Users Guide BitVice 2

INNOBITS
USER´S GUIDE BitVice 2.4
BitVice copyright 2008 Innobits AB. All rights reserved. BitVice, BeatVice,
DVNC, Wise EQ and their logos are trademarks of InnoBits AB. All other
product names mentioned are used for identification purposes only and
may be trademarks, service marks or otherwise copyrighted by their re-
spective holders and are hereby recognized. Credits: Bob Hudson.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
INNOBITS Table of contents items and website addresses in this guide have clickable links
Introduction
What’s new, features, system requirements .................................... 3
BitVice quickstart
For impatient users .............................................................................. 4
Workflow
Batch processing, user settings .......................................................... 6
The details
What all those options mean ........................................................... 9
Quality controls
Options for even better quality ....................................................... 14
DVD basics
Overview of the DVD process ........................................................ 23
The best source

Better input makes for better output ............................................ 27
FAQ’s
Frequently updated............http://www.innobits.se/faq.php
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Introduction
Introduction
INNOBITS What´s in BitVice?
BitVice is a true two-pass variable bitrate (VBR) MPEG-2 encoder with featu-
res that include:
Advanced encoding engine

Multiprocessor support
Batch processing
Two-pass Variable Bitrate (VBR) and Single-pass Constant Bitrate (CBR) enco-
ding
Digital Advanced Video Noise Canceling system (DVNC)
Noise dithering
Deinterlacing option
Pulldown for 24P video
Optional closed and fixed GOP’s
Luma correction Apple DV Codec
Support for “Studio RGB” codecs
Blur filter
Automatic scene change detection
Be sure to read the Read Me - Addendum, when such a file is included with
BitVice.
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Quickstart
Quickstart
INNOBITS BitVice is an easy-to-use standalone application based on some complex
software technology designed to produce very high quality MPEG-2 video files
from QuickTime movies. It works only in Intel processors running Mac OS X
Leopard or later.
BitVice can do one-pass constant bitrate (CBR) encoding, which is faster,

but we recommend using the two-pass variable bitrate (VBR) mode: BitVice
first goes through your movie frame-by-frame to analyze each frame’s unique
compression needs, and then, using your target bitrate to determine the final
file size and how many bits of data each part of the video needs and allocates
them for optimal quality.
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Quickstart
BitVice produces MPEG-2 video (m2v) files that can be imported into any
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compliant MPEG-2 authoring or multi-plexing tool such as Apple’s DVD Studio
Pro. BitVice can also extract the audio from your QT movie file and save it
as an uncompressed AIFF file. Using software such as the free BitVice Helper
multi-plexer, the m2v and AIFF files can be combined into an MPEG transport
stream for use in DVD authoring programs such as CaptyDVD or for use on
MPEG servers for presentations and broadcast.
A NOTE ABOUT AUDIO FILES

As a general rule, DVD’s seem to perform better when the audio is compres-
sed in MPEG1 Layer II (mp2) or the Dolby Digital format (AC-3). In the Multi-
plexing section you will find a link to BitVice Helper, which can do mp2 audio
compression for you. We recommend using a program such as A.pack (included
in older and integrated in newer versions of DVD Studio Pro) to compress
the AIFF file to AC-3. An uncompressed AIFF stereo audio file has a bitrate of
over 1.5Mbps, while a compressed file can be as low as 192Kbps (about 12%
of the bandwidth of the uncompressed file) and still provide good quality. Mp2
compressed audio is an optional standard for NTSC DVD players so it should
not be used for DVD projects that will be distributed for use on ”unknown”
players.
Before we get into the encoding process we want to discuss the workflow
enhancements in BitVice. These things could make your workflow faster.
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Work Flow
Work Flow
INNOBITS Batch Processing
There are two ways of creating batch jobs.You may prefer using the Droplets
feature, which is explained further down, but let us start with the other option.
It is the little folder icon to the right of where it says ”Source/Job list” (our
engineers received the ”Very Discreet Feature Award of 2003” for hiding it so
well). After you opened BitVice, selected your first QuickTime Movie and set
its encoding options, you can click the folder Icon and select other movies and
set the options for each of those.You can also use the Preferences option in
the BitVice menu and select ”Inherit Settings in Batch.” When that’s selected,
(BitVice needs to be restarted) each file in the batch will have the same set-
tings as the file before it. For example, if the first file is set for 5.5Mbps, DVNC
4, then each file opened after that will use the same settings. If you change the
option for one of the subsequent files it will not affect the settings for files
added to the batch before it, but it will affect files added after it. Each file in
your batch will show up in the pulldown menu (where it says “BVtest.mov” in
the example).You can select any of those and change their settings or click the
trashcan icon to remove them from the batch. After you’ve selected all of the
files for your batch session, click ENCODE and go on with the next task on
your to-do-list, or go take a well-deserved break from the computer.
Droplets (for batch processing and speed

boosting)
A BitVice droplet is a small copy of the BitVice application, but with all settings
already entered. All the controls are dimmed down and cannot be changed. So,
just make a new droplet if you want another one with different (or even the
same) settings.
Once you have created a droplet in the folder where you want the resulting
MPEG-2 files, you can drag and drop up to 200 QuickTime movies or their
aliases onto it. This will start a batch encoding, using the same settings for all of
movies that you drop onto it.
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Work Flow
You can create as many droplets as you want.You can even run several of them
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concurrently.
How to create a new droplet

