2v file don't use forcefilm, keep the video at 29.97fps. Also, remember you don't have to run pulldown.exe on the resulting file, because CCE has already inserted the pulldown flags where needed. The only settings I can see in CCE are used to manually override the pulldown detection, this could be useful if there are only a few pure video segments, as you could force CCE to encode them at 29.97fps. But the clunky interface makes it almost useless for complex streams. There are also the checkboxes for Letterbox and Pan&Scan hint, but I never used them as my sources were all full frame.

You should also use TMPGenc to mux the resulting video file. If you use BBmpeg it won't be padded correctly and when you use a program like VCDeasy it will add more padding to making the file much larger. Of course, this is for SVCD, I don't have DVD-R so your on your own for those programs. I also haven't tried using CCE to encode the audio with the video, since I use Besweet for audio encoding.

[Andykard]

I think I'm being a little slow here. I did as you said for the d2v, I did not force film, used 29.97 so that part I got right, but what do you set in CCE. I'm only dealing with the m2v, the sound is demuxed by DVD2AVI and I use it as is in Maestro.
I assume you check the pulldown box in CCE and leave all the other settings for it alone. Do you select 29.97 frames in CCE and just make sure the progressive tab is not checked or do you check that?. Thats the way I tried it, dont check progressive, but how can you tell if pulldown has done anything?. I remember reading a thread somewhere that there is a log you can check to see what pulldown has done. Do you know how to access this log? I looked at the pulldown list after the movie finished encoding and there was nothing in it. Again I'm probably being a little slow here but I really am baffled so any pointers will be appreciated.
Thanx

[wmansir]

The only option I checked regarding pulldown was the pulldown detection box, I left progressive checked because most of the material I encoded was 80%+ film. Once you create the .vaf you should be able to click the pulldown settings button and see a list of how it was encoded. Even if it didn't pulldown anything and encoded it as video it should have an entry that says VIDEO.

I'm not sure what the problem is if it doesn't perform any pulldown. You can see how much of your resulting video has pulldown flags inserted by creating a .d2v of the resulting .mpv file. DVD2AVI will tell you the %FILM just like it does for DVD ripped video.

EDIT: I also didn't change the framerate value, I think when you add the file CCE sets it at 29.97.

[Andykard]

Thanx, I will try again. When you say you didnt change the framerate. Didnt change it from what. Is your template set to 30 or 23.97

[wmansir]

I believe the framerate is initially set to whatever the input file is, I don't think the template controls that, at least on the templates I have made it doesn't. You only have to change it if you want to change the framerate from the input file.

[Andykard]

I tried what you said. I left framerate alone in CCE, checked off progressive and checked pulldown. After CCE finished, I opened up the pulldown menu, but there was nothing inside to denote it had been used. I then did as you said and generated a d2v and ran it through DVD2AVI. This time it showed as 99% film with 29.97fps (instead of 65% film before CCE). I suppose this means CCE did its job?

[wmansir]

I'm not sure, normally, without pulldown checked, CCE produces %100 NTSC according to d2v, before you apply pulldown.exe. So it appears to have added the pulldown flags. But it is odd that it didn't list anything in the pulldown list.

Of course the real test is how it looks. When you play the file on your computer is it smooth? If so, try burning a test disc and see how it plays.

[asifanwar]

I use the feature all the time for the ST:TNG discs (NTSC).

I do the DVD2AVI bit with FiorceFilm off (demux the AC3).
Use AVIsynth as follows:

LoadPlugin("<wherever>\MPEG2DEC3.dll")
mpeg2source("<wherever>\pgc1.d2v",idct=5)
ReSampleAudio(44100)
ConvertToYUY2

Drop that into CCE. Check the 3:2 box but dont adjust any setting. Leave things as 29.97. Do not set it to progressive in CCE (I keep it as Alternate scanning order) and let it do it's thing using VBR.

I then simply drop these into Scenarist (no pulldown afterwards) and re-create the discs using orig menus etc.

I play these DVD-Rs on my Pioneer DV-444 set top player and my 65" widescreen HDTV and CCE does a perfect job every time. No more Decomb for me! I am totally sold on CCE's 3:2 pulldown.

Hope this helps.

