[LAU] DVD creator ?

[Florin Andrei]

Florin Andrei wrote:
> 
> NTSC DVD is 720x480, aspect ratio either 4:3 or 16:9 (non-square 
> pixels), at 29.97 frames per second interlaced (so it's 59.94 fields per 
> second).
> If it's progressive (non-interlaced) then the frame rate is 23.97 fps 
> with 2:3 pulldown.
> 
> This whole frame rate and interlacing issue is not trivial. Make sure 
> you process the video stream the right way before encoding, otherwise 
> you end up with a russian roulette candidate.
> I did pretty much all my movies entirely in the standard 30i format 
> (29.97 interlaced) - the entire processing chain, start to end, was 30i. 
> I don't have much experience with 24p (23.97 progressive). But it's a 
> popular, well known and well understood format, so it should work - 
> provided that the tools are standards-compliant.

Speaking of that:

If the source is progressive (non-interlaced) I would attempt first to 
convert it to 24p (23.97 progressive) with 2:3 pulldown, and make a DVD 
using that format and see if it looks good. The idea is to keep 
everything progressive all the way from the source to the DVD, and just 
do frame rate conversions instead of also messing with the nature of the 
frames (interlaced or progressive).
I could be mistaken, but I don't quite like the idea of converting 
progressive frames to interlaced. It will look rather unnatural anyway 
(like a bad film-to-DVD transfer) even on an interlaced display (such as 
a regular standard definition interlaced TV with a CRT tube), but if you 
show it on a progressive display (a computer, or a plasma/LCD/DLP TV) 
then there will be so many progressive / interlaced / progressive 
conversions that my guess is it will totally screw up the image.
I never tried to do that, so I don't know for sure. But you probably 
know where I'm getting at - the fewer conversions, the better.

Only if that totally fails and it looks ugly, you should consider 
converting your progressive source to 30i (29.97 interlaced) DVD.

You may also try to generate 30p (29.97 progressive) MPEG2 from a 
progressive source of arbitrary frame rate, but make sure all the tools 
involved after that (the multiplexer, the DVD authoring tool) support it 
100%. I'm not even sure whether 30p is "legal" for an NTSC DVD. If it 
is, it might be the better option for arbitrary frame rate progressive 
sources, since there's no 2:3 pulldown involved.
The DVi forum is a good place to ask subtle questions like that. Here's 
a thread on a related topic:

http://dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=77998

-- 
Florin Andrei

http://florin.myip.org/