Select a QT movie of the type you want to make a droplet for. Drag and drop
it onto the BitVice™ icon, which you may already have in your Dock, The
BitVice window opens after you have specified where the MPEG-2 and log files
should go. Enter all the specific settings that you want the droplet to remem-
ber. When you are ready, hit the “Create Droplet” button.
A “Save As:” dialog will appear, where you select, or create a new, destination
folder and a meaningful name for this droplet. Click Save. (Now that the dro-
plet is created you may want to quit BitVice, not going through with the actual
encoding, and erase the empty files it created afterwards.) It is a good idea
to double-click on your new droplet, because this will create a text file, in the
same folder, with all the settings you told the droplet to remember. This will
help you keeping track of all the droplets you have created and what they were
designed to do.
Preferences
The “Inherit Settings in Batch” feature is described in the Batch Processing
section. The preferences settings include an option to turn off the Preview
window: With most systems that will gain you little or nothing in encoding
speed, but it’s there if you think it will help. If you routinely don’t want BitVice
to save your audio tracks to files you can check the Never Save option. If you
often use NTSC D1 sized video (720x486) it may be convenient to select the
Always crop option, to avoid the dialog asking whether you want to Crop or
Scale down to 720x480.
Settings
The Settings option in the menu bar allows you to save your favorite combi-
nations of settings so you can easily re-use them for future projects. After you
select all of the settings for a project, you can go under Settings and select
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Work Flow
Save.You will then be asked to type in a name for those settings. Those names
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will be added to the menu and the first 10 of them can be recalled from the
key-board using command+<number>. Whenever your current setting coinci-
des with any of those you have predefined and saved in the menu, a checkmark
will appear in the menu bar next to the word Settings. The Settings option
disappears after you click Encode to begin the compression process.
A NOTE ABOUT WORKFLOW

If you use Final Cut Pro, when you have finished editing and are ready to
encode, the quickest way is to simply export a non-self-contained FCP movie.
That movie’s icon can be dragged onto the BitVice icon to open BitVice, or you
can first open BitVice and then select the FCP movie. There have been reports
from BitVice users and users of the Apple QuickTime MPEG encoder of rare
problems encoding from an FCP reference movie. With the QT encoder the
problem shows up as a ”this sequence must be rendered” error message and
with BitVice the same problem shows up with a failure to encode beyond a
certain point in the movie. If this happens, export a self-contained QuickTime
movie from FCP and encode from that.
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The Details
The Details
INNOBITS BitVice 2.x is basically a drag and drop application. There is no File menu, so
there is no Open or Save commands available in the menu. BitVice may be
started by double clicking, instead of dragging a QuickTime movie onto its
Finder or Dock icon, but then you must tell it which QT files to open. There is
nothing you can do with the controls until at least one movie has been selec-
ted. This may be done by dragging movies to anywhere in the main window or
by clicking on the little folder icon. The latter will present you with an Open
File dialog window where you can select one movie at the time.
Then you need to select a location and name for the new m2v (MPEG-2 Video)
file.You will also be asked whether you want to save the audio track. If you
try to open a movie that has an incompatible frame rate or format, you’ll see
a warning message (you may also get that message with correct frame rates
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The Details
because of the way QuickTime reads frame rates). When BitVice knows which
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file(s) to compress, it is able to update the controls in its main window, depen-
ding on the properties read from the selected movie file(s).
BitVice automatically determines the size, frame rate and format of your movie
(such as 720x480, 29.97fps NTSC). Please check those to ensure they com-
ply with your source video and the DVD-Video standards (note: DVD Studio
Pro 2 did not support all legal frame sizes such as 352x480 and 352x240 until
version 2.0.4). For NTSC video the legal MPEG-2 frame sizes for DVD are
720x480, 704x480, 352x480 and 352x240. The NTSC frame rate of a compres-
sed movie for DVD is always 29.97fps. This meanstaht if you are using true
24fps (or 23.976fps) progressive video as input to BitVice the Pulldown feature
must be used, see the section on using Pulldown.
The PAL frame sizes for DVD are 720x576, 704x576, 352x576 and 352x288.
The PAL frame rate is 25fps. BitVice can encode all other MPEG-2 legal sizes,
up to 720x576, and frame rates, but such .m2v files will not be useful for ma-
king DVDs.
For those who have NTSC movies at 720x486 (D1 format, which is incompa-
tible with MPEG-2, since 486 is not divisible by 16) a window will appear asking
whether to scale or crop the pictures down to 720x480. For best results use
Crop.
To start encoding, you first need to

