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Choosing between PAL and NTSC releases.
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DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar ContributorNexus the Sixth
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Quoting StaNDarD:
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My PAL-DVDs all have 25 fps, there's not a single one with 24fps. I've never even seen bonus material which is not in 25 fps. But of course it's easy on PAL because there's no real 'conversion' but a simple speed-up.


But are you looking at the output or the base video stream? Big difference. Of course PAL discs will output 25 fps since that's what they are encoded to do, but I bet in many cases they will have the exact same 24p film frames encoded into them (save for the difference in vertical resolution).

(And of course, since bonus material is often sourced from video it will naturally be 25 fps native, no conversion necessary.)
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 Last edited: by Nexus the Sixth
DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStaNDarD
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Of course I'm looking on the raw video stream.
DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar ContributorNexus the Sixth
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Wikipedia has this to say about inverse telecine:
"it is not uncommon to find telecined DVDs where the source was originally recorded to videotape. The same is not true for modern DVDs of cinematic films, which are generally recorded in their original frame rate — in these cases the DVD player itself applies telecining as required to match the capabilities of the television receiver."

And indeed, that's what all sources seem to say. So either you have a very strange selection of DVDs or there is something quite wrong about those statements.

EDIT: This is even more conclusive (although I'm quite sure that "every Hollywood movie" is wrong, Hollywood isn't known for being that consistent): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24p#24p_on_DVD

EDIT^2: Finally, a bit more technical. 
http://24p.com/downloads/24p_DVD_creation.pdf

Well, maybe PAL land is different or it's all a giant hoax, but isn't that just another reason to avoid PAL? 
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 Last edited: by Nexus the Sixth
DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStaNDarD
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OK, here's what gspot says about the mpeg-stream of 'Extrem laut und unglaublich nah' (Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close) which is a real up-to-date mainstream DVD:


If 30,231 frames encoded in 24fps but played back at 25fps would result in 19:20.870 minutes - but as you can see it's encoded in 25fps and played back at 25fps resulting in 20:09.240 minutes...
DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar ContributorNexus the Sixth
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Cool, I'm going to download Gspot (seriously, Gspot?) and try it out on some of my PAL and NTSC DVDs.
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DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar ContributorAce_of_Sevens
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Quoting KinoNiki:
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Not at all. 24p has been possible on DVD since day 1, but since playback equipment was usually limited to 25 or 30 frames per second in those days, playback used to default to one those. Creating an industry standard that would not allow most of the world's available film content to be stored in an efficient manner would have been quite stupid to put it mildly. Why would you needlessly create a 25 frames per second conversion and then encode that when all you need to do is playback the 24p source a little faster, say by 4%? It would make no sense at all, and of course that's why it isn't done that way.


24 fps is not and never has been possible under the DVD-video standard. The flags that designate a transfer as film-based or video-based are instructions to progressive-scan player about how to converted the interlaced signal to progressive. NTSC DVDs are always encoded 720x480 at 60i. Inverse telecine converts the signal on the DVD back to 24p for playback.

Quote:
Ehm, no they don't. Blu-ray players playing PAL DVDs will still have the PAL speedup, unless the player is converting to NTSC first.


I never said otherwise. My point was that it makes no sense to worry about the 20% resolution increase for PAL over NTSC when something's available with higher resolution than either. I'm nto sure where the OP is, but buying local Blu-rays is generally cheaper than importing PAL DVDs from Europe.

Also, even if a PAL player is converting to NTSC, it's still generally going to be 25 fps. They just use frame-doubling to covert the 25 fps to 30. They don't slow 25 down to 24, then convert that to 30.
DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar ContributorNexus the Sixth
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Quoting Ace_of_Sevens:
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24 fps is not and never has been possible under the DVD-video standard. The flags that designate a transfer as film-based or video-based are instructions to progressive-scan player about how to converted the interlaced signal to progressive. NTSC DVDs are always encoded 720x480 at 60i. Inverse telecine converts the signal on the DVD back to 24p for playback.


And yet it moves.

Your version is pretty much the opposite of what was said in the DVD FAQ:

"!In the case of 24 fps source, the encoder embeds MPEG-2 repeat_first_field flags into the video stream to make the decoder either perform 2-3 pulldown for 60Hz NTSC displays (actually 59.94Hz) or 2-2 pulldown (with resulting 4% speedup) for 50Hz PAL/SECAM displays."

