[MEncoder-users] Inverse telecine? framerate from 120000/1001 to 24000/1001

[Corey Hickey]

Rich Felker wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 26, 2006 at 10:01:16PM -0700, Corey Hickey wrote:
>> Munzuk wrote:
>>> Rich Felker wrote:
>>>> I have no idea what you're talking about here. Don't worry about the
>>>> right words, just explain the phenomenon frame-by-frame.
>>>>
>>>> Rich
>>>>
>>> well, let's try that, look at your left, then move your sight from there to 
>>> the rigth slowly (about 5 seconds from shoulder to shoulder), and in the way 
>>> close the eyes for 0.25 seconds every second, record it all, save on your 
>>> memory and then remove with braincoder the black parts where your eyes where 
>>> closed, and thats the problem. :D
>> I think I know what's going on here.
>>
>> Your source video is 12000/1001 fps. The video is composed mostly of
>> duplicate frames (use the '.' key to step through frames and see what
>> I'm seeing). For the reasons Loren described, some of the duplicates are
>> in sets of four and some are in sets of five, depending on the scene.
>> Like this:
>>
>> ---sets of four---
>> frames in file:   01.02.03.04.05.06.07.08.09.10.11.12.13.14.15.16...
>> frames visible:   01.01.01.01.02.02.02.02.03.03.03.03.04.04.04.04...
>> visible framerate: 30000/1001 (12000/1001 divided by 4)
>>
>> ---sets of five---
>> frames in file:   01.02.03.04.05.06.07.08.09.10.11.12.13.14.15.16...
>> frames visible:   01.01.01.01.01.02.02.02.02.02.03.03.03.03.03.04...
>> visible framerate: 24000/1001 (12000/1001 divided by 5)
>>
>>
>> When you watch the original file, the motion is reasonably smooth--not
>> really like 120000/1001 fps, of course, but like 30000/1001 and 24000/1001.
>>
>> You want to reduce the framerate to 24000/1001, but you really can't do
>> that without skipping some frames. 120000 is the least common multiple
>> of 30000 and 24000. Picking either of the original "visual framerates"
>> and trying to force the whole movie into that framerate is bound to
>> produce either skipped frames or duplicate frames, leading to some
>> jerkiness.
>>
>> Actually, now that I've written all that, I'm going to tell you that
>> what I've just described isn't the real problem. I wanted to give you
>> all that first, though, because most of it is prerequisite for
>> understanding what's going wrong.
>>
>> The actual problem is that mencoder's A-V sync code (where it describes
>> whether it needs to skip or duplicate a frame) just isn't cut out to
>> handle these repetitive patterns of frames that need to be skipped in
>> order to get the desired output framerate. As far as I understand it
>> (not well, but I might be correct), mencoder allows A-V desync up to a
>> certain threshold, at which point it skips or duplicates only enough
>> frames to get back below that threshold. Rather than skipping three out
>> of four frames (or four out of five), the actual pattern is somewhat
>> scattered. Therefore, often pairs (or triples, etc.) of frames from the
>> original video that look identical get encoded into the destination
>> file. Also, mencoder will skip/duplicate more aggressively when it
>> detects that A-V sync is way off. So, sometimes more than three or four
>> consecutive frames get skipped and one of the original visible frames is
>> lost entirely.
>>
>> This kind of A-V sync handling works decently well for most mencoder
>> usage. Your case is somewhat unusual, and it falls outside the purview
>> of what mencoder normally does. Is there a clean way to do what you're
>> trying to do? Probably, but I could only speculate. You may have to
>> describe exactly why you're re-encoding, and you may have to consider
>> just leaving the original file alone.
>>
>> Someone will probably correct me if I've analyzed this wrong.
> 
> IMO the situation is nowhere near this bad. Reencoding should give
> (almost?) the identical pattern if you just omit -ofps and leave it at
> 120000/1001, as long as you _don't_ use -vf harddup. No ivtc is
> needed of course.

You're right, that does work fine. I was just thinking in terms of
whether it is possible to reduce the framerate in anywhere near a clean
fashion, in case that was necessary for some reason. Leaving the
original framerate alone doesn't mess anything up.

-Corey