consider the ”Interlaced Input.” op-
tion. If your video is progressive scan
you do not need to check Interlaced
Input. By default, BitVice uses Lower
(bottom or even) field dominance,
which is the standard for DV, but the-
re is an option for Top (upper, odd) field dominance if you need that (the Top
Field First option only shows up when Interlaced Input is checked). BitVice also
has an option to deinterlace your interlaced video, which becomes available
only when Interlaced Input is un-checked. After deciding whether to check the
Interlaced option you then need to decide whether to use the ”Use gamma
2.2” option. We discuss that option in depth later on. Basically, you need to
check this option if you work in Final Cut Pro, iMovie or other programs using
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The Details
the Apple DV Codec, or other codecs which by default assume that its pictures
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will be presented on an Apple monitor with gamma 1.8. We recommend always
checking this option, since this is harmless for all codecs.You can also check
the Use 1 pass CBR if Constant Bitrate is desired.
When you open BitVice it sets the target bitrate to 4.5Mbps. Because this is
a true variable bitrate encoder some frames may be encoded far above or
far below this target rate. There are sliders to set the upper and lower limits,
but for most purposes you can leave these at the default settings. They will
automatically track your target bitrate setting. However if you plan to use
PCM audio (uncompressed AIFF audio files) in your DVD project, then set the
maximum bitrate to 8.2Mbps or less to avoid getting “data rate too high” er-
ror messages in DVD SP and other authoring programs. We think you can get
very good results for most projects using the default 4.5Mbps rate, and if you
use 192Kbps compressed stereo audio you will be able to get about 2 hours
on DVD-R General disks at this rate. As with any form of video compression,
it takes some experimenting to determine which bitrate works best for your
needs. However DVD players seem to function best at lower bitrates especi-
ally when you use DVD-R (or +R) disks, so don’t use a higher rate unless you
determine that it is really needed for quality purposes. Don’t let prior expe-
rience from other encoders fool you to use higher bitrates than necessary. Let
BitVice have a chance to surprise you instead.
A NOTE ABOUT LOG VIEW

When a movie has been encoded and saved as an .m2v file, a log file is saved in
the same folder and with the same name, except with a .log.txt extension. This
text file may be opened and read in any text editor.
Near the bottom of the BitVice interface there is a text box displaying basic
information about most options and settings just by placing the cursor over
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The Details
an option’s name and/or checkbox. Also at the bottom there is a progress bar,
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a pop-up menu for selecting priority level and three buttons: Pause, Quit and
Encode. The Pause button will stop the encoding process and you can resume
it by clicking the same button again, when it has changed name to Resume. The
Quit button will - no surprise here - quit the application.
The slider for setting the target bitrate, or average bitrate, is set to 4.5 Mbps
by default. When dragging it to a new position, its value is updated in the field
called “Aiming for:” and the “Estimated file size:” field will also be updated to
show how big the encoded movie will become when the encoding has finished.
Below the average bitrate slider there are two other sliders for setting the
upper and lower bitrate limits. During encoding the preview window will dis-
play thumbnails of the movie as it is compressed.You can disable the preview
window in the Preferences settings.
Chapter markers in BitVice 2.4

