Dr Who - US Edition

[mariner]

Greetings.

1. Can anyone advise if the US BD editions of Dr Who (series 5,6,7) are 24p of 60i?

2. How's the conversion from 50i UK master done? Any know/reported artifacts/problems?

Many thanks and best regards.

[ChiDragon]

I've only looked at Series 5. It's encoded as 60i using some pulldown pattern. I didn't bother inspecting the exact pattern carefully, since decoding interlaced VC-1 is so annoying. I didn't see any blends but of course you will have some degree of added judder compared to the source.

[wonkey_monkey]

I've only looked at the Specials (which were 25p->59.94i for all regions), but the pulldown pattern was not a simple one as it's really 25p into 59.94i, not 60i with a tiny slowdown. srestore did do a good job, although it makes a bob necessary, but the good news is that with patience the pulldown pattern can be programatically determined and undone (although on some episodes it changed once or twice, or got broken due to some interlaced post production). The specials also had blended chroma. I wrote a thing (http://horman.net/doctorwho/specials.php) about it.

David

[mariner]

Thanks for the kind reply, ChiDragon and David.

No 50i for David Tennant? That's not fair.

I was under the impression that BBD HD programming was shot in progressive 25p format, like the Planet Earth series. Not so for Dr Who?

Many thanks and best regards.

[wonkey_monkey]

I was under the impression that BBD HD programming was shot in progressive 25p format, like the Planet Earth series. Not so for Dr Who?

No, that is how it's shot. But when 2Entertain released the Specials, they just made one master for worldwide release. Apparently the same goes for Torchwood BDs (pre Miracle Day) but happily DW Series 5 & 6 on Blu-ray have apparently been released 25p/50i in Europe.

David

[mariner]

If it was shot in 25p, won't it be easier to convert to 24p (a la Planet Earth) instead of 60i?

[wonkey_monkey]

If it was shot in 25p, won't it be easier to convert to 24p (a la Planet Earth) instead of 60i?

Easier, yes, but then everyone gets deeper voices and runtimes are increased (the opposite of PAL speed-up). If Planet Earth was slowed to 24p (and didn't just have 1 frame per second dropped or some other nonsense) then this would be a special case helped along by the fact that there is very little onscreen speech - and in fact it may have been re-edited and redubbed for US broadcast and release. Also a lot of wildlife stuff is shot at a faster-than-life frame rate, so looks slower on playback anyway.

[mariner]

Changing audio speed without modifying pitch is relatively straight forward, one would think.

Anyway, thanks again for the info. Will be picking up the 50i version.

[wonkey_monkey]

Changing audio speed without modifying pitch is relatively straight forward, one would think.

One might think so, but it's not. It's analogous (but not really) to changing video speed without changing frame rate, where the video is a choppy one with lots of action.

[mariner]

The subject matter is usually dealt with in introductory DSP course.