HC: make compliant & pulldown

[AlanHK]

HC's "make compliant" button seems undocumented; I can't find it mentioned in the HC018.pdf file anyway.

What will it do? It seems to just say "possible non-DVD compliant settings fixed", whether it does anything or not. It would be nice to know what, if anything, it changed.

One problem I had recently was with an AVI with a framerate of 23.976. When loading in HC, it would say "WARNING: frame rate not DVD compliant". I tried the "make compliant" button, but there was no obvious change. Eventually I worked out I needed to do a 3:2 pulldown. Spent a while trying to do this in Aviscript, finally stumbled on the "Advanced" setting in HC that activated this. So problem solved.

A few suggestions:
The warning message could suggest turning on pulldown.
"Make compliant" could turn this on when the source is 23.976.
Why is pulldown an "advanced" setting? Some "miscellaneous" settings on the first tab seem more more obscure and less likely to be changed, if it's just a matter of making room.
The manual, page 7, has "*PULDOWN" (misspelled) in the list of INI settings.
The manual also says here: "If the source isn't 23.976 fps this setting will be ignored". So perhaps PULLDOWN should be a default setting; when would one not want to do this when making an MPEG?

[hank315]

Just changed the GUI so pulldown will be on the first tab.
Pulldown will also be activated for fps=23.976 and using 'make DVD compliant'.
Living in PAL land it's a feature I rarely need but OK there still a lot of people fed up with NTSC :(
It would be a nicer world if there's only progressive PAL ;)

Also consider this:
- It's just a hobby project
- It's free
- Writing a GUI isn't one of my favorites
- And I hate writing manuals...

At least it has a manual but if someone wants to get the typos out, be my guest.

[Skelsgard]

Is there anyway to get HC to do both 3:2 pulldown AND interlacing, since its treats them as exclusive and NTSC DVDs use both?
Thanks in advance.

[AlanHK]

Just changed the GUI so pulldown will be on the first tab.
Pulldown will also be activated for fps=23.976 and using 'make DVD compliant'.
Living in PAL land it's a feature I rarely need but OK there still a lot of people fed up with NTSC :(
It would be a nicer world if there's only progressive PAL ;)

Thanks. I prefer PAL too but sometimes you have to use what you get.

Also consider this:
- It's just a hobby project
- It's free
- Writing a GUI isn't one of my favorites
- And I hate writing manuals...

At least it has a manual but if someone wants to get the typos out, be my guest.
I don't understand what you're getting at. Do you not want comments and bug reports? Was I impolite? Am I supposed to send a thank you message every time I use it and it works? Which is 95% of the time so far, if that makes any difference.

I don't demand you do anything and won't abuse you if you don't. Actually, as regards this pulldown feature, now I know when I need it and how to turn it on, it won't save me any time to make it more prominent; but it might save the next newbie coming along some hassle.

Anyway, here's another comment, ignore it if you like.

When HCEnc finishes a job it pops up and becomes the foreground process. As I'm usually doing something else at the time, this is often a surprise. A few times I've been typing away and hit ENTER, which HC grabs; and as the "Encode" button is selected, it erases the just-finished job and starts to redo the last job again before I realise what's happened. Put it down to operator stupidity if you like, but perhaps it could just stay in the background and blink on the status bar.

Humbly submitted with thanks in advance for your time.

[hank315]

I don't understand what you're getting at. Do you not want comments and bug reports? Was I impolite?
No, certainly not and bug reports are much appreciated.
Sorry if my tone offended you, think it's just that maintaning the GUI and manual isn't my greatest hobby...

When HCEnc finishes a job it pops up and becomes the foreground process. As I'm usually doing something else at the time, this is often a surprise. A few times I've been typing away and hit ENTER, which HC grabs; and as the "Encode" button is selected, it erases the just-finished job and starts to redo the last job again before I realise what's happened. Put it down to operator stupidity if you like, but perhaps it could just stay in the background and blink on the status bar.
Stupid, well than I'm just as stupid because I had the same also some times :)
It's caused because the encode button still has the focus when the GUI pops up again, will change it so keystrokes are ignored when it pops up.

[AlanHK]

Sorry if my tone offended you, think it's just that maintaning the GUI and manual isn't my greatest hobby...

How you spend your time is up to you -- if I make suggestions, that's all they are.

It's caused because the encode button still has the focus when the GUI pops up again, will change it so keystrokes are ignored when it pops up.
Cool.
Looking forward to the next release.

[Trahald]

@ hank315
Thank you for your hard work on this excellent app x 1000. :)