This makes it easier to bring Chapter Markers across to DVD Studio Pro from
Final Cut Pro and other video editing systems, for instance from Media 100
systems.
BitVice reads the quicktime and search for markers only in the first enabled
text track associated with the video track. This happens during the first pass
only. This feature is not supported in CBR mode, where only one pass is execu-
ted.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
If no text track is enabled in the movie, then no markers will be read. This
means that you must ensure that (at least) the track, which markers you want
BitVice to read, is properly enabled. To inspect which tracks are enabled you
can use the QuickTime Player.
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The Details
Open the movie in QuickTime, press cmd+J to view the movies properties.
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In the example above, the chapter (text) track named “Text-spår” is enabled
and will be scanned by BitVice for chapter markers.
Also make sure to save the file (cmd+S). Then leave QuickTime and drag the
file onto the BitVice application.
In this way it gives you the flexibility to be in charge of what markers BitVice
should take into account.
There may be many chapter/text tracks with different markers for one video
track. If you want to select a specific track, you can do so by simply enabling it
and turning the preceding ones off.
This means that BitVice will NOT honor Compression Markers, written in a
separate text track, unless other tracks before it are disabled first. Only one
track, the first one, will be read even when several are enabled.
BitVice treats compression markers and chapter markers in the same way. They
will both be embedded in the encoded mpeg video file and they will show up
in DVD SP and other tools. It will also force an I-Frame insertion (a new closed
GOP) on the frame pointed out by any new chapter in the track.
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Quality Controls
Quality Controls
INNOBITS As mentioned earlier, BitVice automatically reads the movie’s properties like
format, frame rate and frame size when you open a source movie and displays
this information in the BitVice window. If you need to change the picture size
of the movie you can select different frame sizes using the pop-up menus.
When reduced picture size is used, the encoding speed will of course improve
dramatically. If your source was captured with a low-resolution camera such
as a VHS, there is little point in using the maximum size allowed in MPEG-2 for
DVD (720x480 NTSC), because that amount of picture information is simply
not available in your source.You could get almost the same quality by using for
example 352x480, which is much faster to encode and requires a much lower
bitrate and final file size.
Below the video format, size and frame rate information is a text field showing
the name and destination of the new m2v file. Below that is ”Source/Job list”
which is explained in the section on Batch Processing. The settings labeled Co-
lor, Matrix and Transfer are automatically set by BitVice and should not need
to be changed. We believe that our software engineers included them in the
interface to frighten and/or intimidate we mere mortals.
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Quality Controls
If you find a combination of options that works well for most projects, remem-
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ber you can save them using Settings in the menubar. Or - even better - create
some droplets that you can reuse.
Some of the quality options are Use gamma 2.2, DVNC, Spatio and Scaler.
These are options which may help clean up problematic video: very fast mo-
tion, noise from video that was digitized from a VHS or other analog source,
camera noise and even some DV compression artifacts.
We recommend that you create one or more short test videos with examples
of the types of video you use most often as well as examples of video that
may have caused you problems in the past after being encoded. Encode the
test video with the different quality settings, burn it to disk and then watch the
DVD on a properly calibrated TV or video monitor to examine the results (of
course, also encode the same video with none of the quality settings checked
but possibly at different bitrates). While we can provide some general informa-
tion about when and how to use the different quality options, in the discussion
forums at http://www.innobits.com you will find some BitVice users reports
about how various quality options helped them.
Interlaced Input
This option must be turned off before you can use the deinterlacer or the
NTSC 2:3 pulldown feature. It is also recommended to turn it off for input
originating from film or otherwise progressively scanned images.
The Interlaced input box should be checked if you know your video is inter-
laced (two fields per frame). Again, by default the interlaced option is set for
bottom field dominance (a.k.a. the ”lower” field dominance), but an option for
Top field first (also called the ”upper” field) will be displayed when Interlaced
Input is selected. Bottom field dominance is the default for DV, but if you’re
not sure about the field dominance of your video, here’s a simple test: select
a short sequence with enough motion to make a difference between the two
fields - a 5 or 10 seconds long sequence will do. Encode two MPEG-2 clips,
one with Top field first checked and the other with it unchecked. The clip with
the correct setting will run smoothly when fed to an interlaced TV monitor
through an MPEG-2 decoder and the incorrect one will show jerky motion. If
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Quality Controls
they both run just as smoothly, then the video is probably not interlaced, so
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the Interlaced input may be left unchecked. Encoding is faster with this option
unchecked.
If you shot progressive video, converted to progressive (for example by using

the Deinterlace Fields option new to QuickTime Pro as of Version 6.5) or are
working with graphics and/or animation created entirely on a computer, then
leave Interlaced unchecked. There are instances where even interlaced video
may look better if you leave this one unchecked, although if you have interlaced
video with rapid motion sequences, then be sure to check i, if smooth mo-
tion is essential. If you use Media 100, the Innobits discussion forum has some
users’ tips on solving field problems resulting from a Media 100-quirks.
NOTE: with this option checked you cannot use the deinterlacer in BitVice!
Use deinterlacer
Most video for TV is still ”interlaced,” meaning each frame is made up of two
fields, with one field making up the even lines of a frame and the other field
the odd lines. These fields are not recorded at the same time by the camcor-
der: in NTSC video there is a roughly 1/60th of a second delay between them
and in PAL video 1/50th of a second. This same delay is present during playback
as the odd and even fields are interlaced on the display (TV or video monitor)
to create a frame. In ”progressive” scan video there is no such delay between
adjacent lines from each field. Computer monitors are progressive scan devices
and, generally speaking, interlaced video can show a lot of artifacts, especially
on edges of moving objects (some describe these interlacing artifacts as loo-
king like the teeth of a comb or edge of a feather). If you are producing video
that will be shown only on computer monitors, then using the BitVice deinter-
lacing option can suppress such interlacing artifacts.
However, if you want to produce a progressive scan DVD that will play well on
both interlaced and progressive scan monitors, then you should start with true
progressive source video such as that recorded by the Panasonic AG-DVX100.
This is discussed more under the Progressive/Pulldown option.
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Quality Controls
Closed GOP
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Selecting Closed GOP will force all GOPs to become closed. It is recommen-
ded only for clearer fast forward and rewind or for projects that will be distri-
buted on DVD-R. Selected or not, BitVice forces a Closed GOP at every scene
change. ”GOP” stands for ”Group of Pictures.” In MPEG-2 terminology, a video
frame is called a ”picture,” each movie you encode is called a ”sequence” and
each sequence is composed of GOP’s. A ”closed GOP” is self-contained and
therefore decodable without any reference to previous pictures.
Fixed GOP
If you are doing multi-angle DVD’s, then check this option. It will disable the
automatic scene change detection in BitVice and ensure GOP boundary align-
ment between different video tracks, which is required for multi-angle work.
A NOTE ABOUT MULTI-ANGLE WORK

