[MEncoder-users] [BUG] a-v sync problems with pullup,softskip (only on some DVDs)

[Corey Hickey]

Phil Ehrens wrote:
> 
> I just wanted to step in here and say that if this is a
> U.S. release dvd, these things typically change frame rate
> at strange times and for no apparent reason. Hardware players,
> mplayer, and mencoder seem to be able to deal with this
> in all the cases I have seen, but maybe some filter or
> plugin is incompatible with the "handling"? Just an idea.
> 

Yes, it is a U.S. NTSC DVD. I know what you mean about changing 
framerates; usually it's really changing from soft-telecine (actually 
24000/1001 fps progressive) to hard-telecine (30000/1001 fps).

 From what I've seen, there are several types of DVDs that do this.

Class 1: TV-show DVDs that have a canned intro spliced in.
Example: Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 1 (and later?).
The actual content of these titles is soft-telecine, but the intro (with 
the opening credits, scenes from past episodes, etc.) is hard-telecine.

Class 2: TV-show DVDs with brief hard-telecine at scene changes.
Example: Sex in the City season 1 (and later?).
My hypothesis is that this is a result of broken DVD-mastering software. 
Perhaps the scenes are stored separately before mastering and the 
telecine occurs where files are "spliced" together. Now that I think 
about it, the hard-telecine might actually be at chapter divisions; I 
never bothered to look closely.

Class 3: TV-show DVDs with random, frequent telecine changes.
Example: Some Twilight Zone episodes I saw a long time ago.
These were really annoying to look at: every couple seconds the video 
would toggle from hard-telecine to soft-telecine, with no apparent 
regularity or correspondence to anything I could see.

Class 4: Cinematic DVDs with very occasional brief hard-telecine.
Example: The Lord of the Rings extended version.
This is probably similar to "Class 2", but very infrequent (only a few 
times in the whole movie). Definitely not chapter boundaries.

Class 5: Cinematic DVDs that switch from soft- to hard- once.
Example: Polluck
Polluck is the only movie I've ever seen that does this. It's 
soft-telecine until somewhere in the middle, where it switches to 
hard-telecine for the remainder.

...there's probably more, but these are the ones I've come across.


In any case, Rich wrote the pullup filter, so he'll be able to figure 
out what's wrong.

-Corey