[jankster]

asifanwar,

Are you talking about 100% NTSC interlaced source. Most all my movies are near pure FILM. However "The Godfather I" had many interlaced chunks, I beleive this is called hybred source. Would your procedure work for this. I'm kinda new at AviSynth and started out using 2.5, would this work??

LoadPlugin("C:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5\plugins\MPEGDecoder.dll")
MPEGSource("D:\compress\armageddon\arm.m2v")
#MPEGSource("D:\compress\armageddon\arm.m2v",0,"ff")

I don't ever use "ReSampleAudio(44100)", never crashes, and because I'm use 2.5 I don't need "ConvertToYUY2 " right??

This area has always confused me, Thanks for any help!!

[asifanwar]

jankster:

The ST:TNG Region 1 discs are the classic hybrid discs that have eluded people for some time. They are not 100% of either type. When you run them through DVD2AVI, they will flip between NTSC and FILM depnding on what is going on in the scene. All the space scenes are NTSC, and most of the people scenes are FILM, except people scenes with credits overlayed, or with any type of special effects (such as the main viewer, or transporters etc)

The method I wrote about works perfectly for hybrid sources like that, and would probably work perfectly for the Godfather too.

My authored VOBs flip back and forth between NTSC and FILM exactly like the originals do, which is something I could never get decomb to produce. In other words, CCE will reproduce the hybrid nature of the video, which is ideal.

With regards to your script:
I am not sure about MPEGdecoder and what it will be feeding, so I use the more 'traditional' method. I also note that you seem to be re-encoding an m2v. I feed the d2v that DVD2AVI makes from the VOBs. I do not perform any stream stripping when I rip.

Hope this helps.

[jankster]

asifanwar,

Thats the info I was looking for, your method lets the DVD player take care of things. Is your DVD player a "Progressive Scan". When it flips from NTSC to FILM, can you see it, how does the HDTV handle it. This also confuses me (btw I don't have a HDTV yet)

Thanks!

[asifanwar]

I have a Pioneer DV-444 set top player, and it is connected via a triple-component cable to a 65" widescreen HDTV. Any material at all can be viewed in either Interlaced or Progressive, or the player can be set to AutoDetect. This last feature will attempt to detect a FILM source and flip to Progressive. It works well for newer DVDs, but older ones seem to stay as Interlaced, and I then force it into Progressive mode to give it the film-like quality.

DVD players do not switch back and forth in the middle of a sigle title though. As the title starts, you can see the picture kick as they player makes it's choice (eg a studio logo would kick into Interlaced, and then when the feature starts, it will kick into progressive). The ST:TNG discs (originals too) default into Interlaced mode, and sometimes they look better that way. Forcing into progressive gives them a film-like quality but also 'smooths' things slightly, and it really depends on what kind of mood I am in.

Bottom line, the only differences that the HDTV make in terms of encoding parameters are
1. always make an anamorphic widescreen copy, even if the original isnt
2. do more passes, cos you WILL notice the difference

Hope this helps.

[jankster]

Thanks once again asifanwar, In reference to your:
"2. do more passes, cos you WILL notice the difference"

Interesting, I just made a post next to this thread, on its page 4:

"Question about the "Getting the best out of CCE" guide... ( 1 2 3 4 )"

About using multiple passes to get the bitrate to swing up and down through out the movie, that is VBR. Single pass in CCE is basically CBR. I think 2 passes are a minimum, and any more than 3 produces little to no change. The 2nd pass makes a huge change in the bitrate. I pasted your replys in my notes files for future reference.

[Ntsita]

About using multiple passes to get the bitrate to swing up and down through out the movie, that is VBR. Single pass in CCE is basically CBR. I think 2 passes are a minimum, and any more than 3 produces little to no change. The 2nd pass makes a huge change in the bitrate. I pasted your replys in my notes files for future reference

It's not true. Single Pass in CCE is VBR (in fact, it's called 'One Pass VBR' and the bitrate swing up and down through out the movie).

[asifanwar]

For a pure FILM source (ie a typical movie), my encode speed is about 2.5 - 2.8x so I do about 5-6 passes and it looks just great on the big TV. Anything less and you tend to notice.
(my 3:2 pulldown speed on TNG is about 2.2x)