In order to encode files for multi-angle tracks, there are limits on the maxi-
mum bitrate for each m2v file. BitVice has a slider that allows you to set a
maximum rate and for multi-angle tracks you’ll want to set that maximum rate
to whatever the specified maximum is for the number of tracks you’ll be using.
This information is available in the documentation for your DVD authoring
application.
Use Studio RGB

Some high-end editing systems (such as Avids and Media 100 codecs) may
produce QT-files which when decoded, by default, are presented in the so-
called StudioRGB format, instead of standard RGB. This will produce dark grey
instead of black. While this may be rare, BitVice provides an option to correct
for this. An in-depth discussion of Studio RGB is found in the “What is Studio
RGB?” section.
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Quality Controls
Use gamma 2.2
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This option changed its name as of BitVice 1.7. Before it was called “DV Luma
Correction “. It is turned ON by default and it is always SAFE to keep it that
way, for any type of codec. So, why do we still give the user the option of tur-
ning it OFF? Most users who use DV codecs from Apple must leave it turned
on, to maintain color and level transparency. However, a few of these users
have come to like the darkening effect that such codecs produce when this op-
tion is unchecked. Therefore it is still left as a user option in the user interface.
For those who use DV codecs from other vendors this option may have no
relevance, so they might as well leave it turned on.
The actual MPEG-2 encoding process starts with an input of decompressed

RGB pictures, which are expected to be gamma corrected for TV (2.2). When
selected, BitVice explicitly asks the codec to deliver the decompressed frames
at gamma 2.2 after decompression. Most QT codecs compatible with interna-
tional TV standards will do this by default, which renders this option without
any effect. DV codecs made by Apple, though, usually don’t. (There might be
other codecs as well.) Instead they change the gamma from 2.2 (which is
standard for the DV format) to 1.8 (which is a rather unique standard used for
Apple monitors).
The Apple DV Codec changes luma values when going from RGB to DV and
from DV to RGB. BitVice decompresses all source video to RGB before enco-
ding, so your DVD will be too dark if you uncheck the “Use gamma 2.2” op-
tion. However, NTSC users will find that their DVD may look lighter than their
DV tape did. This is because of a flaw in the way NTSC DV camcorders output
an analog signal. We explain more about that in the discussion on NTSC analog
video black levels in the DVD BASICS section further down in this users guide.
Ironically, even though you may be seeing your DV tape with the wrong black
levels on an NTSC monitor, many people think it gives the video a richer look
and might prefer the darker MPEG-2 video you get by unchecking this option.
That is why we decided to still keep it optional.
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Quality Controls
Use 1-pass CBR
INNOBITS While we strongly urge you to use the standard BitVice mode of two-pass VBR
encoding, we now provide the Constant Bitrate mode for those who really just
got to have it for such things as SVCD production. The encoding speed will be
a little faster too.
Drop Frame Count

Drop Frame Count is only available when the frame rate is 29.97 fps. Some
users want to explicit remove drop frame count for some reason. Drop frame
count does not mean that you are loosing frames in the video. It is just a flag
telling the encoder to use a certain scheme when calculating the time code for
a group of pictures. If you are uncertain, set this checked when you are using
29.97 or pull down to 29.97.
Start code offset

