Hi everyone,

I made this (hopefully simple) guide on how to IVTC (inverse telecine) your videos before encoding. Since most videos (not all, but a lot of them) are filmed at 24 frames per second, you don't want to encode the 30 fps material that you get from PO, ScreenPlay, etc. Unfortunately, pretty much everyone seems to be doing it wrong, and I am hoping that will change. The only person/service I've seen actually doing this correctly so far is SmashVidz.

Anyway, this does require Windows, but this process is going to give you better results than anything else, I promise. Better encodes, smoother frame rates, and more efficient playback in Video SL.

Here's the link: www.youtube.com view
Be sure to watch in 720p as you'll be able to read the text more easily.

Note: I left out a few things (such as replacing audio with CD-source stuff) just for simplicity; I am just focusing on the video in this tutorial.

Please let me know if there are any questions and I'd be more than happy to help. I really hope more people can start using this method, it'll be better for all of us.

Brett

Thanks for updating the guide Brett. I've been getting nice results with your old guide.

Thank you!

Dope man...

thanks for the video! It will help a lot of users here!

very nice video!!!! thank you

Do you have any suggestions for rendering preferences in Sony Vegas after quick edit of a video?

Well, when I edit in Vegas, I always do something similar to this process first, except instead of encoding with MeGUI, I create an uncompressed AVI with VirtualDub (just load the .avs into VirtualDub and then save the uncompressed AVI).

Then, I edit with that file in Vegas, and then render, again, an uncompressed AVI out of Vegas. After that, I create an .avs script that looks like this:

DirectShowSource("vegasproject.avi")
ConvertToYV12()

Then load that .avs into MeGUI and encode as normal. This way, you're only going through one encoding stage.

Hope that helps!

Also, it is ESSENTIAL that your Vegas project settings are equal to that of the AVI you're editing with. So, for instance, if you've got a 640x360 video at 23.976 fps, make sure you set that in Vegas as well.

Cool. I will definately try this out.

"a little bit of a learning curve?"

haaaaaaaaaa!

great post man.

maybe u guys can explain this one to me.
I understand how when u go from a 24 to 29.97/30 fps it does that by making
dupes (like u mentioned every 5th frame)
but you also said to keep it at the original fps rate (so, why is there a dupe frame?)

thanks man, so informative

It's just because the DVD spec requires 29.97 fps. So, that's just the method that's employed to handle 23.976 fps material -- three progressive frames, and two combed frames. Fortunately, Blu-ray allows real 23.976 fps progressive stuff, but I doubt we'll be seeing any music videos on Blu any time soon.

Oh, ok.
so the original media is 23.976 but when its put onto the DVD it shoots to 29.97?
then we are just down-converting it back to its original format of 23.976

if they all come up saying 29.97, how do we know it was initially 23.976 and requires
the duplicate frames removed?
and will VSL have any issues vith a file rendered at anything other than 29.97
I thought I read that 29.97 is the preffered FPS rate?


sorry for the Inquisition Brett... Im at that point where I know just enough to be dangerous (to myself) in the realm of videos

Nah, it's all good! I'm glad people are asking questions.

The easiest way to find out whether to IVTC it is to put the TDeint() line into the AviSynth script (and don't do the Decimate line yet). Then, load into MeGUI and start hitting the right arrow on your keyboard. If you see four frames and then a duplicate, then you know to remove that. If you keep seeing constant frames already, then you've got 29.97 material.

23.976 material actually runs better in VSL than 29.97. Less frames to decode = less CPU required. It also means that when the software has to blend frames (which it pretty much always does since you're adjusting pitch), it's blending from the raw individual frames, and not an already blended source (which is what most crap deinterlacers do.. they just blend the two combed frames). Just gives you better performance all around.

VSL actually supports quite a bit, as long as it's encoded properly. Heck, I even have some 59.94fps files in my library that work just fine.

Brett, thanks for the tutorial. I alreadly went through it and have got to the point of trying some encodes using your workflow. However, I have lot of VOB's that i ripped from PAL DVD's which themselves are at 25fps. With these type of sources is necessary to remove the extra (duplicate frames). If does not not seem to make an difference for me.

Ah, that one is tricky. If the video was actually recorded in PAL (meaning it's actual 25fps source) then you don't need to do anything.. just deinterlace and encode.

However, if the video was originally film or NTSC (23.976 or 29.97) and then converted to PAL, you're pretty much out of luck, as they have to apply frame blending to those sources to get them to look good for PAL uses. If you can get your hands on other sources for the video, definitely do so.

Cool, it is actually the original PAL and actual 25fps. The workflow has already helped with one of two other files though. I do have PO and Screen Play DVD's so either way very very useful. Thanks again.

Can those settings be achieved using Sorenson Squeeze. I've been using Phat Al's encoding settings found here. How does that compare?
www.serato.com

I'm not sure, as I don't have experience with Sorenson Squeeze. I did some searching and I don't think that Squeeze has the ability to perform IVTC. It can, however, crop and output as widescreen if appropriate (you'd have to do this manually, though).

Of course Squeeze has the ability to do IVTC, it's a professional encoder.

Look under the filters section

I stand corrected.

thanks DJ Brett for the guide, and for your help.


thanks Justin, I will take a look at the IVTC settings in Sorenson.

Sorenson Squeeze is picky with IVTC. I remember I was trying to use it on an older version and my files would become out of sync when using the IVTC filter.

nik39 and I tried convincing everybody that the pulldown was ruining their videos years ago but no one seemed to care. they were happy to deinterlace the pulled down material (ruining it even further).

i'm glad to see some of you finally taking notice that the you need to remove the pulldown before editing or converting to mp4.

i just wish all dvd material was the same so the same process could be used for every video.

Oh btw, I'd bet that smashvidz gets a lot of their videos in the native frame rate, before the pulldown was added.

It's not that we didn't care. This is just the first tutorial that got posted.

thanks d-twizzle, so you're currently not using IVTC setting on Sorenson. I wonder how the new version can handle it.

before my last tutorial i did, i actually was going to post a tutorial on pulldown removal. the topic was pretty much ignored by everyone so i just moved on to something different.

i'm just glad people are starting to take notice. the absolute worst are the sites that happily ruin pulled down material by deinterlacing it, and then selling the videos like that. this is the worst because once they've been deinterlaced, you'll never get back the 23.98 frames in tact.

i have plenty of ruined videos from the early days so i know what i'm talking about.

maybe a tutorial for mac users is still in order though. compressor, after effects, custom scripts and shake can also remove pulldown on the mac. after effects is the only one though that can auto-detect the cadence AND allow you to override the detected cadence and supply your own pattern. compressor just auto-detects and you pretty much need to supply the cadence to shake in order for it to work.

also, i didn't watch his tutorial but I'd be concerned about source material that was shot with the so called "advanced pulldown" or 2:3:3:2 cadence. Obviously if the pulldown removal only knows how to deal with 3:2 (or 2:3, whichever you prefer), then it will seriously bungle source frames with 2:3:3:2 pulldown.

Anyway, glad to see people doing this. Now get someone from all those crap sites ruining videos to read this thread.

oh I forgot to mention that AE can remove 3:2 and 2:3:3:2

Is there any limitations on the operating system to do this? Would someone need XP or above?

Are you on Windows 98? JK

if you do this that would be brilliant..... the mac tutorial i mean.... im trying to ween myself off PC!

Yeah, I'd like to know how to do this on the Mac as well. I still use Windows for my primary workstation OS but it would be nice to know.

A-Swift, there are ways for AviSynth to handle 2:3:3:2 pulldown material, however I've _never_ seen this used in any of the footage I edit.

Yeah, I've been trying to get people on this for two years now but, indeed, nobody seems to care (or understand the difference). Quite frustrating...

Nice tutorial Brett, thanks. Now I gotta install bootcamp...

I'll send you some. hahhaa.

we just shot a music video using HVX200. these are VERY popular cameras for shooting music videos.

Do all videos then have the pulldown? I have started to use this process, and I am taking each video one on one, and adjusting the crop size, but I want to make sure I am Dec(5) when I should be, and leaving it along when I should.

Also, rendering MPEG4's this way, how does that affect the keyframe? I was always understanding that Serato used keyframes as reference points in the song..

While there are tools on the Mac that can do IVTC, both commercial (Compressor, Cinema Tools) and freeware (JES Deinterlacer), none of them do even close to a good job of dealing with broken cadence material, such as most music videos shot on film, telecined to standard def, and then edited in a 60i environment.

As far as advanced pulldown, I have NEVER seen it used in final delivery. Advanced pulldown is usually added by 24p capable cameras to facilitate easy removal during ingestion into an NLE. The project could then be edited naively at 24p and a standard, 3:2 pulldown added when the final edited master is output to tape.

AviSynth can handle this. Granted, there are a few frames (lasting less than a second) each time the cadence is broken where it can get a little choppy, but it quickly figures out the cadence again and picks up correctly.

As I mentioned in the video, most require IVTC, but some do not. Easiest way to figure it out is to start with just TDeint() in the script and not the Decimate(5). Then in the preview window, start seeking frame-by-frame. If you see four frames and then a duplicate, four frames then a duplicate, four frames then a duplicate, etc. then that means you need to add the Decimate(5) line. If not, that means it's a 30fps/60i source, so just deinterlace with TDeint() and you're good.

No, not all videos have pulldown.

True

Keyframes are not related to pulldown at all.

