Authoring region-free 24p DVD

[Bill Stephan]

Ole,

I’m working on a similar project right now. Downconvert your 1080/23.976P HD to NTSC by whatever high quality method available. The key to making this work is to encode the NTSC using an advanced encoder that has IVT – Inverse Telecine, which flags the unneeded field in the 3:2 pulldown. The DVD player can output 24P from an IVT encode if it is connected to a display that supports 24P video, otherwise it outputs standard NTSC with 3:2 pulldown. (Note that there is no support for a 24P video stream in DVD.)

AME and Compressor do not have IVT capability. We use a Sonic SD-2000 encoder.

Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City

[Ole Jenssen]

Bill, thanks for your reply.

(For 24p i now mean 23.976p.)

I have done some more reading, and if I understand this, and you correct;

A DVD player can read 24p footage, but never output native 24p. But the trick is to get the DVD player to do the necessary conversion on the fly.

And the best is to author the DVD in NTSC 24p region free. The encoder should insert neseccary flags (Encore/TMPEnc/AVIsynth etc.). Then ALL DVD players world wide should be able to playbak 24p footage @29,97fps progressive (Although my Samsung LED HDTV shows the 24p DVD footage as 59,94 when played back from my Samsung Blu-Ray/DVD player)

The whole point for me is to avoid unecessary work by doing any kind of conversion for the DVD, and let the DVD player do the conversion when playing back the DVD. Also this will ensure the DVD will play back correctly in both NTSC and PAL land..

[Bill Stephan]

Ole,

Please note that a “24P” DVD is actually an NTSC DVD with the redundant fields flagged in the encode so that the DVD player can output 24P if the display can accept that format. Also, because NTSC is 29.97fps, the “24P” actually plays at 23.976P.

Beware that the NTSC/PAL issue has not gone away entirely. My clients in Europe tell me that compatibility with NTSC DVD on PAL players and TVs is about 75-80%.

It is a standard feature of NTSC DVD players to strip 3:2 pulldown, but I do not know how (or if) PAL DVD players handle these discs. I have dual-standard DVD players in-house, and these play the 24P DVDs correctly; but I have not tested on a PAL-only DVD player.

Please test thoroughly before proceeding with a big release involving PAL countries in order to avoid unexpected playback issues.

Bill Stephan
Senior Editor/DVD Author
USA Studios
New York City

[Ole Jenssen]

Thanks for your input Bill!

I will test on PAL players.

Too bad however I have to use NTSC with 720×480, PAL has about 100 lines better vertical resolution! 🙁
Hence, I wish I could render the DVD out in 24p (23.976) regionfree PAL 720×576, and that it was possible to play back these discs in NTSC land.

Will see, if necessary I will consider a PAL version as well, however, I think I can live with 75-80% compatibility.

Thanks!

Ole

[Tim Kocher]

Hi Ole:

I am in a similar situation and mindset (where I don’t care about people with 15-20-year old DVD players) and would really like to keep everything at 24p throughout the mastering process, and have it played back at 24p. Considering most displays are 24p capable these days (I think), it doesn’t seem an unreasonable request, eh?

Anyway, I just wanted to make sure I was understanding your’s and Bill’s final conclusion. Am I right in understanding that I can simply go ahead an encode an elementary stream (.m2v / ac3) to a 720×480 24P format? I can than author the DVD with this format and the DVD players (or most of them) will play back with the 24p by decoding it correctly themselves? Is this accurate? Or do I still need something that inserts the proper flags?

Thanks,
Tim