Here you are allowed to explicit set the offset for the time code to be in the
output video stream. If you for an example want your video for some reason
to start on 10 hour, 6 minutes, 6 seconds and 2 frames, enter 10 6 6 2 in
respective field. It does not affect the quality but could be useful if you are
encoding several clips and later want to concatenate them with some of your
other tools.
DVNC
The DVNC (Digital Video Noise Canceling) filter does ”temporal” proces-
sing and considers content of adjacent frames when analyzing and cleaning
up a frame. We believe the unique design of the BitVice DVNC filter makes it
an especially powerful and useful noise reduction tool. We would urge you to
learn first about the capabilities of DVNC and make it your first choice for
noise reduction. If you use DVNC, you could start with a setting of about ”3.”
Some users say they can see a difference of just one step (say from ”3” to ”4”).
Other users report routinely using as high as 10 or 15. Again, different types
of source video will have different responses. DVNC is a separate application
running inside BitVice.
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Quality Controls
The ”holy grail” for many desktop DVD producers is to get over two hours
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of video on a DVD-R disk at a quality that will be acceptable to their clients.
DVNC, in combination with the other advanced components of BitVice, can
help you reach that goal with video that might not otherwise produce ac-
ceptable results. Once again, it’s recommended that you view your tests on a
properly calibrated TV or video monitor before making your final judgment.
Almost any digital video has noise it, even if it may not be noticeable by the
causal viewer. Since even minimal noise is the worst enemy to good MPEG-2
encoding results, we recommend using the DVNC filter. A separate article
”More information about DVNC” is available at http://www.innobits.com/
newsletter/dvnc_art.html .
If you like DVNC, you will probably love our product Video Purifier, that is
a standalone NLE software for you to use as an additional tool of the trade.
Read more at www.innobits.com/purifier.html .
Aspect
For most legacy source video this will be set to 4:3, but if you have shot with
something like an anamorphic 16:9 lens, set Aspect to 16:9 and your video be
displayed as a letterboxed widescreen on ”normal” DVD players and moni-
tors/TV’s and as 16:9 on widescreen systems and computer monitors. In DVD
Studio Pro when you create a track for this type of video, set the track display
mode to 16:9 Letterbox. That way your widescreen video will be letterboxed
even if a DVD player’s menu options are set to play it as Pan and Scan with the
right and left edges cropped. This option has no effect on the encoding process.
It is just a piece of information that is forwarded to the decoder/player, telling
it which picture aspect ratio the pictures were intended to be displayed at. De-
pending on the format of the display that is connected to the player, this info
can be of help in choosing how the footage should be displayed.
IntraDC
By default this is set to ”8.” Many BitVice users report setting IntraDC at ”10”
for most projects. This can result in a slightly higher quality but at the expense
of encoding time. Tests have shown that ”9” may be better than the default ”8,”
but we do not feel that ”10” is worth it in terms of the hit on encoding speed.
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Quality Controls
We think that most other settings are much more relevant for high quality
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results and we are still waiting for evidence from BitVice users that a higher
setting than ”8” will actually be worthwhile. However, since it is allowed in the
MPEG-2 specification you are free to experiment with it.
Spatio and Blur