If you are rendering a mp4 from a source with 3:2 pulldown with keyframes every 15 frames, there will a keyframe every 15 frames in the mp4

If you are rendering a mp4 from a source without 3:2 pulldown with keyframes every 15 frames, there will a keyframe every 15 frames in the mp4

Right on a-swift, but I do not see anywhere in the MeGui interface where I can dictate a keyframe every certain frames...

Thanks for the quick response as well DJ Brett B

thank you for sharing this wealth of knowledge!

is there a way to batch ivtc a group of vob files with your method?

especially if one were to organize the vobs so that they were seperated by whether they were originally shot in 24p or 29.97 etc.

also for us mac users, has anybody been had this level of precision using ivtc within compressor? thanks in advance...

on the mac, compressor will auto detect the cadence when doing reverse telecine. it's very easy.

after effects will let you autodetect the cadence, and override the detected setting if you like.

Check the "Advanced settings" box when you're configuring the x264 settings and add "--keyint 15" (or whatever you want--15 means every 15 frames). I've _never_ messed with that setting, just let x264 do its thing, and I've always had perfect performance. But that's just me.

I've been trying to figure out a solution to this. Problem is, I'm such a nerd that I really tweak each video individually. And replacing audio will always be a manual thing, so I've never looked into the idea too much. However, I am 100% sure it's possible if you're willing to write something to do it... I'll leave that to someone else though :P

you can batch vobs that have different cadence?

i don't know. can you?

the vob's could be organized into groups with the same cadence/parameters... and then batched that way...

basically this question is for those of us who are getting ready to redo our libraries again with this superior method and hope to avoid doing every vob file individually.

No, they'd have to have the same cadence.

I saw another web tutorial on this and they suggested making 5 folders, 1 for each cadence and then sorting your videos into them. Then you could batch all videos at the same time. Each folder at a time.

Could you possibly find the link to that? I'm very curious about how they achieved that.

it was a tutorial for doing reverse telecine with mencoder (command line). i think it was linked off the doom9 forums. i'll find it.

Awesome. Finally an interesting thread in here :) Props for all the information and the nice tutorial, Brett B.

I have a few questions about the whole process (most of these questions are not IVTC related per se), hopefully someone will be able to answer them.

1. Scaling. The common music video from a DVD will be at 720x480 with a PAR 0f 0.889 and a DAR of 4/3, which results finally in the given 640x480 (non-widescreen). Now, why are we converting the videos which are at 720 to 640? Wouldn't it make sense to try to avoid any additional rescaling (any real rescaling is like what for audio files means resampling which you always try to avoid)? The funny thing is... my tool does it also, so it some point it looks like I also agreed that this is the best approach - but I can't remember the answer :-(

2. Cropping. (This is somehow related to question 1) In your script you are cropping first, then resizing to 640x480. If you crop before you resize, then this means you are actually again resizing with an most likely not even factor, which also means you are degrading the picture. Wouldn't it be better to crop as the final step? (Okay, then VSL has to resize them later, but since VSL does resizing anyway, let VSL do it all in one step, saving as much quality as possible by avoiding multiple rescalings)

3. Decimate.

3.a Now when you go from 24fps to 29.97fps you have to "duplicate" a frame otherwise things will not match up. What I never understood is the timing. At 24fps you would have a time distance of 1/24s between each frame, with 29.97fps it is obviously 1/29.97s. Now if you spread 4 frames to 5 frames, doesn't it mean the you will introduce some judder? This is the first part of the question. Now comes the second part

3.b When you do the IVTC process and the decimate process, This means basically that you have to readjust the timing, since... well, forget it. This is not a question. Haha :) But this means that during IVTC you *must* use decimate otherwise you will end up with judder as well and will also mess up the timing since you have 29.97 frames (or is it 30?) but since you specified a target fps-rate of 24 the video will run at a different speed.

3.c Do you know if any tool which is able to show for each frame the exact timeposition? This is important for me with VFR, since handbrake seems to rely on VFR.

4. Cadence. Is anyone able to give an estimation about how many music videos have a fixed cadence, and how many have a broken cadence where you either need to break the scenes into parts and IVTC them seperately or alternatively, use an adaptive IVTC algorithm?


And please, if anyone finds some terms which I used in a wrong way (I am still a noob when it comes to video) please, please take the time and correct me. I made the experience that is quite important to use the proper numbers and terminology otherwise certain methods, and results are difficult to understand or do not make sense at all.

nik39 is a noob when it comes to video? that's funny.

with regard to #2, you are correct. this is why there is no "crop filter" in fcp. you must crop as a final step to the output file.
#3.c - fcp will show you absolute frame number for any given point in time.

here's that link i was talking about where they make 5 directories, 1 for each cadence. again, using mencoder to do the reverse telecine:

www.dvxuser.com

Is there any way to do it the other way around? For a certain frame I would like to know the exact time position.

yes it would do that to. just type in a + symbol, then the exact frame number you want to go to, then look at the little box that shows you the smpte timecode in hh:mm:ss;ff format.

there is no "place" to put the +frames into. just start typing and it'll go there. make sure the timeline or viewer window is active. or the canvas if you prefer to do it there. basically, any window but the browser will do this.

Thanks, a-swift.

Do you know of any commandline tile which can show a list of all frames incl. the stats (at least time-position... )?

tile=tool

i'd have to think about that one nik.

would it be fairly safe to say that most music videos of American artists are originally film or NTSC???

im based in Australia so there are some DVDs which I can buy which are PAL

The majority of videos shot in the US that originate on video camera (not film), will be shot with 23.976 fps. Lots of reasons why directors choose that frame rate. Most importantly, the ability to derive the other frame rates from this source and also the light needed to light scenes is less than higher frame rates.

ok cool - thanks - good to know

\

damn - does this mean i cant get away from windows? :)

The first crop parameters (usually only 8-12 pixels) is just to remove the overscan compensation that PO/ScreenPlay/etc apply to the videos. In the world of computers, we don't need to worry about overscan, so I want to get the picture to be the exact size of the frame.

I resize to 640 first for two reasons.
1: We are working in square pixel environments with computers, so 640 just works better IMO.
2: When I resize to 640, it also makes cropping for 16:9 easier, since all I have to do is take 60 pixels off the top and 60 pixels off the bottom, which results in a perfect 1.78:1 AR file (640x360).

3. Decimate.



That's exactly what IVTC is. IVTC is the removal of that duplicate frame. If I was leaving that duplicate frame in, it would just be considered decombing. Also, technically this is 23.976 fps, so that's why the timing matches up (that's a standard for pretty much all film content for final delivery -- for example, Blu-ray movies are encoded at 23.976 as well).



I can't answer that, never messed with VFR personally. I can't imagine that working well in VSL either? I could be wrong though :)



I've found that MOST music videos (at least before very recently) have a broken cadence. Lately, with the move to everything digital in the entire chain, it seems they're editing in true 24p and then applying the pulldown afterwards, so there are some with perfect cadences. But, again, this method handles broken cadences pretty well (IMO). Other than a few jumpy frames (literally a few, less than 1 second), it finds the cadence again and continues IVTC correctly.



We're all noobs :) That's why I'm glad we can have these discussions!

Haha, that's your call :) Personally my workflow has always been better in Windows because I learned everything I know in Windows. I have nothing against Macs (I use a Mac every day, and use a MBP for DJing), I just unfortunately don't have much knowledge when it comes to video tools in that environment.

I'd put my mac tools against anything in windows. There's not much I can't solve with MPEGStreamclip, FCP, Compressor, After Effects, Shake, ffmpeg and mencoder.

thats what i like to hear! i just want to be completely windows free

Again, I'm not doubting any tools on the Mac side. Just saying I learned on Windows, and so far, everything has worked for me.

using A-Swifts outstanding FCP Sessions tutorial as a guide, i've followed his steps in terms of using MPEG StreamClip to create a MOV file to edit in FCP, and also demux to get the m2v file to use the Reconnect media step.

However, following this thread, it would seem as though i would need to IVTC the file that I will eventually Reconnect to - right?

If so - i cant seem to use the 'Cinema Tools Reverse Telecine' option in FCP/Cinema Tools as it seems as though it cant read a M2V file - what should i do?

or i am doing it all wrong?

When doing this to videos can you see a noticeable difference?

You can absolutely see a noticeable difference - playback is much smoother and judder-free. It also reduces strain on your CPU since you are only decoding the frames that need to be decoded (instead of a bunch of duplicates). Depending on how you're deinterlacing videos right now, this could also lead to better picture quality since you aren't blending fields which some deinterlacers do.

Brett.... WOW... The difference in video quality at dublin was utterly amazing last night. Each of the distributed screens in the bar looked like a DVD image. I had non of the vertical tracing that I was getting before. The file size is quite reasonable.

Props to Smashvidz... their product quality was awesome!!!

Thanks

Cool now I just need to figure out how to do this.

ditto

it's not too hard if you follow the directions. You may come across some different scenarios though. depends on your source of videos.

I just want to say thanks for what is one of the most informative threads I've seen here.

This page from the Handbrake Wiki might help some: trac.handbrake.fr

So my question is for some very old stuff pulled from DVD's: it seems like for some stuff, there's no real way around deinterlacing?

Two videos I've struggled with are Clash "Rock The Casbah" and Rick James "Give It To Me Baby". Besides both of them being of pretty low quality in general, none of the detelecining/reverse telecining options in Compressor, Final Cut Pro, FCP's Cinema Tools, or Handbrake (which supposedly auto-detects cadence) have been able to successfully work on those two.

