Did Madman Field Blend the Remastered G1 DVDs?

[ndjamena]

I have all 5 sets of the original MadMan DVD releases of Transformers G1 which I've had for years but am not at all happy with, or in fact with anything Madman released at the time. I've attempted to re-encode the things using AVISynth and X264 into something I could play on my WDTV but it turns out at the time of release Madman had a habit of converting the frame rates of all their animation series through a process called field blending. They even used the worst imaginable kind of field blending which winds up blending every single frame with one of it's neighbours.

It's not noticeable throughout most of each of the episodes which were mostly animated in 12p (meaning each field is blended with a duplicate of itself), but every now and then (generally during action sequences) the frame rate will shoot up to 24p and suddenly there's not a single unblended frame to be found. There's no way of undoing that kind of damage using any kind of filter I'm aware of, so I want to replace my Transformers DVDs and was wondering if the remastered versions are free from field blending or if I should commit to ordering an NTSC version from Amazon instead.

[Paulbot]

I'm willing to have a look for you on the remastered dvd, but how exactly do I tell if it's field blended?

The remastered DVDs have used some different DVD compression to the original set so there might be some quality loss instantly apparent. For example what was 7 dvds for Season 3 and 4 in the original release is not only 3 dvds.

[DELTAprime]

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.

[ndjamena]

How do you tell? Well if you go through the video frame by frame you should be able to see that some of the frames are blended (especially when there's fast movement). They generally don't animate that way. It's difficult to tell the difference between good field blending (where they leave at least one of each original frame unblended and interpolate frames in between) and the madman kind, but since any kind of frame/field blending at all effectively halves the resolution of the video, if the remastered version doesn't consist entirely of sped up, pseudo-progressive frames I think I'd be better off with the NTSC version (which can be fixed through a simple ITVC).

(Actually, Transformers doesn't seem to be as bad as some of the other examples I have. Maybe that's because they didn't bother speeding it up before blending all the fields.)

[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.

[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.