The Spatio filter does what is called ”spatial’ processing and essentially looks
at one frame at a time. The BitVice Spatio filter is a basic tool with three levels.
We recommend you not to use Spatio at the same time as DVNC. Under the
Spatio option you will also find two levels of Blur that might be of use with
extreme edge artifacts from very troublesome source video.
Progressive/Pulldown
BitVice can add pulldown to
true progressive 23.976fps
source video in order to
produce DVD’s that are
compatible with both
progressive scan (including
computer DVD players
and monitors) and ”nor-
mal” NTSC players. When
“Interlaced Input” is turned
off, the pulldown option be-
comes available under the
frame rate menu. (Pulldown
works only with progressive scan video). There are choices for 23.976 and 24
fps source video. They will both map to 29.97 when the pulldown flags have
been added. This allows you to edit and encode just the 24 ”original” progres-
sive scan frames. For a given bitrate, encoding 23.976 frames with pulldown
results in more data allocated to each frame compared to encoding 29.97fps
video. Looking at it from another angle; if you let the MPEG2 encoder add the
pulldown flags, it will use only 80% of the bitrate, for the same quality, compa-
red to if you let it encode all the duplicated fields of the telecined signal. Be
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Quality Controls
aware that using 24fps instead of 23.976fps source video requires that your
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audio sample rate be changed to reflect the speed difference between 24fps
and 23.976fps. DVFilm Maker, and most audio applications, can stretch the
audio by 0.1% for use with 24fps 23.976fps. Their website does a good job of
explaining this and other nuances of “24P” production. Read more further on,
in the section ”More details about 2:3 Pulldown”.
Multiplexing
BitVice does not do multiplexing (“muxing”): combining audio and video into
one MPEG stream. However, a free application called BitVice Helper (not
created by Innobits) will multiplex your BitVice-encoded file and your AIFF
or WAV audio file to create an MPEG stream that can be used in applications
such as CaptyDVD and standalone hardware MPEG players that require MPEG
Transport Streams. BitVice Helper can also create a video_ts folder, which can
be burned to DVD by such programs as Toast and MissingMediaBurner. This
DVD will play on DVD players although it will only have one movie and no
menu. BitVice Helper and MissingMediaBurner are available as free software on
Internet.
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DVD Basics
DVD Basics
INNOBITS DVD-Video (the formal name for the standards for putting videos and movie
on DVD disks) has become perhaps the fastest growing media format ever. It
took 13 years for VHS players to reach 30 million units sold. It took eight years
for CD players to reach 30 million units. It took just five years for 30 million
DVD players to be sold. Clearly, consumers have taken a liking to the quality,
ease of use and long lifespan of DVD videos compared to VHS tapes.
For most video producers, though, entry into DVD production was prohibiti-
vely expensive until early 2001, and only large budget projects could afford the
costs associated with converting a video to the DVD format.
That changed when Apple computer announced it would ship new computers
with DVD recorders and software to enable the creation of DVD’s. Apple’s
iDVD software, while very basic, allowed anyone with the price of a Superdrive
Mac to become a DVD producer. Its DVD Studio Pro allowed anyone with a
Superdrive Mac and another $1,000US to buy software that could be used
to create DVD’s with pretty much any feature available in the DVD-Video
standard.
This has created a revolution in DVD production: in the year 2000 you might
have had to spend tens of thousands of dollars for the hardware and software
needed to create DVD’s. In the year 2004 you can buy a $1,000US computer
that includes everything you need to produce simple DVD’s with menus and
chapters.
DVD-Video disks require that the video be encoded as MPEG-2. With software
such as iDVD you can only use the encoder included with the application.
With DVD Studio Pro (DVD SP) and other sophisticated applications, you can
import MPEG-2 files created by a variety of encoders, including BitVice.
Programs such as DVD SP also allow creation of DVD’s productions that can
be put on different types of DVD disks including dual-layer DVD-9 disks which
can hold almost twice as much data as the DVD-5 disks used in the Superdri-
ves and most other affordable desktop DVD burners. If your project is going
to be burned to disk using a Superdrive or one of the similar DVD burners
offered under other brand names, you need to keep in mind the limits of the
DVD-5 disks and specifically the DVD-R General disks used by these burners.
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DVD Basics
First time DVD SP users are often shocked to find that although they bought
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DVD-R disks which are labeled as ”4.7GB,” they got an error message when
they tried to burn a project that was only 4.6GB in size. In fact, those 4.7GB
disks will only hold 4.37GB of computer data. The difference is in how you
compute a gigabyte (one million bytes). A gigabyte of disk space is computed
by multiplying 1000x1000x1000. A gigabyte of data is computed by multiplying
1024x1024x1024.You’re right; that doesn’t make sense, but that’s the way they
do it and technically another term should be used when referring to a gigabyte
of data, but no one does that and really all you have to remember is that no
matter what brand of DVD-R General disk you buy and no matter what type
of computer or software you use, you can only put 4.37GB of data on the
disk. Other types of DVD’s used for DVD-Video production can hold different
amounts of data (some less, some more), but those disks are not usable on
most desktop DVD production systems. If you do plan to use them, be sure
you learn about their limits.
In addition to the limits on how much data DVD’s can hold, you also need to
understand bandwidth, which concerns how fast that data can be accessed.
The DVD-Video standard calls for hardware DVD players (your typical DVD
player sitting on top of the TV) to be able to play back your DVD movie at
9.8 megabits per second (Mbps or Mb/s is 1,000,000 bits/s) With audio and
other overhead, the maximum bandwidth is 10.08Mbps. While DVD players
technically are required to be able to play DVD’s produced at this maximum
rate, that doesn’t mean they always do so without problems. DVD-R General
disks as well as newer disk types such as DVD+R, DVD-RW and DVD+RW are
not compatible with all stand-alone DVD players and the DVD-ROM players in
computers (which use software to decode the DVD video and audio files). This
means that your disks may not play on certain machines and computers, and
even with players that are ”compatible” you may have problems if your DVD
was encoded at or close to the maximum data rate (bitrate).
It has been recommended that videos encoded for DVD-R General disks have
a bitrate of 7Mbps or less and that the audio be com-pressed as MPEG1 Layer
II (mp2) or Dolby Digital (AC-3). Keeping your total bitrate well below the
maximum allows some headroom for error correction routines. Also, some
knowledgeable DVD producers have reported that while DVD players are
supposed to support up to 10.08Mbps, some simply are not capable of doing
so, especially not when reading from home burnt DVDs. If true, it’s not too
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DVD Basics
surprising because, until the advent of affordable desktop DVD production,
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the video on many DVD’s was encoded at rates as low as 3.5Mbps in order to
be able to fit a two-hour movie on a single layer disk. The software decoders
in computers can have an even tougher time with higher bitrates and if you’re
producing a DVD that will primarily be played on computers you will want to
keep the bitrate below 5 or 6 Mbps. With BitVice you have an encoder that is
capable of producing high quality MPEG-2 files at low bitrates and we suggest
that you use BitVice’s default 4.5Mbps bitrate as a starting point for all pro-
jects. If some complex or tricky footage doesn’t look quite right at that bitrate,
consider using one of the quality options instead of a higher bitrate. With the
batch processing features in BitVice 2.4, including droplets, it is now very easy
to encode short test movies with different bitrates and options to determine
what works best for your particular source video.
Creating a video DVD typically involves acquisition and editing of video, com-
pressing the video into the proper MPEG-2 format, extraction of the video’s
audio track as a separate file (and, if desired, compression of the audio track)
and then importing the video and audio tracks into an authoring program
for creation of the structure of the DVD (which also involves importing still
images for use in menus). After the structure of the DVD is created and you
confirm that the right track plays when each menu button is clicked, the files
are all multi-plexed (combined) into the format required by DVD’s and then
burned to disk (you don’t have to use your authoring program to burn the
disk: many producers favor third-party applications such as Roxio’s Toast and
say that by using Toast to burn their video_ts files at the 1X setting they get
disks with fewer errors).
Obviously, this is a simplification of the process, as anyone who has ever read
a DVD application’s users manual knows all too well, and there can be tremen-
dous complexity in the authoring process. On the other hand, you can create a
video DVD quite simply by plugging a VCR into certain DVD recorders, loading
a blank disk and pressing the ”record” button.
But whether you use complex authoring, or find a simple way to get your
video onto disk, the quality of your DVD is largely part dependent upon the
MPEG2 encoder. An MPEG2 encoder is a compressor whose job it is to take
a large amount of video and cram it into a smaller space. If you shoot in the
DV format, you may know that an hour of DV video takes more than 13
gigabytes of hard drive space (DV, by the way, is already compressed: an hour
of uncompressed video would take up more than 70GB of disk space). On the
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DVD Basics
DVD-R General disks with 4.37GB of disk space your one-hour of DV has to
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be compressed to perhaps less than 30% of its size in order to fit on a DVD. If
you have two hours of video the video could be shrunk to 15% of what it was
in the DV format.
In order to get twice as much video into the same space you have to adjust
the ‘bitrate.” Bitrate refers to how much data (how many bits) are allocated
to each second of video and is usually expressed as Mbps (millions of bits per
second or, more commonly, megabits per second).
One of the keys to good compression is how those bits are allocated. It may
be of use to know a little bit about what kind of footage needs more or less
bits, to be faithfully represented in an MPEG-2 stream. Frames that are busy
with lots of fine detail, e.g., text, sharp edges, noise, foliage or close-ups of a
lawn, will need an enormous amount of bits compared to less busy frames. Ea-
sily compressed frames include uniformly colored pictures -for example blacks
- especially if they occur in clusters larger than a few, which means there is no
information to compress, neither spatially (within a picture) nor temporally
(between pictures). They need so very few bits that many encoders and multi-
plexers, especially in the past, have had serious problems with handling them in
a civilized manner. A CBR encoder has no other option than to insert several
million bits per second of zeros (padding) into the stream in order to keep
the bitrate up on target. A frame of video that has little or no change from
the frames that come before or after it doesn’t need as many bits for good
encoding as does a frame that has a lot of changes compared to its neighboring
frames. A Constant Bitrate (CBR) encoder will on average allocate the same
amount of data to each individual piece of the movie. That means frames that
could use more bits don’t get them and some frames get bits they don’t need.
A Variable Bitrate encoder (VBR) will, as the name implies, vary the amount of
data it allocates to each piece of the movie. There are one-pass VBR encoders
that have little variation and for all practical purposes function much like a CBR
encoder. A two-pass VBR encoder such as BitVice actually analyzes each frame
before it starts encoding and is able to optimize the allocation of bits to each
GOP, frame, macroblock and 8x8 block within the movie.
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The Best Source
The Best Source