Am I missing something?

maybe these videos do not have 3:2 pulldown added so there is nothing to remove. maybe they were shot ntsc broadcast format natively. not likely but a possibility.

use compressor.

im trying to! But just completely not sure on what settings to use - if i use compressor to convert a m2v file to a m2v file (and selecting reverse telecine under the Frame Controls section) - does this mean that there is no generation loss?

If so - im still confused as to what file format to use QuickTime Movie, and select Uncompressed 10-bit in the Compression Type section? I thought this would put the M2V file through a conversion process which i dont want.

so confused!

as far as i know, the reverse telecine process on all the methods listed above will recompress each frame unless you use uncompressed as your export type.

can someone post up the .avs file. Seems easier than trying to type everything in the youtube vid.

Glad to hear it man!

LoadPlugin("X:\Path_to_DGIndex_Folder\DGDecode.dll")
LoadPlugin("X:\Path_to_Plugins_Folder\TDeint.dll")
MPEG2Source("video.d2v")
TDeint()
Decimate(5)
Crop(left,top,-right,-bottom)
Lanczos4Resize(640,360)
Crop(0,60,-0,-60)
ConvertToYV12()

Notes: Only use Decimate if the video is actually 3:2 pulldown, and only use Crop(0,60,-0,-60) if video is widescreen.

sorry if this is a stupid question but when you resize to 640x360... doesn't that cut off the chyrons on a promo only .vob?

That's cropping, resizing does just that it resizes the entire video.

LIke taking a 5x7 and shrinking it to a 3x5, It's the same picture just on a smaller scale.

sorry. i meant to say doesn't cropping cut off the chyrons on a letterbox promo only .vob? does that bother you esthetically?

thanks a million a-swift - i think i got it worked out now and seems to look good. You're help has been invaluable - thanks dude!

and thanks DJ Brett B for opening our eyes to this - im definitely always keen to hear about techniques to make my videos look sharper!

Brett, i was testing avisynth 2.6 and was able to utilize TDeint() without the LoadPlugin call.

Ah, yeah, if you have the TDeint.dll in your AviSynth plugins folder, you don't need to load it.

It bothers me much less esthetically than improper aspect ratios, which is what you'd get if you just play a letterboxed 4:3 video on a 16:9 monitor. Everything that I do is assuming that the video will be played on a 16:9 monitor. It's a good idea to start producing ALL of your edits and encodes in 16:9 from here on out - if you aren't already playing on 16:9 systems, eventually everything will be 16:9.

aaahhh...... im back to not liking my videos

after I IVTC the m2v file, and then use this to render to MP4. Most of the frames look beautiful but at random points in my video there is a lot of interlaced frames. It doesnt happen at regular intervals, and the length of interlaced frames changes each time so theres no pattern.

when i render to MP4 and also Deinterlace, the video looks pixelated and 'digital'.

i cant seem to get this right! anyone got any suggestions?

gold, thanks!

Alright. Giving this a go right now, but a couple of questions.
*First, why isn't this a sticky yet?
*Second, have you ever sent more than one batch of edit jobs to the queue and let them run? It looks like it has the potential to do that in MEGui, but it would require a different avs script for each to process. So say I had 10 videos, I would need 10 avs scripts , and I would need to load those up individually because they may all have different needs. I have an script running now, but I may try this with the next couple and see how it works out. I've already encoded them with MPEG Streamclip before so right now it's trial and error on my vob collection.

is there any way to ignore pullup using mencoder?

as a demuxer? sorry, was incomplete..

Gasshhhhhh*** pulldown flags.. ignore pull down flags ::cries for an edit button::

Thanks for this info Brett B.

i need a dumbed down zipped folder with all software (that's free) puma instructions to go with this.

Great guide, a lot of these free programs work good but the lack of GUI and combined nature of the apps scare a lot of people. Not to mention dealing with a script. As a long time VJ but new guy to Serato this will help a lot in converting my material.

Brett you are the man.

I got it to work for mp4's, but what if I want to edit in vegas, what do I need to encode too first.

I know how to get from unc avi to mp4 out of vegas, so I need to get the file with all the ivtc and stuff first.

i think i got it for vegas now. Not sure if it's rendering at unc avi though

What I do in that case is change the ConvertToYV12() at the end to ConvertToRGB().

Then, I load the script into VirtualDubMod and save as an AVI. This will give you a fully uncompressed AVI file that you can edit with in Vegas. Then, you can either export as MP4 out of Vegas if you want the easy route, or render as uncompressed AVI. Also, make sure your Vegas project settings are _exactly_ the same as the video you're working with. So, if it's 640x360 at 23.976fps, make sure your Vegas settings are that too.

If you choose to render as uncompressed AVI and encode with x264/MeGUI (which I recommend), create a new script which contains the following:

DirectShowSource("video_from_vegas.avi")
ConvertToYV12()

Then load that script into MeGUI. For the audio source, just load the AVI. Everything should encode as normal.

This is definitely possible. That's exactly how I've done it in the past. Just set up all of the scripts and then load a bunch up to encode.

Update on Mac tutorials for IVTC fellas:

I've done a BUNCH of research on this and I've come to the conclusion that you can't IVTC music videos on the mac. Every single music video I've tested, all have broken cadence. There is no reason to believe that ANY video would have a single cadence that isn't broken.

The only way to IVTC files with broken cadence is to use an adaptive IVTC tool. That is, one that detects scene breaks and picks up new cadence as it identifies it. There is no software for the mac that does this, that I know of. If such software does exist, please let me know and I'll do further testing with that.

I use 3 different applications for removing 3:2 pulldown. AfterEffects, Shake and Compressor. All do a fine job. I like Compressor for simplicity. I like AfterEffects for it's auto guess cadence and manual override. I like Shake for its scriptability. None of them can account for broken cadence though. Which means, if trying to IVTC a music video, you'll almost certainly end up with a frakenstack of frames that are much worse than the 29.97 frames you started with.

If anyone has updated info, please let me know.

Hey Brett, done alot of research now and thanks to you, I have completely switched over to megui and I love it. It is indeed more work, but if you are serious about quality, is the only way to go. I have one question that mabey you can help me with.

My encodes are coming out awesome, but is there any way to limit maximum birate? they are ranging anywhere from 6k to 15.1mb, which is odd. I did not have this problem with mediacoder or ffmpeg before.

Thanks again.

a-swift.

How can you find out if the cadence is broken.

I've done Brett B's way and found that most videos the 5th frame is a dupe, but I haven't gone through all the way to see if they stay like that.

Step through the video frame by frame. You will see a pattern of 3 frames which look good, and 2 frames that look crappy. The frame we want is the 1 of 3 good frames. The 1 frame always follows the crappy frames. Note that frame number (obviously you need a player that can show you the frame numbers, like Quicktime player 7).

Once you have the frame number you do

frameNumber modulus 5

This will give you the start frame for the cadence. If the cadence is continuous, the start frame will be the same anywhere you select randomly in the file and detect the pattern manually. What you will see is that the start frame will move around because the cadence is broken. All this means is the the edit was most likely done with source material that had the pulldown added before they began editing.

If the edit was done in native frame rate, and the pulldown was added to native frame rate master, then the cadence would be continuous, with a single start frame for 3:2 pattern.

Also, when you do any kind of IVTC, you'll want to inspect the file completely and do frame by frame checks to make sure the IVTC was done correctly.

so the decimate 5 just takes out every 5th frame.
How is the correctly ivtc'ing the video than?

It's not puma. The only way to properly IVTC a video is to restore the original progressive frames. That's what a true IVTC does. With 5 frames of 3:2 pulldown material you have 10 fields. Those 10 fields need to be restored to the original 3 progressive frames. Taking out every 5th frame does not do that.

Oh and btw, I love being proved wrong on anything. So if I am wrong, someone please show me where. I don't know everything.

Typo I guess.. it is "4 progressive frames" :)

Nik39 is correct. 4 progressive frames. That's what I meant to type.

am I better off just leaving things at 29.97fps and deinterlacing than?

this is worse than anything else you could possibly do. deinterlacing a video that is 29.97 from a 23.98 source will mangle the frames beyond repair.

at least leaving it 29.97 interlaced won't make it any worse than it already is, plus a display that knows how to display interlaced footage will display the frames correctly so your interlacing artifacts will be minimal.

of you deinterlace the video, the mice teeth on your edges will be baked into a progressive frame and the display will not be able to see the fields (since you removed them by de-interlacing) and reassemble the frame.

this might be completely ignorant of me, why wouldnt you just leave it @ 23.98?

I know some services keep the fps the same as the source...

Good topic.

Do displays really work properly with the video signals VJ's are streaming? You have to remember - It is unlikely that we really maintain the original playback speed. In other words, displays should fail in 99.999% of the cases. Is this correct?

Ok, maybe I'll continue with my tutorial because clearly there is still some more to be learned here.

I'll be demonstrating IVTC and explaining these concepts in a way that is VERY easy to understand, no matter what your previous knowledge.

I'll also show what happens when you try and deinterlace footage that is 3:2 and a few other confusing topics I've seen in this thread. It won't be hard to show that simply removing the 5th frame does not do a true IVTC.

I really am going to do it this time.

PO or many others don't come at 23.98 they give you 29.97 for some reason.

