help w/ bad PAL to NTSC to PAL conversion?

[hrgiger6]

I have a tv recording of a short concert I believe was recorded and broadcast in Europe in 1998 on a PAL vhs tape. it is full interlaced. I am trying to capture it to put on dvd. first thing I notice is that the color (especially blue) is BLASTING. then when I split the fields for processing I noticed that there is a duplicate field every 6 frames. 1,2,3,4,5,5. this makes me think that a 25 fps PAL source had a field added to every 5 to bring it up to 29.97 (there probably are some added ones missing here and there so it isn't a full 30 fps.) does this sound right? also I believe the color problems are due to a bad NTSC to PAL reconversion or something? if I use a multi format vcr and set the output to NTSC the colors appear to be natural.

here is a sample: http://www.mediafire.com/download/e471lndnqdpr2b8/clip.rar

what would give the best results with this? is this common?

[hello_hello]

Till someone else comes along (I haven't downloaded the sample as it's large and my internet connection is slow), try something like:

LoadPlugin("C:\avisynth_plugin\TIVTC.dll")
tfm().tdecimate(mode=2, rate=25)

I vaguely recall a 29.970fps source that'd been converted from PAL by slowing it down to 24.975fps then using a pulldown pattern to take it to 29.970fps. I think the pattern is 3:2:2:3:2.

If that's the case:

LoadPlugin("C:\avisynth_plugin\TIVTC.dll")
tfm().tdecimate(cycle=30, cycleR=5)

The output frame rate will be 24.975fps, but it might be a tad smoother.

For colour adjusting, maybe:

ConverttoRGB()
RGBAdjust(1,1,1,1) # the first three are red, green and blue levels
ConverttoYV12()

http://avisynth.org.ru/docs/english/corefilters/adjust.htm

[hrgiger6]

thanks I will give that a shot. here are some screens showing if I capture this PAL tape as PAL, and if I capture it as NTSC using a multiformat vcr. surely there is some sort of conversion taking place to make the color so much better in ntsc, which makes me suspicious about a previous conversion that did not convert properly from one format to the other?

[ChiDragon]

^ No screenshots in your post, that I can see.

What about lowering your capture card's Saturation control so that blue isn't wildly clipping?

I have a tv recording of a short concert I believe was recorded and broadcast in Europe in 1998 on a PAL vhs tape. it is full interlaced.
...
when I split the fields for processing I noticed that there is a duplicate field every 6 frames. 1,2,3,4,5,5. this makes me think that a 25 fps PAL source had a field added to every 5 to bring it up to 29.97 (there probably are some added ones missing here and there so it isn't a full 30 fps.)
I don't understand your conclusion. Your sample is 25fps.

Each duplicate in the video replaces a field that has been dropped, so I don't think this is anything other than regular PAL video. Something caused it to become 41.67Hz instead of 50Hz, but the issue is either part of the recording itself (nth gen by an idiot tape trader with too much equipment and too little knowledge?) or a problem with the VCR somehow. The dupes are not pure digital duplicates as with a capture card drop: they are noisy, they bob, the saturation changes, the head switching noise at the bottom of the frame changes.

Example frames when viewed with Bob or SeparateFields: there is a field missing between 569-570, 575-576, 581-582, etc. You can see how his hand jumps forward. 1163-1164, 1169-1170, 1175-1176...

P.S. I hate samples with such meaningless filenames, as they always seem to end up lost in my Downloads folder.