That is, the interlacing takes place in the decoder at playback, not by the encoder. Which makes sense since encoding progressive frames is much more efficient.

So who is right, you or the industry?
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 Last edited: by Nexus the Sixth
DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStaNDarD
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Just as I assumed earlier, it seems that 24fps is for NTSC only. Click Me.
DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar Contributordee1959jay
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That's right. My Oppo BDP-83 blu-ray player can do 24 fps on NTSC DVDs, but not on PAL DVDs.

Quoting Ace_of_Sevens:
Quote:
I never said otherwise. My point was that it makes no sense to worry about the 20% resolution increase for PAL over NTSC when something's available with higher resolution than either. I'm nto sure where the OP is, but buying local Blu-rays is generally cheaper than importing PAL DVDs from Europe.

Also, even if a PAL player is converting to NTSC, it's still generally going to be 25 fps. They just use frame-doubling to covert the 25 fps to 30. They don't slow 25 down to 24, then convert that to 30.


Agreed. Regarding conversion from PAL to NTSC: I never use that, as I'm in Europe. Such conversion is only needed as a result of the habit of selling NTSC-only screens in the US. Over here all screens are multi-system.
Just wanted to make sure no one was under the illusion that a blu-ray player was somehow magically going to resolve the PAL speedup.
 Last edited: by dee1959jay
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I have an Oppo 93 and sometimes I have to decide between whether I should want an R2 PAL release of a title or an R1 NTSC of the same title.

I wish I had this sort of information more often. I always look for it ...

Young Frankenstein @ DVDBeaver

Lots of times the R2 release looks better at this site. But sometimes the restorative effort is only made by the media / distribution company for the big money market.

I'm afraid that the question of what's the best release varies quite a lot from title to title, with PAL vs NTSC being just a single factor.
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@lasitter:
You will need a hardware modification to your Oppo to be able to play R2 discs. It can play PAL out of the box, but Oppo would lose its blu-ray license if they made it easy to unlock DVD regions, so it's PAL R0 only. You can get one at jvbdigital.com or on eBay.

BTW: on the BDP-93 Oppo has dropped the 24 fps feature on NTSC DVDs. Since it produced mixed results on the 83, they decided the feature did not meet Oppo's quality standards.
 Last edited: by dee1959jay
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Quoting KinoNiki:
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Quoting Ace_of_Sevens:
And yet it moves.

Your version is pretty much the opposite of what was said in the DVD FAQ:

"!In the case of 24 fps source, the encoder embeds MPEG-2 repeat_first_field flags into the video stream to make the decoder either perform 2-3 pulldown for 60Hz NTSC displays (actually 59.94Hz) or 2-2 pulldown (with resulting 4% speedup) for 50Hz PAL/SECAM displays."

That is, the interlacing takes place in the decoder at playback, not by the encoder. Which makes sense since encoding progressive frames is much more efficient.

So who is right, you or the industry?


Re-reading that, it appears you are correct. This leaves me wondering why so few players support 24 fps playback for DVD as it seems like it would be fairly simple.
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Quoting dee1959jay:
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@lasitter:
You will need a hardware modification to your Oppo to be able to play R2 discs.

Yeah. Got the German modchip right after I got the player. Love it.

And I'm NOT going to upgrade the firmware and lose ISO support.
DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar Contributordee1959jay
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The Danish one, I reckon? Great!

Damn right about that firmware!
 Last edited: by dee1959jay
DVD Profiler Unlimited RegistrantStar Contributordee1959jay
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Quoting Ace_of_Sevens:
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Re-reading that, it appears you are correct. This leaves me wondering why so few players support 24 fps playback for DVD as it seems like it would be fairly simple.


Well, Oppo tried it on their BDP-83 and abandoned it for its successor, the BDP-93, the reason being that all too many DVDs are poorly authored, producing less than favourable results on 24 fps (tearing issues and so on).
 Last edited: by dee1959jay
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Quoting dee1959jay:
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The Danish one, I reckon? Great!

Woops.

.dk, vs
.de

Big diff.
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