Ok, maybe I'll continue with my tutorial because clearly there is still some more to be learned here.

I'll be demonstrating IVTC and explaining these concepts in a way that is VERY easy to understand, no matter what your previous knowledge.

I'll also show what happens when you try and deinterlace footage that is 3:2 and a few other confusing topics I've seen in this thread. It won't be hard to show that simply removing the 5th frame does not do a true IVTC.

I really am going to do it this time.

swift, if you need any assistance (not meaning technically - I know you got this stuff locked down) - I'll be glad to help out with your tut.

Look here
www.doom9.org

The 5th frame is not the one to delete if they are using the 3:2 pulldown they are combining 2/3 frames to make the extra frame.

Not spouting off knowledge just trying to put it in my words to see if I actually understand it.

because they are too lazy to re-engineer their videos DVDs for dual frame rates on the same DVD. DVD spec says you can have video at 23.98 and 29.97 on the same DVD disk, but they must be in separate titles. Same thing goes for 4:3 vs. 16:9, you can have them on the same DVD, in different titles. If you matrix just the two options of frame rate and aspect ratio, you wind up with a DVD with a bunch of titles.

You also wind up with a bunch of different workflows based on the frame rate and the aspect ratio. It's much easier for the lazy promo only guys to force all the videos to a single format. 4:3, 29.97.

And of course since they've forced all those videos with pulldown and letterboxing, they continue to use these versions for the DFF.

Don't expect to see this fixed any time soon. The only video service I know of that is even making any kind of attempt to offer videos in proper formats without hacks, is smashvidz.

Yes puma. That is correct. This is why you simply can't just remove the 5th frame and call it IVTC. That's not removing the pulldown.

thanks man... makes sense.

its amazing what you can learn in 2 years...

allmighty-swift... do you have an answer for my question as well? ;)

No the original speed is not maintained on playback either. Obviously if you have a 23.98 video that you are playing back on a Mac that has the video output set to 59.94 or 60p, there will be some buffering and doubling of frames going on. The Mac disply output is constant no matter what the framerate of the footage you are playing.

But the question is mainly whether this will confuse or not confuse the display when trying to display the video frames properly.

I'll have to disagree with this. If it was being played by a standalone DVD player and outputting the original fields to the TV(s), then it would be deinterlaced. But in our case, Video SL is displaying the frames as it sees them (which means you'll see the two "bad" fields for every five frames) and then the computer is sending its own independent output to the TV. The TV doesn't exactly know that those frames are interlaced, because the TV is just receiving a raw 60i/60p signal from the laptop. In order for the TV to deinterlace, those exact original fields must be transmitted to the TV untouched.

I'll have to disagree with this. If it was being played by a standalone DVD player and outputting the original fields to the TV(s), then it would be deinterlaced. But in our case, Video SL is displaying the frames as it sees them (which means you'll see the two "bad" fields for every five frames) and then the computer is sending its own independent output to the TV. The TV doesn't exactly know that those frames are interlaced, because the TV is just receiving a raw 60i/60p signal from the laptop. In order for the TV to deinterlace, those exact original fields must be transmitted to the TV untouched.

Ah, thanks for that, Brett, that answered exactly my question.

When using my Mac with the DVI to composite adapter, it outputs a 29.97 NTSC signal that is interlaced. Interlaced footage played back via this adapter, looks correct to me on a TV.

Played through QuickTime, or played through Video SL?

a quote from PO website --->www.promoonly.com

since PO is offering videos in mpg & mp4 format, why in the world would they not encode the source video in its original aspect ratio (or at least 16:9)??..... laziness??

You would not want to know how PO's european videos look like. Really.

Ask the SV-experts. They were shaking their heads as well.

i think i sorta found this out on my first video edit that i was trying to apply all the knowledge i learnt from you swift and Brett B - i was so frustrated that I couldn't get a perfect video!

Good to know it's not my techniques or whatever. I've resorted to IVTC'ing the video and the basis that most of the video will be nice, and there will only be some frames which are not nice which ultimately is still better than leaving it alone.

Im looking forward to the next tutorial!

Good idea KMXE. Don't forget with IVTC your files will be smaller and vsl will run smoother, even if the ivtc is not correct.

So, I should stick with it, even though it's not correct.

IVTC is coo, but how can I deinterlace without deinterlacing. Isn't there a different way.

I've been using the Detelecine option in Handbrake with good success lately.

sorenson has ivtc, but it definitely throws the audio off sync

ed. Interlaced footage played back via this adapter, looks correct to me on a TV.


Have you checked the files to see if it works correctly with broken cadence?

that was weird

Swift, check the dilated peoples video. That's the one I did it to.

I will.

Uh, any ideas about this error? (I've got AviSynth 2.6 alpha installed, I tried it with other versions as well)

"AviSynth script error:
Script error: there is no function named "Decimate")

Any ideas?

I just downloaded a script called "FDecimate" and it works.

No, it doesn't work. It seems like it removes half the frames.

Can anyone send me the decimate.dll file?

Okay, I figured it out. Hooray -- thanks a lot.

make sure decimate is in your plugins and call it up first (load plugin)

Decimate is actually a function of the Decomb plugin. Some versions of AVISynth don't come with it, and some do. No idea why. If you get that error, just download decomb.dll from avisynth.org and unpack it into your /avisynth/plugins folder.

This should be sticky topic already.

trust me, take your time to learn this method. its simply the best.

You can actually clean up your footage with a couple scripts and you wont believe the output quality.

you wont regret!!

I'm staying quiet on this one.. but I 100% agree.

i have a few powershell scripts if anyone wants em. docs.google.com

dgindex.ps1 makes dgindex projects from a batch of vob's. if you load a bunch of vobs in dgindex manually and try to save it, it only makes one dgindex project and not one for everyone vob.

makeAvs.ps1 creates an avisynth script (from a template) from a batch of d2v files. all the avs files will be exactly like the template. the template works for about 80% of po's vids. you may have to tweek a few individually.

then i manually select the d2v and audio file in meguid and queue it. then i run the queue with 1 worker/cpu core. i'm running on a quad core.

if i could script the megui part i would. my next task is to find an encoder than can take avisynth scripts and run from the command line...any takers?

AWESOME! I'm giving this a try tomorrow. Thanks!!

something is buggered on mine, When I have WS videos and choose the 640X360 option, it crops the video and makes it look stretched, my avs script used to work, but now it doens't for 640x360 videos.

Hmm. Maybe it's just resizing instead of cropping?

Wow thats awesome - I am going to have to try to fuck with that batch.

I used the lancos4resize option specified in your video.

Hey Brett B, i think we should all do a windows tutorial on analyzing DVD footage or vobs using Dgindex and then do IVTC using Avsynth then encoding with Megui.

This time we use AVSP script editor for Avsynth.
Im sure you already know this method but that way you can preview as many scripts in a snap.

We get to provide all the links for software downloads and do lots of examples and a bit of editing.

This stuff needs a bit of programming background and a lot of people will never get it.

is your email djbrettb@gmail.com?
i will try shoot u an email.
mine is blackbeltsound@gmail.com

lets organise a webex meeting with anyone else interested.

Definitely; I'm all for it. Would love to make this as easy as possible for anyone.

Hey Brett (or anyone else who can answer this question) I am trying to accomplish this very task, but its saying after or while I render from vegas that I have an 8gb file limit on avi files.. help?

are you running windows on boot camp with the file system as fat32? Or, is your drive formatted for fat32 if not using a mac w/windows.

running vista 64 ntsf and sony vegas 64bit edition

I think your Vegas is set to 8gig max output file size default on some settings.I could be wrong though.

Seems to me these settings are restricting you to get a file size bigger than 8gig. Look around on output settings and unclick this setting.I will look around in my settings too and tell you what i come up with.

I would like to add that the rendering process to unco .avi from vegas produces huge files bigger that 8 gig even though the files you were editing were way smaller.

But after this process, Megui will encode this ounce .avi to a fairly small file size again.

Hope you get a solution to this, i remember having similar problems to this.

I found out that VLC has issues playing the file in full, but when I load it in vdub or megui, it converts the file as a whole. I think its something with my vista 64bit os, because mediainfogui also reads an inaccurate time length.

well, Ive been messing with this all night in mediacoder.

its quite simple in the preview to identify a file with duplicate frames, and deinterlacing artifacts.

it has an AVIsynth tab, where u can load a script, in this case im only loading it as:
decimate <5> it is in fact every 5th frame.

it has a real time cropper, so its easy to slide the frame to where u want it and
get pretty spot on crops.
{and this is why i looove mediacoder>>>>
if u click on the time tab, the click select it opens up a real time window where
u can select your de-interlacer, and make contrast/brightness ect ect adjustments
in real time. (only certain adjustments require a APPLY button.
I use the YADIF de-interlacer

then u can click on the PICTURE tab, than the FRAME RATE tab.
there theres options in there (like do/dont adjust frames rate & and dont/do delete duplicate files)

I gotta tell ya I AM SO HAPPY with this output!
big ups to brett and everyone who chipped in.

in a few minutes Im going to post the mediacoder preset.
(keep in mind you'll have to write your own AVS script and load it, it targets it)

Ill also upload HALF of the movie file (for legal reasons)... I want some critique and suggestions on what you guys think.

I know on videos that ARE 24/25 fps Ive been getting great quality on my encodes.
but the 29.97's were driving me a little nuts.
I know Ive said...WE ARE SPLITTING HAIRS WITH QUALITY before... but the more I read
the more I wanted to exel.

code & clip coming.

thanks joshua.

