DVD Video making questions

[Dogway]

Im a bit lost here. Today TVs are 60Hz progressive, so my question is do I need to feed interlaced content to burn a DVD video?

I understand that the TV needs a way to display whatever my source fps is (24,25,30...) to the 60 stands for. Do I handle this on the .avs or in the encoding stage?

And about encoding, I tried HCenc, and it does a good job, but my output is a .m2v I can't use to burn the DVD. While I understand I have to "Author" it, doing it so through TMPGenc, it reencodes my m2v and adds some letterbox. Why is that and what should be a good workflow? Im willing to learn, so Id be pleased if someone knows &/or points me to theorical+practical guides

[Ghitulescu]

Im a bit lost here. Today TVs are 60Hz progressive, so my question is do I need to feed interlaced content to burn a DVD video?
Why are you confused? The DVDs are interlaced encoded. They may contain however progressive footage.

[Dogway]

AssumeTFF()
AssumeFPS(30) #instead of 29.97
spline64resize(720, 576) #or whatever
SeparateFields()
SelectEvery(12, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 6, 9, 8, 11) #pick 10 fields out of 12
Weave()

This is the code to make it 25fps from 30fps I grabbed in another thread (I wanted to get near the 24fps film look), in my intention to make it comfortable for the TV to play (smooth as smoothest it could be).
Problem comes with HCenc and TMPGenc. With the first I need to set some parameters, interlaced or progressive, I set it interlaced and it outputs a m2v file. Then what do I need to do with the m2v to make the VOB files (Author it) without reencoding? If I Author it through TMPGenc it reencodes it and screw things a little.

[Dogway]

I tried MuxMan instead of TMPGenc, and it did what expected, only muxing to VOB containers. That is good, I burned the DVD and everything went fine, but I could see some combing while playing it on Xbox360. When I checked in MPC-HC it was almost perfect, only some eventual jaggyness, is this normal or it has something to do with my .avs script or encoding flags?

[Ghitulescu]

I fail to see what you're after? Do you want to convert NTSC->PAL and then display it on a 60Hz panel? Nonsense, 60Hz panels display better a NTSC source than a PAL one. Do you want to create a DVD with 60Hz material? Again nonsense, the DVD does not allow 60i nor 60p.

[Dogway]

Im not converting anything in fact. I have a recorded footage from some friends at 30fps, and my intention is to make it look "cool" at 24 or 25 fps. But at the same time I want it to prepare for DVD/TV in the best possible way. By decimating to acquire 24fps I could have later problems for DVD, so Im using the 30 to 25 code I posted above, which is almost the same and is also DVD compliant.
Right now Im trying this code, and it seems better, but Im gonna burn in a DVD and check on TV to see what happens:
AssumeTFF()
AssumeFPS(30) #instead of 29.97
spline64resize(720, 576) #or whatever
ChangeFPS(60) #dup each frame
SeparateFields() #split into fields
SelectEvery(24, 0, 3, 4, 7, 10, 13, 14, 17, 18, 21) #pick 10 fields out of 24
Weave() #output 25 fps interlaced

I tested on a CRT TV and it plays fine, but HD TVs show some combing

[manono]

What's the source video's resolution? If 720x480 and interlaced, you can't just do a blind resize to 720x576. Bob it first, resize it, and then reinterlace it in whatever screwy way you want.
While I understand I have to "Author" it, doing it so through TMPGenc, it reencodes my m2v and adds some letterbox.
Then you're doing something wrong as TDA can be 'instructed' not to reencode if fed compliant material.

[Dogway]

source is 1080p. I solved it by making it 25fps progressive (I didn't know it was compliant) and author it with muxman. That's what I would answered to myself if I knew before :P

PD: anyway for the future it would be good to know how can I make interlaced contents not to show combing on flat TVs.

[manono]

PD: anyway for the future it would be good to know how can I make interlaced contents not to show combing on flat TVs.
You could encode them properly, for one thing. If your source was 1080p, why on earth were you trying to interlace it anyway? I'm sure your player already plays NTSC DVDs. Why'd you say earlier, 'AssumeFPS(30) #instead of 29.97'? Are you saying this 1080p hi-def source was 29.97fps? Oh, I see, it's home-made stuff. I still don't quite understand why you intentionally want to make it play jerky, even if you say it's to make it more film-like. You removed one in six frames just so you could encode it at progressive 25fps? A better idea might be to adjust the gamma, brightness, and contrast as often home-made stuff royally screws that up.

[Ghitulescu]

it would be good to know how can I make interlaced contents not to show combing on flat TVs.

Simple, buy a better TV.

I still fail to see why would one need to downconvert an HDTV source (even more, a progressive HDTV source into an interlaced DVD destination then complaining about combing) :confused:

[Dogway]

Yes, it was my fail, I just thought DVD required content to be interlaced, but yes my 30->25 progressive workaround now is decimating. It's 30fps, I just borrowed the code from somewhere as is (the comments aren't even mine).
By the way I used HCenc, with its "best" settings, didn't dig much on it, but isn't that enough?

Yes I know its a ver dirty thing, but you know, giving less temporal resolution makes it closer to film's, besides Im also grading and doing some image manipulation. But they (my friends) already know what they need to make a GOOD film like clip, like native 24fps, no codification, etc... I do what I can :/

I chose to do 30->(dirty)25 rather than 30->(dirty)24->(dirty)25, I just chose PAL because it has more resolution and framerate is nearer to 24fps.

@Ghitulescu: Ask to the people of the contest this DVD was sent to. As for why interlaced I already explained that

[Ghitulescu]

I still have no clue what you want to achieve.

Which contest are you talking about?

Nevermind, I think that you should have a "reading break", to understand what NTSC, PAL and Film are, and how one is converted (if needed) into another one. Because there's no need to convert one standard into another one, not today, not with European sets (Tenerife belongs to Spain, which belongs to Europe), which sets are PAL/NTSC-compatible.

[Dogway]

I know the basics of what NTSC, PAL and FILM are. I read a lot and I know I could convert some standards into anothers, but this is 30fps, I also asked in the forums about converting 30fps to 24 and the less wrong solution was to decimate, I dont want to interpolate the whole frames making it prone to artifacts. But if you know a way to make a 30fps source to 24fps, burn it into a DVD video and have a good experience quality wise, please tell me. Specifically the content is a music clip, which was sent to a national contest of some kind...

[manono]

You don't change a progressive 30fps source into progressive 24fps. And you certainly don't decimate it to achieve that silly goal. If it's native 30fps (it's really 29.97fps, isn't it?), you keep it that way. Do you have a small sample available?

[Dogway]

Its 30fps, I checked the mov file with mediainfo and made sure it was that. I think that's what the Canon 5D outputs

[Ghitulescu]

Its 30fps, I checked the mov file with mediainfo and made sure it was that. I think that's what the Canon 5D outputs

It depends on the firmware, older ones have 30fps, newer ones have 29.97fps.

[Dogway]

I don't think my friend (the owner of the camera) has any clue about firmwares and stuff.... but anyway I was told in another thread there's also a new firmware for native 24fps, so I already suggested to them for future music clips or whatever.