another NTSC (film) to PAL conversion question

[tilllt]

hello,

admittedly i am a little bit lost about all the posts about standards conversion, all the plugins involved and especially which one of the guides is the best for my problem. excuse me that i have to ask again, but what is the best way for my case? i need to put an excerpt of an xvid .avi to a PAL DVD in MPEG2. I assume that the original footage had been shot on film and thus should be handled with the teleci(n/d)e filter, but i am not sure. mplayer classic properties of the film are this:

Video: DivX 5 512x288 29.97fps 747Kbps
Audio: MPEG Audio Layer 3 48000Hz stereo 128Kbps

i dont care if there is a 4% speed difference involved (if the original footage has been shot on 24fps)... can anybody help me out with the script or a link a script that could do this?

thanks,
till

[Xesdeeni]

You need to verify whether the source was film or not. If you load this into VirtualDub and step through, do you see about half the frames duplicated? If so, it's from film and you can use the following AVISynths script:

DirectShowSource("Input.avi")
AssumeTFF()
FDecimate(23.976)
LanczosResize(720, 480)
AssumeFPS(25)

Load this into your MPEG encoder. I think this will also speed up the audio, although you might need to add an argument to the AssumeFPS() to be sure (see the docs).

If each frame is different, it's not from film. In that case you are probably best off using this script:

DirectShowSource("Input.avi")
AssumeTFF()
LanczosResize(720, 480)
ChangeFPS(50)
SeparateFields()
SelectEvery(4, 0, 3)
Weave()

This one won't adjust the speed, so the audio can be used as-is.

Xesdeeni

[Guest]

Welcome to the forum!

>what is the best way for my case?

You have to follow the forum rules, however, specifically in this case, rule 12: do not ask what's best. Also, rule 1 applies: use search. Do a search and post again with specific questions about what you have tried, and follow forum rules. Thank you.

:readrule:

[tilllt]

Hi,

thank you for the tips, i am in the process of experimenting with my footage. i have to make one remark to the advice of neuron2 though: i did a lot of searches and the problem was not, that i didnt find any solutions, the problem was rather that i found too much. if you search this forum or try other sources on the web, for me it seems that avisynth seems to be a VERY powerful tool, capable of doing a lot of stuff on a professional level: the point is, that unlike other software on this level of development, the sources of information are very chaotic. a lot of guides refer to a certain (often outdated) version of avisynth with a certain set of versions of plugins, that you, as a newcomer to this software, wont be able to see through. i am not a big fan of centralizing things but in this case i think a bit of version control and packaging sets of filters would make things significantly easier. i know that almost everyone contributing here does this voluntarily and maybe thats the problem... just imagine a firefox / mozilla approach of organizing software versions and plugin management, i guess you would immediately have the most versatile and professional software solution for low-level video manipulation on planet earth (accessible for everyone). my impression now is, that people from other fields of film business and even postproduction professionals, will get lost. see, i am a directing student, i write movie scripts (not avisynth scripts ;) , i direct actors, edit my films AND occasionally i have to use tools like avisynth to finalize my projects. it is not that i am not interested in technical kind of things, but admittedly i am a bit overwhelmed by the information needed, just to get started. if the starting point for the best possible NTSC to PAL conversion would be to install avisynth 2.5 with "neuron2 filterpackage version 2" everything would be fine. if you have to figure out all the latest version of all the software plugins needed or if they maybe already have been integrated to avisynth, and then finally you find 10 different walkthrough guides where every author thinks his approach is the best, you get lost easily - thats why i asked my question (again).
just a thought - avisynth is great, no doubt, but not everyone is a programmer...

thanks a bunch for the help anyway,
till

p.s. try to do a search on NTSC PAL conversion here, and look how many post show up...

p.p.s a remark for the companies using avisynth and the plugins professionally (means you make money with it): what about giving back a little bit of it, setting up a centralized server to gather information, plugins, doing version management and so on? although i cannot judge how big this market is but video restoration IS a market.

[Guest]

We do our best to package things and make information available, given our limited time and preference for activities. If you find it lacking, then there is an ideal opportunity for you to contribute.

At a minimum, we ask that you search through the guides and postings and *try something*. Then inquire about problems you run into. Nobody will tell you "what is best". If you just come on as a noob and say "there's too much to search through, tell me what to do", few people will have the time or inclination to do your research for you. Like it or not, this is a highly technical site, and you are expected to be tenacious and resourceful, and to understand what you are doing. There's a learning curve and no short-cut to the top.

It would be like if I went to the Film Academy web site and said, I googled "writing film scripts" but there is so much! Please tell me the best way to write a film script. Then I add, you directors and script writers should package your stuff better so the noobs can write the best scripts. :)

If I come and say, I've researched Hitchcock's approach to building tension in a scene, and I've tried to do it in this script fragment, but it's just not coming off right, you'd be much more likely to become engaged, wouldn't you?

@Xesdeeni

Is something missing from the beginning of your post? Why would he see half the frames duplicated for film, if you haven't done SeparateFields()? And when you say "load this", the referent is not clear. Maybe it's just not clear, or I am misreading it?

[Xesdeeni]

@Xesdeeni

Is something missing from the beginning of your post? Why would he see half the frames duplicated for film, if you haven't done SeparateFields()? And when you say "load this", the referent is not clear. Maybe it's just not clear, or I am misreading it?He said above that the source was a 512x288 NTSC DivX at 29.97 fps. That says to me that it is not interlaced (although 288 is an odd resolution for NTSC, so he might have meant 512x240?).

So I made some (possibly invalid assumptions). Obviously if it's truly from film, then the 24 fps would have to be converted to 29.97 fps. I don't have to tell you that most of the time, the (slightly slowed down) film would be telecined to an interlaced video. To make 240 tall video, most people throw out one field (ech!), leaving 240 lines at 29.97 fps. Stepping through this type of video would give repeated frames about every other frame due to the decimated telecine.

I certainly could be wrong in my assumptions. 512x288 wouldn't have an obvious path from NTSC, but it is 16:9 on a square pixel display. It'll be up to tilllt to let us know.

Xesdeeni

[Mug Funky]

p.p.s a remark for the companies using avisynth and the plugins professionally (means you make money with it): what about giving back a little bit of it, setting up a centralized server to gather information, plugins, doing version management and so on? although i cannot judge how big this market is but video restoration IS a market.

good idea! don't know about setting up a server (avisynth.org seems to do okay, though i could be mistaken), but giving back is a good idea. now i feel all guilty :(

@ IanB: you live in melbourne, don't you? want some anime? :)