Waiting for the code and clip

heres the code: www.sendspace.com

you might want to go into the TIME>SELECT function tab and adjust the
video how you like it... you'll notice I have my contrast @ 52 and my other settings.
I change them for each video depending.

I also changed the De-interlace function to Linear blend.
on a yadif I occasionally got this obscure green boarder on the right.
not all the time...

Im gonna load an old video I just did (Karma Police) and a new one
(heheheh...Im trying to find one that i ripped that was 29.97)

QUESTION. is there a default MS audio adjustment when going from 29.97 to 24.00?
I cant tell if its falling off... the videos Ive done are actually horrible performed by the artists.

heres Karma Police. www.sendspace.com

obviously Im still working out some of the fine details...but this video is very DARK.
its also a very slooow moving video...so you can really pick up everything
i felt it was a tough one.

the white video are easy, they always come out looking decent.

and heres cornelius: www.sendspace.com
(obviously this needs a remux...i dont know..maybe its SUPPOSED to sound like that?)
its a "newer" vid... alothough its mostly seemingly amature footage...it had dupe frames
and needed it...and Im proud to say the frames are gone, as well as any artifcts.
(didnt need to de-interlace at all)

again (for the mods) these are 1 minute renders ... so we can all see.


now, please.... pointers?

link fail on Cornelius, correction:
www.sendspace.com

Hey Joshua,

I was having a super hard time with mediacoder giving me bad delays. I have completely switched from mediacoder to megui. Will post some clips of my ETV stuff to show you guys in a few.

I must say tho.. and I hate to say it, but I am really disappointed in the promo only quality now that I am really taking time out and encoding every video. Sure the patrons in the clubs don't notice.. but i do, and big time :(

Yeah that is right.

VLC has problems reading the unc .avi from vegas.

But if you load the file in VDub it works fine.Then from Megui it converts the unco .avi to a very decent mp4 file.

Yes, I did find this out after about an hour of head scratching.

Sure the patrons won't notice but since i know how good quality should be like, i notice that big time too.

This is fine, but for music videos, MAKE SURE you are still adding proper letterbox bars for 640x360 output, otherwise in the "stretch" mode in Video-SL, you'll have videos that are stretched vertically if they are less than 360 height. As long as you produce everything to the same standards (all 4:3 videos to be 640x480, and all 16:9 videos to be 640x360, for example) then you'll be able to leave it on one setting all night, instead of having to switch between Stretch, Preserve, Letterbox, etc. all the time.

yeah... in the crop feature it has the "maintain aspect ratio" option.

even though sometimes ill tweak the ratio just a tad...

I'm currently modifying my powershell scripts so that the makeAvS script to read the DGIndex log to determine if the file is 4:3 or 16:9. Then the makeavs script will be able to choose between 2 template avs files (4:3 or 16:9).

i'll post up the new script when i'm done.

I think I'm going to need to try this.....

But, what happens to an IVTC'd file once I stretch/shorten it to make a video edit? Won't my video editor then re-add some frames to get back to 25 fps?

@Disgrace
cant you set the fps in most programs?
I know in vegas you do.

@ culprit
like losing the audio sync?
is this while removing the duplicate frames, or in general?
Ive never had that issue... but i know some people have had issues with media coder
give my preset for a 29-24 conversion a shot (above)

heres my present to keep the fps the same.
www.sendspace.com

if anyone has a good preset for mediacoder to render a file ready for vegas let me know...I just havent sat down and messed with it to create one....

here is the scenario I'm thinkin of:

- I take a 29.97 dvd rip, IVTC to 25
- the original video is 118 bpm, but the remix audio is 128
- I need to "squeeze" the video to line up with the new audio
- If I render the project at 25 fps, Vegas will need to delete/duplicate frames?
- or would I render the project at 27.11 fps??? i.e. (128/118)*25

I thought you first render a file to work with in VEGAS.

thast was my last question actually.

if you do a render from a vob (@ 29.97) and decimate the frames and
output it as a uncompressed AVI (rather than a .264 mp4)
when u drop that into vegas u wont lose quality from the original vob, plus not
have the extra fames.

as i understand it

@disgrace, I think you are overthinking it.

Don't fuck with your fps when doing edits.
Set the project fps at exactly what your input file is and make sure you render out with that as well.

640x360 @23.97 in = 640x360 @23.97 out Uncompressed avi.

wouldnt it make more sense, correct me if Im wrong, to get rid of the duplicate frames BEFORE doing your editing?

yeah (IVTC)
that is what brett said from the jump on this.

I take the vob remove the dupe from with the dgindex,meguie,virtual dub stuff (unc avi)
load into vegas, edit and render out unc avi with same settings as input file. load into sorenson and compress to mp4 and keep same aspect ratio, fps.

- I take a 29.97 dvd rip, IVTC to 25
- If I render the project at 25 fps, Vegas will need to delete/duplicate frame

I sort of mis-read Disgrace's question.
but to clarify what he was asking (above)

if you have IVTC'd it to 25fps (I thought it was 24fps???)
the frames are gone... you have already deleted them...

so, in vegas you will be outputting the same as your input.
which is what we aim for.

I use 24fps or 24p, not 25 isn't 25 PAL?

Anyway to render out of AvS in an uncompressed format other than avi? Or remux the m2v and audio back together as a vob/mpeg2 in the script?

yeah, I would like to make another vob, so I can do that to all my files and keep the new vob. I can't keep all those 8gb files to use for edits, it's a once i make the edit I delete the unc avi, but still have the shitty vob.

OT,
has anyone came across a vob that only had ac3 audio and virtual dub wouldn't take it.
Drake's over has that problem

Exactly. I archive all of my files to vob and it would be nice to not have to do that to every file every time I want to use that track for a mix or a mash or to keep a huge uncompressed file sitting around in a file...especially in archive. Or to have the option to use that file in FCP since it doesn't take avi.

yes sorry... 24 fps

So uncompressed avi into Vegas at 24 fps... I misunderstood that part.

But my question is what happens to the frames that become "extra" when I speed up this uncompressed avi to make a remix edit. The video file is now 10% faster, so I have 10% too many frames if I render the finished remix project to 24 fps. Aren't we back where we started, with duplicate frames?

When you time stretch the file you aren't messing with the fps (i don't believe)

the fps stays the same but new frames must be added or dropped, depending on if you're stretching or shrinking.

the algorithms for whether to create new frames by doubling, create new frames by blending, or even something smarter, can make a huge difference on the quality of the stretch algorithm. same goes for shrinking.

the best (and most time consuming to render), is to use something that does a pixel by pixel analysis of the image and knows from frame to frame, where the image is moving to and coming from.

Yes, and in the rare case that I do an edit like that, I always deal with it on a per-video basis. For example, if I'm speeding something up significantly and the source is 23.976fps, I'll output at 29.97fps just to give it more room to "blend" those frames with. If it's a one-percent speed up, I just stick to 23.976.

Forgot to address this question. No, Vegas doesn't duplicate frames by default. Like A-Swift said, there are algorithms within the software that kind of "blend" the frames together.

yeah, it "creates" new frames entirely that didn't exist before. of course if you're working in progressive, these frames created out of thin air will also be progressive.

Thanks for the great answers guys... I can see myself using this method for my own edits, where there would probably be some time stretching going on.

Thanks to this guide, here is some quality samples I am getting now. (mind you the sources are really good). They are less than 30 second samples.

www.sendspace.com
www.sendspace.com

Great Quality mp4s mate..

thank u sir

you do not have to keep the unc .avi from vegas.You can delete this soon after converting it to mp4 because its not the file you use for making edits.

You can keep the unc .avi from virtualdub if you want because its not that big and its the one you use to make edits.It never gets to 8gig in size.Do you get what i mean?

And yes, i have ripped a dvd with ac3 file that virtualdub wouldnt take.
Right now i'm thinking of converting the ac3 to another format before trying again to use it in virtualdub.
I'll get back to you if i find the solution.

Yeah, i went on to convert the ac3 file to mp3 or wav and it works perfect in virtualDub.

I used a program Goldwave.
Im sure you can get some freeware to do the same job.

Those look perfect! You've definitely got it.

Is there a way to do this in a simple fashion for the mac?

It's been determined that, at the moment, it is not possible to do this on mac, unless you use bootcamp to windows.

why do people like using bootcamp. you have to restart your laptop. use parallels, vmware or wine bottler.

I was able to do this on the Mac with Episode Encoder.

www.telestream.net

I think I've got it figured out... Used some IVTC Promo Only footage to make an edit in Vegas. The difference is night and day, even when exporting the mp4 directly from vegas!!! Thanks Brett

Now my problem is when I try to take the avi from vegas to encode in MeGUI, I get an error saying there is no FAAC.exe file... am I missing something very basic?

wow! ok I'm sold....

here is a 15 second clip... this was rendered out of Vegas. Compared to the output of the original VOB, this is unreal!

www.mediafire.com

Thanks Brett, now I need to redo all my edits..... *grumbling*

Is there a way to substitute the source file in Vegas? I hear there is a way to this in FCP. If I could redo my edits simply by substituting the IVTC'd file for the VOB I originally used. I would be VERY happy

a side by side comparison

www.mediafire.com

yes there is a way.

go to the project media tab and look for your video file and right click and go to "replace" search for you replacement file and that's it.

