Should I be using Pulldown.exe on my NTSC Films?

[Roveer]

Another question on a topic that I can say I don't fully understand. Here goes:

When I do a movie that will require re-encoding. I will usually use DVD2AVI to create my AC3 audio file and my frameserve file for vfapi to then feed into CCE. In DVD2AVI I will use 'force film'. I frameserve into CCE and when the encode is complete I will have a ~4gb mpv file. I have been taking that file and running it through pulldown.exe using the "-prog_frames p" option. I then take the resulting .mpg file into DVDMaestro along with the AC3 file, use chapter extractor to pull the chapter points from the original movie, change format and dump to text file then bring the whole thing together in DVDMaestro, set first play, and finally re-author into video_ts. The resulting video looks good, no audio synch problems.

Is this all correct? I think the last time I tried to use the .mpv file straight on that it was playing way to fast (15 seconds of original movie would be 8 seconds in the mpv file), hence the pulldown. Is this the correct way of doing this?

Does anyone see anything wrong with my method? I'm not big on spending the time to try and re-author with all the menu's and extras. If I find extras that I like (example would be the 2 history channel specials included in Pearl Harbor), I will either put them on their own DVD-R or do a SVCD of them.

I'm interested as to whether I have any significant flaws in my process.

Thanks,

Roveer

[SiC]

Your method is the exact way I do it, I use pulldown.exe on films that are 23.97fps. I don't have any problems with it so I will continue to do it that way :)

[Roveer]

Your answer brings me to another question. You mentioned that you do this for all of your 23.97fps movies. I guess I should be paying attention during the DVD2AVI session as to what the fps or video type is? I ALWAYS do 'forced film'. Should I consider modifying my method based on the type of content? I think most of the movies I've done so far have fallen into this category, but I would sure like to know if there's something I should be watching out for, and changing the process if I find it.

Regards,

Roveer

[tyee]

Hi Roveer
I do the same as you too, although I've been using smartripper and extracting the movie to a separate .m2v and .ac3 files instead of .vob (DVD2AVI can import .m2v's also). I'm using AVISynth instead of VFAPI because of CCE 2.5 (which accepts .avs directly).

Regarding DVD2AVI,yes you should watch for something other than "FILM" showing when test playing, like Doom9 guides say. In that case I guess you'll have to encode either interlaced, or deinterlace using one of a few methods (decomb, I think does it). If someone has a better idea, please tell us!

Lately I'm converting Laserdisc to DVD by using AVIsynth's "pulldown" function which seems to work great for IVTC. Even though it is a manual method it is fairly quick to do and as far as I can tell it is perfect if you do it properly (read the documentation). There is another post around about doing the Laserdiscs and the technique to use for "pulldown" (written by Atlantis) in this forum so take a look if your curious.

Tyee