Some questions about CCE and PAL videos.

[mp3dom]

Hi,
sorry if these questions are already posted by someone. I've made search but I'm not completely sure of my ideas.

I've a 16:9 PAL film. Bitrate View say me that the film is interlaced (??) with Alternate scanning order and Top field first.
I know that Bitrate View only show the "flagged" info in the mpeg so I've loaded the film in VirtualDub Mod to see if the video is really interlaced.
So... the conclusion is that the video is Progressive (no scanlines).

I've also red in many topic that the best scanning order with progressive material is "ZigZag" but Bitrate View say me "Alternate".
So, in the CCE (2.50) encoding options I've checked "Progressive Frames" , "ZigZag Scanning Order" and leave "Top Field First" unchecked (i've not checked if really is TFF or BFF).

Have I made the right settings (that output the best quality)? or there are better settings?!

Thanks a lot to all. Sorry for my bad english.

[Matthew]

You should *always* leave upper field first unchecked with progressive material...and even with interlaced material it is a good idea also. RB's CCE FAQ in this forum covers this unless I'm mistaken.

Just one thing though...dunno what source you are dealing with but I recently encoded a tv series that was shot on film (so progressive) but the credits were interlaced so I checked interlaced in CCE (but with zigzag). So make sure you don't have a mixed source, it almost certainly is not though.

Anyway, if your source is all progressive then yeah I'd use those settings also. Incidentally I find that a lot of progressive PAL material is marked interlaced but it is usually encoded with zigzag.

[mp3dom]

Thanks for the reply.
The output quality with those settings seems to be good enought. In Tv the movie is really good and smooth (so the Field order is correct).
Ah.. only 1 other question:
In progressive material, the field order has a sense?! Is there a difference between a progressive film with Top Field and a progressive film with bottom field? (i mean with these flagged values).
I've tried to see differences using an AviSynth script and VirtualDub Mod (AssumeTFF().SeparateFields()) but i can't see differences (the field sequence seems to be good).
Thanks very much again!

[Matthew]

With progressive material the field order is meaningless, the flag is there but it means nothing. Most progressive material will say TFF in bitrate viewer but I did once have one that was BFF. But like I said, it's meaningless - the flag is only for interlaced material.

CCE's upper field first doesn't change the TFF/BFF flag, CCE always outputs TFF - what that flag does is change BFF interlaced material into TFF material by shifting the video by a line or something. Hence it's best to encode all material with the option unchecked, and if you do have a BFF interlaced video stream you can change the flag after encoding (from TFF to BFF) by using an app like pulldown.

[mp3dom]

Ok! I've understand all :cool:
Thank you very much again!