I have been doing that for a while... going back and slowly replacing old edits with newer IVTC'd videos.

thx Al...


For resizing.... does this script make sense to preserve widescreen?

.....
Crop (14,0,-14,-0)
Lanczos4Resize(640,480)
Crop(0,70,-0,-70)
Lanczos4Resize(640,360)


or am I better to not "stretch" the video. like this:
.....
Crop (14,0,-14,-0)
Lanczos4Resize(640,480)
Crop(0,70,-0,-70)
Lanczos4Resize(640,340)

why not
Crop (14,0,-14,-0)
Lanczos4Resize(640,480)
Crop(0,60,-0,-60)
Lanczos4Resize(640,360)

How do you get 360 from 480 subtracting 140

I just did a test with a po vob and ivtc'd it and did a little clip to compare, rendered both (unc avi and og po vob) to mp4 with vegas and there is a noticeable difference.
Only thing now is I can't get vegas to deinterlace when I render to mp4. I got it set as progressive, but no go still.

IVTC and Deinterlace to uncompressed avi, edit uncompressed avi in vegas, then render to mp4 from vegas using progressive.

u don't lol.... I guess the final video doesn't NEED to be 360. If its 340 or 320 or whatever it qorks out to, that's the way I'll keep it

@culprit.
I can get from vegas to avi to mp4, but I used to be able to render straight from vegas to mp4 and they came out deinnterlaced (i believe)

Does anyone get the PO dff files, do they look as bad as they vobs ripped from their dvd's?

I'd have to guess the main difference here is due to the deinterlacing algorithm. As much as removing duplicate frames helps, it won't make the picture that much crisper.

The fuzzy one was VOB deinerlaced in and rendered to mp4 Vegas. The crispy one is IVTC'd and deinterlaced with SviSynth, then edited and rendered to mp4 using Vegas

@disgrace.

I did the same thing last night with the luda how low vob.
The text looked clearer in the ivtc'd video.

did you deinterlace with avisynth or vegas? I'm not concerned enough to narrow it down and figure it out tho lol. I'd rather spend the time redoing some edits

Deinterlaced, yes, ivtc no. Removing that duplicate frame makes the file size a little slimmer, its a little less cpu intensive, playback is a little better and looks a little clearer.

Yeah, I prefer the 24fps, or 23.98 to be exact, but I doubt I will go through my entire library and change them all.

What's done is done, but from now on it's all ivtc even though I could pump out tons of quick intro edits by using just the vobs, but now I gotta add this extra ivtc step.

Indeed, I am not going through my whole library, but for new dvd's and my best of dvd's, definitely.

Yes! Huuuuge difference! That looks amazingly better.



After you crop 60 from top and bottom, you don't need to resize again, as it will automatically be 640x360. I really recommend ONLY cropping 60, even if the actual video still has some letterbox bars, because any further cropping wouldn't be true anamorphic 16:9 widescreen. Not a big deal when playing on your computer, but when you output out of VSL, it will get stretched in weird ways once it finally hits the TV/projector.

Again, this is just a matter of opinion, but I really think it should be kept as 360 whenever possible. Even if that means there's some extra black bars within the video.

For example, if you're playing in VSL and you have it set to "stretch", then the video will be stretched vertically since it has to fill those extra pixels. It's just easier to have only two standards for everything. 640x480 for 4:3 videos, and 640x360 for 16:9 videos.

I'm so glad everyone seems to be getting this! Good to know I didn't screw up the guide too much ;)

Yes, thanks for the guide brett, sorry for all the stupid questions but I got everything sorted out now.

ive read in other forums that cropping all the black irrespective of what the your final frame size is is much better than leaving them in because a) you're encoding black which is a waste of time and b) the file size is smaller.

Ive tried this and have had weird frame sizes for a video (624x344 for example) and in VSL ive left the settings as Preserve video size. This seems to work just fine without cropping the video, letterboxing is introduced if the video is widescreen etc on a 4:3 screen and pillars are introduced if playing a 4:3 video on a widescreen tv.

what do you think of this? Is there something in this that might be 'bad' or might go wrong?

waaaaatttt!!!!


Thanks for fucking a good shit up....


DJ Brett B and others who had constructive things to say on the thread thanks I appreciate it. I learned a hell of a lot.

Don't feed the trolls. The mods will delete these posts.

indeed just ignore the messages

kinda ridiculous at this point.
why aren't they banned yet?

Because it is something like 5o'clock in the morning on a saturday in New Zealand?

true..

it's just stupid shit like that that gets my CV02 all in a bunch

who banned?
i'm lost

Spammer again but the mods deleted and banned

true true, but Chads is is seattle...i like him as a banner guy.

its gone anyway, i wonder who got it.

I'm seeing some videos that have a very irregular pattern of interlaced frames. Madonna's "Celebration" from the DVD, and her live "Sticky & Sweet" DVD are two examples.

Could these have been originally shot in PAL resolution/25fps? I notice that both the Smashvidz and iTunes version of "Celebration" are 25fps...

Assuming these did originate at 25fps and were converted to 29.97 for DVD, is there any way to IVTC these, or is deinterlacing the only solution?

It just comes down to what you prefer. While I normally hate stretching 4:3 to 16:9, I prefer it to be stretched in the club, as I think the pillar boxes kind of take away from the visual aspect (again, I only mean while DJing. When watching stuff at home I keep everything correct AR). But again that's just my opinion. You can do it however you prefer! Like I said, I just keep everything in two standards so that the widescreen videos are never stretched vertically.. that looks even more weird IMO.

Yes, unfortunately, there are issues like this from time to time. If possible, I usually go out of my way to try and obtain PAL versions of these videos, although even if you have the PO DVD legally, I'm not sure if it's 100% legal to grab a PAL version from another country, due to licensing issues.

Just speaking "theoretically" here, if you did manage to get a PAL version of a particular video that was shot natively in PAL, then all you need to do is deinterlace and you're good to go. But to answer your original question, yes, if you do choose to keep the NTSC versions, your only choice is to deinterlace. You can't extract the original PAL frames once they've been converted to NTSC in that way, unfortunately.

Thanks Brett, that's what I was afraid of...

At least I've been able to get pretty decent results on that kind of stuff using some of the better deinterlacing tools.

FWIW the new Adobe Premiere can import VOB files directly. There's still the decimate issue though.

So can Vegas, I would like a way to take the unc avi from virtual dub and make a vob to keep. I can't keep 4gb avi's around. Too much space taken up.

just save the original vob if you need the space. if you need the uncompressed avi in the future, you can just make it again in virtual dub with the original vob. takes a little bit of time, but saves a lot of space.

Yep this is what I do. I usually burn each project - the avi file to a cdr they are so cheap now.

Actually can't you keep the .d2v and wav file as well then you just need to load it into Vdub.

Thanks.

Please post a link to the 4gb CDR's....


actually I did the math before... Hard Drive space is actually cheaper that burning everything out to DVD or CD.

Just buy more hard drives.

Not only cheaper, but saves a hell of a lot of time.

huh? guess you didnt notice the minus avi files in there buddy

write out the word minus next time... I don't think anyone notice that.

Working on Janet Jackson "Escapade" right now (ripped from the "Design of a Decade" DVD). This video has always bothered me a bit for being "dark" when on-screen.

The VOB, loaded into MPEG Streamclip, shows a 23.976 frame-rate. So presumably that DVD was authored as one of the "good" ones (adds the extra frames in playback on a DVD player)?

But when scanning through that video, there's a number of places where I can see some noticeable interlacing. Not every three frames or anything, just an occasional random pair of frames at a few points in the video. Seeing the same thing on other tracks from that DVD. These aren't at scene-changes, either.

I'm both puzzled about how that happened (maybe someone IVTC'ed from an earlier NTSC dub?), and if there's any reasonable way to fix it.

"Runaway" from that same DVD is also 23.976fps in the VOB, but looks like there's interlacing on every single frame (?!).

Any thoughts?

Can you post a 10-second sample of one of the problem areas?

question/discovery...

in my never ending quest to make shit out of shine-ola' I was tweaking my workflow
when faced with a 29.97 file that indeed needs to be pulled down and I noitced in
Vegas, under AVI there are 2x 4 options for writing directly out of vegas and
it incorporates the pull down.

they are:
ntsc 24 (actual setting IS 23.976) insterting 2-3 pulldown
and
ntsc 24 (actual setting IS 23.976) insterting 2-3-3-2 pulldown
and the same ones for a widescreen setting.

(I used the 2-3... honestly I couldn tell the difference)

once I set that I went in and changed it to uncompessed avi and the screen size to
640x480 (the ntsc locks it at 720x480)...but the original video IS 640x480
then I went to my mainstay of mediacoder to render out the final MP4.

Im pretty happy with the results.
I was curious from the Vegas gurus why no one caught this before...
or is there a reason vegas editors dont do it this way?

sidebar... theres about 10 different de-interlacers on medicoder.
I jump back and forth between YADIF and Linear blend.
Yadif seems to yeild the best results when I DO need to use it... but is there a better one?

Well, those "NTSC 24" settings are converting to DV. Not horrible, but I'm just paranoid about losing even the slightest quality, so I keep everything uncompressed until the final encode. If that works for you, then great.

