Subtitles - Drop Frame Synch Problem

[Yayita]

I am making a PAL -> NTSC conversion, and I am determined to help pave the way for the Big3-4 to work with PAL<->NTSC conversion. Zeul with its latest release of Numenu4U has given a great step forward.

Great job Zeul!!!!

Now to my problem...

I converted the PAL movie with Procoder at 23.97 fps progressive.

I made the pulldown with BatchCCEWS which enables the drop-frame flag.

When muxing back, audio and video are perfectly synch, but the subs start getting out of synch as the movie goes on. By the end of the movie audio is ahead by a couple of seconds.

I know this is a drop frame issue because I can mux with DVDLab, use the same .sst file and bmp's and get the subs in synch if I select "Timecode is written in real time, 29.97 fps".

Or I get the same out of synch problem if I select "Timecode is written in non-drop frame, 30 fps".

How can I solve this problem in scenarist?

Any Scenarist Wiz out there that can help me.

[Zeul]

this is governed by one factor. Has procoder dropped any frames or has it kept them all? ie is the duration the same as the original? If it is not (and for best conversions it should be different - cause every frame has been kept) then you will need to scale the sst by a factor of 29.97/25, the audio will need processing too. If the duration is the same then your movie will not look so good. Your problem is that the sst is written based off 25fps. time is time so that doesn't changing, BUT the framecount does. ie if the sst says xxxxxx:20 then that = 20/25 * 30 = which is the ntsc equivalent.

[Yayita]

Thanks for your reply Zeul.

The movie was re-encoded to 23.97 that is 1.03 frames are lost per second. The movie is the same length and it looks great. That is why I used Procoder. If you try the conversion with CCE, I repeat IF, you are right, then you have 2 options:

1) Change the duration of the film and have the same amount of frames, but then you have to alter the audio files and deal with the change in pitch.

2) Drop a frame and have the same duration and reduce quality of video.

But if you do the job with Procoder, the image quality does not suffer and you end with a film of the same duration. That is why many people in these forums recommend to use Procoder for NTSC-PAL conversion. And I adscribe to that opinion.

See most notably http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=45459&highlight=procoder+ntsc+pal

Now back to my problem. My subs are off by 29.97/30 not 25/29.97 and my issue is a drop frame issue. So I remain with the question open to anyone who can help.

[Yayita]

I got it!!

After many trials and errors, I got it, although each trial implied a 25 min muxing :mad: .

What happens is that Scenarist defaults to non-drop frame. I tried to change that in the imported video asset properties, (Property Browser Window), but scenarist would say, "The drop type of ..... cannot be changed because it is part of a track."

So what worked for me: before importing any asset, I changed the settings to drop frame: menu Settings->Default Settings->Timecode Format->(choose drop frame).

That was all, everything n-synch now.
;)