Did Madman Field Blend the Remastered G1 DVDs?

[ndjamena]

I'm not sure what your talking about. The only thing Google comes up with for what a field blend is wine related.

You have to remember with TV content we are in the PAL region, but Transformers was made in the US where they use NTSC which means both the frame rate and resolution are different. In order for Madman or anyone else to transfer content from NTSC to PAL a frame rate change and resolution change is normal on DVD as it is SD and follows the PAL and NTSC standards. This creates artefacts in the encode, it is unavoidable unless you make a Blu-ray which can change it's frame rate to 24 (film), 25 (PAL), 30 (NTSC) and 60 frames per second as the content dictates.

If you want NTCS produced video without any conversion artefacts you need to buy the US DVD or a Blu-ray if it exist.

I should probably also point out that I tried ripping my Madman release of the Remastered version to play on my Xbox One via DLNA and found that MakeMKV could not separate the episodes and the image was stretched out to a 16:9 image.

Yes, I'm aware of all that. Ben 10 Onmiverse was converted from NTSC 24p to PAL 25p through simple speed up, which is the way I like it. Frame blending is evil, especially since Transformers was originally animated as 24p. Stargate SG1 was ITVCed to 24p the sped up (with the remaining 29.976fps sections blend converted) and that's a much better method of frame rate conversion than what madman used. I admit that I am annoyed that all the DVDs I bought before I knew better are permanently ruined, but at some point I'd like to try to fix it as best I can and I'm wondering at the moment how the frame rate of the remastered edition was converted.

(I separated the episodes with MKVMerge. I have a powershell script that will extract the chapters using MKVExtract, guess which chapters mark the end of an episode and create a command line to pass to MKVMerge so it can perform the cut.)

(Field Blending is also called Frame Blending, no one's given me a better name for it and so far no one has corrected me when I use it.)

[CBratron]

I believe Ozformers has found it's first videophile.

[ndjamena]

I believe Ozformers has found it's first videophile.

I've spent too long on the VideoHelp Forums and forgot other people have no idea what I'm talking about.

I don't know if this will work but:
<iframe src="https://www.flickr.com/photos/92900013@N03/15566225767/in/photostream/lightbox/player/" width="75" height="75" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen oallowfullscreen msallowfullscreen></iframe>

https://flic.kr/p/pHwYAT

Anyway, if you can see that it shows four different frames (or at least four different fields passed through NNEDI3(fields=3)). The images are from four minutes twenty four seconds into the first episode where Jazz is ascending on a rising platform. A and D are pretty much fine, although you can still see shadows of neighbouring frames if you look hard enough, but B and C are obviously two pictures blended together and in fact there's an image in between B and C that no longer exists in a non-blended form.

https://flic.kr/p/q12U6w

Transformers Animated is simply sped up so has fully progressive frames. Beast Wars was itvc'd then sped up, where the itvc process couldn't find enough matches, fields were dropped. Beast Machines (not madman I know) simply had fields duplicated to fit on a PAL DVD. Whatever frame-rate conversion Head Masters went through defies explanation and is horrifying to contemplate. My old copies of Armada were fully progressive, but I gave them away when the new ones began being released. I almost bought the new releases last time JB had a 20% off sale but they were missing 2 of the 6 box sets. I'm assuming the new copies of Armada and the rest of The Unicron Trilogy are simply sped up, I'll be pissed if they're not.

But that leaves The Remastered G1 sets in La La Land. I have no idea if they're blend converted or not. And I figured you guys would be more likely to have a MadMan set you can check for me than the international community on the VideoHelp forums.

[Paulbot]

Is that shot of Blitzwing from the opening credits? I can check the Jazz on the platform scene, but I don't think the remastered season one set includes season two's opening credits anywhere.

[ndjamena]

Is that shot of Blitzwing from the opening credits? I can check the Jazz on the platform scene, but I don't think the remastered season one set includes season two's opening credits anywhere.

Yup, that's the Blitzwing from the opening credits, I added it because I thought it would give more impact then an unidentifiable block of metal. It shows the same problem though, the frame in the middle doesn't exist on it's own so it's impossible to properly reconvert the episodes to their original frame rates. There's blending everywhere throughout the episodes, but I thought it was important to point out where frames have simply ceased to exist because of it.

Almost a day and I'm still none the wiser. I'm still trying to remember where I saw all the remastered sets lined up nice a neatly recently...

[DELTAprime]

I believe Ozformers has found it's first videophile.

What about me, the guy that hates the constantly changing aspect ratios and film medium on AOE's 3D Blu-ray?

But I think we have found our biggest videophile.

I've never noticed this issue in content. But i do see blurriness in non-120hz or better LCD panels. Of course 120z or better TVs then have other problems *cough*Soap Opera Effect*cough*.

Anyway I can't see any Frame Blending in Blitzwing's transformation in the intro of the first episode on season 2's first disk. But there are other issues that might annoy you. It's not actually a HD Remaster. What they actually did was take 2 separate sources of video and edit them together. You go from what appears to be Kid Rhino's DVD video to what appears to be the Broadcast tapes that Madman used on their last DVD release.

[Sinnertwin]

i love lamp.

[DELTAprime]

So while we are on the topic. I have a MKV I made of season 1 disk 1 of Madman's Remastered set. How do I change the aspect ratio from 16:9 to 4:3 as it should be and then split the file up into episodes?

[ndjamena]

So while we are on the topic. I have a MKV I made of season 1 disk 1 of Madman's Remastered set. How do I change the aspect ratio from 16:9 to 4:3 as it should be and then split the file up into episodes?

16:9? It's one of those is it. DVD's store aspect ratios in two places, one set is stored in the IFO files, which is what every DVD player on earth will read obey, the other place is in the MPEG2 stream itself, which DVD players simply ignore. Most of the time the stream AR matches the AR in the IFO, but since it's redundant information it doesn't have to. Of course MakeMKV removes the actual streams from the VOBs and leaves the IFO files behind so what you end up with is a file with the stream AR which is sometimes wrong.

http://www.videohelp.com/tools/DVDPatcher
http://www.videohelp.com/tools/Restream

Either of these should be able to modify the AR in the stream. They're old programs so they may not work very well with modern MKVs, so you'll need to use MKVExtract (MKVCleaver/gMKVExtractGUI) to extract the video as an m2v first then run the programs on the m2v files. That should fix the AR issue. After that you need to remux the video back into the file using MKVMerge. Make sure when you remux the file you set the video's aspect ratio to 4:3 (768, 576) because like a DVD an MKV stores it's ARs in two places.

If you want to split the file the easiest way is to use MKVMerge GUI (MMG), load the file into it, then switch to the Global Tab, choose Split Mode -> Split Before Chapters and enter the chapter numbers you want to split at. Assuming they haven't been renamed you should be able to see the chapter numbers by looking at the file using MediaInfo or Loading the file into the MMG chapter editor.

[millhouse]

Of course 120z or better TVs then have other problems *cough*Soap Opera Effect*cough*.

I'm with you. Just bought a new Sony TV yesterday and spent 30 minutes researching settings for it and disabling any of the CinemotionFlowSoapOperaHell options!