However, what you said about deinterlacing in mencoder raised a red flag for me. Since you rendered out to DV, your video wasn't 24p anymore. It was 29.97 with 2:3 pulldown. Because of that, you'll need to IVTC again before encoding. YADIF and linear blend are both forms of deinterlacing, and not forms of IVTC.

Are your final MP4s 29.97 or 23.976?

thanks for the quick response brett

its 23.976
heres the workflow.

29.97 rip from dvd to vob

editing done in vegas w/ settings at 29.97 in properties.
rendered out of vegas with the ntsc 24 (actual setting IS 23.976) insterting 2-3-3-2 pulldown avi setting
changed to uncompressed

render in media coder @ 23.976

I noticed last night after a tad more tweaking and comparing the 2-3 & 2-3-3-2
that the 2-3-3-2 does NOT need the de-interlacer.
and the final product certainly looks a tad better, so I "think" the 2-3-3-2 is doing
the proper pulldown...

I don't think vegas does proper ivtc.

Why not take the vob and ivtc first and then edit with vegas and export at ivtc film at 23.976 unc avi.

Joshua, you still getting that 5th frame right?

nopes.
as mentioned, with the 2-3-3-2 setting (and no de-interlacer) the 5th frame is gone.
and its not a de-interlaced picture.

like Puma suggested, it makes more sense in the workflow to just work with the 23.976
file.

so I dropped the vob in vegas, and used the ntsc 24insterting 2-3-3-2 pulldown avi setting, changed the compression to uncompressed.
cropped accordingly and rendered out the avi.

I was pretty happy with the results...though, as usual...Im caught up with
is it good, or am i just patting myself on the back for the improvments Im seeing.

Can you please post a short sample? I'm very curious about this. I have a feeling it might not be doing proper IVTC, but I'd love to be proven wrong! :)

yeah...Ill hit u up on fb

just upgraded to windows 7 ultimate 64bit addition and switched out my raid 1 for for (4) 1.5tb hard drives in raid 10, added 4 more gigs on my monster machine and I am very happy with the results

Very nice! My main machine is now an i7-860 w/ 4GB RAM, and I get around 90fps encoding. I'm okay with that! :)

yeah on my second pass I am getting roughly 50-60 fps which is really nice and that problem I was having with vlc not playing avi files correctly fixed and avi files load in vegas in seconds.

are you having an issue where vegas takes forever to load the file and when vlc on plays 38 seconds of the avi?

I was with vista 64bit, i upgraded to windows 7 ultimate and that issue went away.

I have that issue I stated above, but it's with XP, windows 7 (on bootcamp) runs horribly slow and vegas tends to turn opaque and take forever to do anything. Still using crappy XP

man must take you forever to do edits then. I am running on a desktop when I do my edits. Here is my specs

Intel i5 750 w/ 8GB, (2) MSI Radeon 5670 in crossfire, Windows 7 ultimate 64b

Doesn't take forever. Mac Pro 8 core with 8gigs of ram.
Sucks xp only uses 3 of it and win 7 blows with it.

I might have to reinstall again, but it's a pain in the ass and I'm too scared to install over my xp part because it works great and it will suck if I have to start over.

I do need a new video card though, it's the og one and it suciks.

mabey some driver issues? the upgrade from xp to windows 7 is almost a must man.. let us know if you figure it out.

I think I'll back up the xp partition and try it.

I highly recommend winclone to backup your windows partitions for those of you who own macs and run windows on them.

I back up our bootcamp parts at work with it and it's awesome, you can even resize the partition without losing the data.

Puma I might be selling my Radeon ATI 4870 card, can't remember. Might be getting a new octo. hit me up

I was just looking at mac pro video cards.

Gotta see what that is compared to my crappy ati 2600 xt

i have two of these in my desktop system www.frys.com

unfortunately apple are pricks and don't allow you to use any video card.

Hey Brett B,

New to Video-SL and I'm trying to edit all my music video's that are already MP4...what do you recommend I use??

I've been using Quicktime Pro, but for some of the videos it's giving me that ghost effect after I'm done editing them.

I've been working with the settings on Handbrake with regards to detelecining and I'm stuck. I need a video player for Mac that will allow me to go frame by frame without having to load up FCP or Premier. VLC only does 3 second intervals and Quicktime doesn't load vobs. Currently I'm loading up Parallels and then running MEGui to check video files before testing my settings in Handbrake. So far the results have been pretty good. I'll post those later. But right now I'm looking for a player that will show frame by frame to check for the duplicate 5th frame. Thanks.

mplayer.

mpegstreamclip?
havent tested it though

Mplayer is a no go unless there's a super secret way to get into frame mode besides hitting the . button as stated online. Streamclip does frame by frame but it is either blending frames or dropping the 5th frame automatically. I'm using a 29.97 video that I know has a duplicate 5th frame. I already created an avs file for the video in Windows but I'm trying to find something on Mac that will even show that 5th frame.

I find it ironic that OSX software is being such a pain with showing these frames, especially since Apples were THE platform for audio/video editing for so long. Guess most of the video scenesters moved over to Windows at some point in the 90s and haven't gone back yet.

Uhm... what else do you need? I thought that's what you were asking for?

I was asking for a player that would do frame by frame and not auto drop the 5th frame or blend frames. I can't seem to get mplayer to do frame by frame at all. If I press the . button it stops or plays. If I hold down the . button it advances slowly but not enough to check for a duplicate frame.

And yeah, I'm there with pop. I can't believe that Mac doesn't have some way of showing these frames without having to load up an editor or Parallels to use tools in Windows. If I have to check every video in Windows first so be it, but I was hoping for a Mac solution to detecting duplicate frames.

Not sure what you're trying to say.


My version of mplayer stops when I press "." and jumps to the next frame when I press "." again.

What version? I'm using MPlayer OS X 2.0 (2.0b9r5).

Still working on an answer to the first. I think I figured out why it doesn't show that 5th frame. So hold on that one for right now.

Ok I went back and checked my avs script and the duplicate frame doesn't show until after the Deint () command is entered. Is that right?
In other words, with the script showing just the load and resize command, the file is still showing interlacing and there is no sign of a 5th frame duplicate. It's basically a resized version of the d2v file. After I enter the TDeint command there is a visible 5th frame duplicate. Then I go in and add the Decimate (5) command.
Before I go on does all of that seem to be correct?

MPlayer dev-SVN-r25648-4.0.1


Correct. TDeint will recombine the 5 frames into 4 leaving one duplicate which Decimate will eliminate then.

And there is no other way to achieve this other than by going through AVS, correct?

Not sure what your question is. Other software also offer IVTC functions. Does that answer your question?

right, I run it with decimate.
becuase not everything needs to be de-interlaced AND ivtc'd

Ive found thus far... most do though.

Ive noticed, as much as a great picture as the TDEINT gives you it does as a little "blur" to the picture.
Ive been correcting this in vegas by adding a .040-.060 sharpness effect
I know theres Yadif, and a few other de-interlacers.
is TDEINT the best option for us?

also, if you use megui/h.264 to render an mp4 how do you adjust the keyframes?
mine have been coming out ok... but not IDEAL...I get a little lag

What I'm trying to find is a way to view the 5th frame on a Mac. My question is, is there a method for Mac that will display that 5th frame as it would through AVISynth after the TDeint command? That's what I'm trying to get at. I know it's a stretch.

try it with NO commands...

I might be wrong here, but if you take a 29.97 vob, and add a de-interlacer it will
blend the frames...
with nothing applied you will see the 5th frame.

mpegstreamclip will let you do it, just hit the arrow over button. You can see the minutes, seconds and frames move. after 29 frames a new second appears.

just checked two sources. one a 29.97 and one a 23.976 fps.
the 29 had dupe frames.

That's awesome. Testing my file now to see if it's the same.

Ok. Yeah. I can definitely see a duplicate frame coming in between that sometimes isn't noted as a frame. Like it will be :18,19 and then another frame and then :18,20. So between 19 and 20 there are 3 frames instead of 2. It's not the same as 4 frames then dupe, but it's a start. Thanks. I'll keep working at it.

And you hit the nail right on the head. Macs are way too focused on consumer friendliness for me. I like my raw geeky video tools on Windows that allow me to see frame-by-frame data, etc. That's exactly why I use Windows for all of my editing.

It's not even Macs that aren't focused on consumer friendliness, it's some of the programs too. I've been testing the detelecine process in Handbrake and it actually puts out a really good picture. But there are too many downsides. The main ones: 1. There isn't a reliable way on a Mac to unblend frames to check for a duplicate 5th frame as there is with the AviSynth code. In order for it to work in Handbrake you would have to hard set the frame rate at 23.98. Handbrake then removes the duplicated frames through the detelecine default and leaves the frame rate at 23.98. If the duplicate frames aren't there the frame rate is higher than 23.98 and you get a jacked up file. So you have to be able to test the 4-1 frame before even going into Handbrake. 2. In Handbrake there isn't a way to resize a 720x480 frame size down to 640x360. Since the resize and cropping aren't independent, any cropping done affects the resize parameters. And since Handbrake only works in increments of 16 you always end up with 640x368 frame.
Even in Mpeg Streamclip you can set the frame size independently from the cropping and get a perfect 640x360 but there isn't a decombing feature or a detelecine feature. So you're left with deinterlace, which in side by side comparisons is a pretty big difference between both the Handbrake file and the AviSynth file. It's really noticeable when you're looking at PO chyrons.
It was interesting seeing the actual results in Handbrake after taking time to go through the wiki and test on videos that I knew had pulldown applied. I just wish the GUI had more options available to take full advantage of what the program can do.

Yep, sounds like you found exactly what I did, in regards to Handbrake.

Now, there have been a couple of last-minute emergency situations where I needed to rip and encode something quickly before a gig, and Handbrake did the job for the most part. Unfortunately, yes, I could only get 640x368 and every once in a while the IVTC cadence gets messed up, which Handbrake does NOT handle well (believe me.. ugh). But as you said, with the AviSynth method, you can check every individual frame before applying any IVTC processes to make sure the video actually needs to be IVTC'd. It's not that I'm against other options... it's just that I've never seen anything (yet) that can match the power of AviSynth.

From my experience Handbrake does a pretty good job (except for the 16pixel limitation), it usually tries to resync to the pulldown pattern which is very handy for situations where the cadence got messed up. *shrug*

"Tries" being the key word there.. haha

I'm still learning about the different cadences. But exactly. If there were some changes to the way Handbrake handled resizing and cropping it would be a little better for just the average user. It still wouldn't be much good to the guys using AviSynth to get an uncompressed file but for those doing simple encodes it has the potential to give better results.

Curious.
what about DVDs that are PAL (25.00 fps)
obviously if the original framerate is 23.976 and they choose to do 25.00 over
29.97 its not the same cadence for duplicate frames.

to date I am just leaving them at 25, and De-interlacing them....(if needed)
but i didnt know if there was a decimate command for that blended frame that has
to be in there somewhere

from my understanding, once it goes to PAL, it's fuct..............

just deinterlace and encode.......

that's been my experience too...

... totally fuct.

I still don't understand why companies like ... do not at least properly IVTC before they change to PAL 25fps. These clips look horrrible.

I think for pal videos, they just speed up the frame rate and don't add any dupe frames. I doubt you can just changed the output to 23.976 and render that way. I have done that to a select few of my edits and they seem to look ok.

It's best to just leave as is. There aren't any extra frames, so you are fine in that sense.

They take the TC'ed video at 29.97 and adjust the frame rate to 25.00. Nasty.

oh, nevermind. I thought they would have taken the raw file and just sped it up a bit.

I have seen pretty bad, bad encodes. *shudder*

you have to wonder, if part of the motivation to do pal25 over ntsc29.97 in a
video pool is SO PEOPLE WONT dvd rip the content and clean it up to its original
format?

Even if you play it back as it supposed to be played - it looks horrible. For us.

You know.. there are DJ's who spin with youtube audio and video files ;)

the few other guys round here who tried doing video when it first popped off where that...it made it hard for me at first to sell the concept to newer places.
they had seen these guys playing horrific files...and more importantly playing them
like amatures... so I had alot of pre-conceived walls to kick down

Yeah, problem with PAL stuff is that in order to get it from NTSC to PAL (unless it was actually shot in PAL), they blend the frames. Then when we go to play the video in Video SL (or whatever we decide to use), unless we're playing at 0.00% pitch, there is additional blending going on. Just looks nasty.

I have actually seen a plugin that claims to be able to extract the original 23.976 from PAL converted stuff with a special algorithm. I saw an example once and it actually was impressive. But not impressive enough for me to bother downloading it, and thus, I forgot the name unfortunately :( If I think of it., I'll be sure to post it here. It was just a pretty simple Avisynth plugin.

It was mentioned by someone else a few months ago, but got no other discussion: Telestream's "Episode Encoder" seems to be the only Mac software capable of doing proper IVTC.

Unfortunately, this software has several points against it:

1) it's $500 for the base version;

2) that "base" version has an arbitrary batch-encoding limit of 25 files (though that limit is supposed to be removed in a new "version 6" that's supposedly coming soon);

3) not the most stable software I've seen (it crashes rather effortlessly when doing mundane things like saving a preset, or skipping around in a preview-window);

4) It occasionally does weird fuck-ups. Like for example today I'm trying to re-encode all the videos from a Cure DVD. The audio tracks on that DVD are definitely stereo (my earlier Handbrake encodes from the same DVD came out in stereo just fine), but Episode is rendering all of them in a weird comb-filtered-sounding mono for no apparent reason. And "Boys Don't Cry" encodes with the audio about 1 second out of sync.

But it has the following advantages:

1) It almost always does an excellent job IVTC-ing videos that can benefit from that, even on videos with broken cadences. *Very* occasionally an interlaced frame or two will show up in a video, but I'd say 95+ percent come out perfect. For the occasional video that doesn't come out perfect, I just add deinterlacing to the process list.

2) For videos that require deinterlacing, Episode seems to do a better quality job than most encoders.

3) Has a lot of nice and useful video-processing functions and preview functionality for that.

4) Has capability for normalizing audio (very convenient for the many DVD's where the audio is fine, but at a very low level) and basic EQ capability.

5) Capable of encoding to ProRes and other formats so videos can be IVTC'ed and/or processed before editing;

6) Encodes fast, and creates very nice-looking h.264 MP4 files that play well.

Let me try to answer my question partly:
You don't need to adjust the timeposition for each frame because you are using a CFR, therefore all frames will be equally distanced.

Now when you are using VFR things might get more tricky... I haven't found it out yet.

Brett,

do you have samples where handbrake fails?

Can I just say how much I hate 25fps interlaced material.

Just deinterlace.

I leave them at 25fps, not sure of an easy way to convert them to 24

doesent mean i HAVE TO LIKE IT!

Haha true.

telecide() is my new friend.

Yeah buddy! It's a little more sensitive, but the results can be stunning.

yeah it is sensitive and I've not used it on some edits because the result looked worse than tdeint.

I can't get all of this to work in win7 though. Sucks. I am this close to deleting my xp partition, but I can't ivtc in win 7 yet, keeps getting an error in vdub

Really? I'm doing all my work in Win7 x64 with no problems. Can you tell me the specific error you're getting?

I'll fire up vdub tomorrow and post back.

one thing I hate, but I think this is a windows thing an you can turn it off, is that I can't drop any files on anything. I have to choose file, import, or whatever.

Hmm.. definitely a weird issue going on with that. I drag and drop .avs files into VDub, Vegas, and Premiere all the time.

me too, no problems with win7 x64

yeah i'm using winy x64 and vdub no problems. if ur using a 64 bit version of vdub, try with 32.

I'll have to see.

I'm def using win7 64bit.

I've noticed there are problems when running parallels and having parallels tools installed. Vegas would pretty much lock up and I have to delete parallels tools.

I don't run win7 underparallels anymore and now vegas doesn't freeze

good. I still have a semi freezing problem when loading up audio engine on startup, but my research says it has something to do with internet explorer.

I might have to reinstall (at work as well) parallels fubars up win7 when running in bootcamp.

The render times seem about the same if not slower in win7 64 vs xp.

So, whats the ballot on stuff that comes in raw @ 100fps?

if you kick it back out at 100fps is that going to overwork VSL?

100fps? Wow.. only thing I can think of is 3D PAL broadcast transmissions.. haha

Yeah, VSL still can't handle my 60fps encodes smoothly, so I'd say 100fps is definitely a no-go.

100fps. Where you getting your shit Joshua. Marty in the Delorean

hahaha...I know...
When I dropped into vegas...I was like WTF?

I thought 100 was used for SLOMO...

mind U, it looks soooooo good.
I guess Ill render it at 33.33
hopefully it will remove 1/3rd the frames
rather than 25, where it would do 1/4

I hate changing the framerate though.

As long as you end up with an even number you should be fine. I'd go with 1/4.

The win 7 UAC was causing the drag drop error. (Fixed)

Vdub error

AVI Import Filter error: (Unknown) (80040154)

It's 64bit, I'll try 32

Oh, you're using 64-bit vdub? Yeah, that would do it. I use 32-bit everything, except for the final editing step (Premiere).

yeah 32 bit worked.

So there is no method of ivtc for 25fps files?

I was researching this too and it seems like there are some avisynth scripts to do this, but not sure how though.

I've been leaving them at 25fps

Well, if it was originally shot in PAL, then 25fps is the original rate and it would not require any IVTC.

Unfortunately for videos shot at Film (23.976) and then later converted to PAL, that's pretty much impossible. In certain cases, if the video was converted just right, the avisynth plugin Restore24 can attempt to extract the original 23.976, but I've never figured out how to make it work.

i've noticed material converted to 25 from 23 isnt horrible, but 23 to 29 then to 25........ehhhhhh

That's why I leave em at 25fps.

yeah, "point of diminishing returns"....ya know, that whole theory

yup.

I've gotten tracks from pools that are 25fps as well, especially stuff that is not shot out here.

Doesn't effect my vjing, nor does it look shitty when I render to 29.97 with ME after recording the set.

question...

if one was to use the IVTC method using VirtualDub and wanted to use the uncompressed AVI file to edit in Final Cut Pro... what codec should we use? I am experimenting now with FCP and want to still use VirtualDub, etc to prepare my source files. I know that FCP is best used with ProRes MOV files but you can't export in that codec on a windows based computer.

any suggestions?

convert your uncompressed avi to prores in quicktime on your mac.

I thought about that. I just wonder how much quality is lost from an uncompressed avi to prores (HQ)

It's probably minimal, but there has to be some generation lost.

What I hate is having a telecined mov file and have to convert to vob to then ivtc in vdub.

Has to be a way around this.

in theory, it should be the same loss as going from vob to prores. it's minimal and people do it all the time.