INNOBITS You can have a great source video and an authoring program with all of the
bells and whistles, but if you use a poor encoder, your DVD can be pretty
disappointing. Or you can have an ”okay” encoder and get disappointing results
when you find you have to put a longer video on disk than you usually do, or
you have a video with a lot of fast motion or other footage that challenges
your encoder beyond its limits.
New DVD producers, especially, often speak of wanting to get ”DVD quality”
but aside from the quality of your source video, the one factor that will help
you get the best DVD quality is the quality of your MPEG-2 encoder. Will
using BitVice make your DVD’s look like one of those rental DVD’s with the
latest Hollywood blockbusters? Well, we would hope so, but the truth is those
movies were likely shot on 35mm film by some of the world’s best lighting and
photography experts, the film was digitized with very expensive flying spot
scanners at several times the normal video resolution and it was progressively
scanned.Your video, meanwhile, may have begun its life on $700 camcorder in
an interlaced DV format, with the video compressed 5-to-1 as it was recorded
to tape. In short, Hollywood has a big edge over the average video maker when
it comes to the quality of its original source material.
Even with the best MPEG-2 encoder, you still need do all you can to ensure it
is fed the best quality source video you can obtain.
If you have to use low-quality formats such as VHS tape for your source mate-
rial you can do such things as plugging a time base corrector (TBC) between
your VHS VCR and digitizer (whether it’s an analog to DV converter or an
analog capture card in your computer). Some VCR’s have ”sharpness” controls.
If yours has one, turn it down: the softer video will have less noise in it and
will be easier to encode. If you need to convert Hi8 and regular 8 videotapes
to DV in order to import it in to your computer, consider using a Digital 8 DV
camcorder instead of a standalone analog to DV box.You can actually insert
the regular 8 and Hi8 tapes into the Digital 8 camcorder and not only will it
play the tapes and send the output to the Firewire connection as DV, it will
also use its built-in TBC and digital noise reduction features to clean up signal.
Also, if you use NTSC video, remember that most DV/DVCAM gear has an
analog input set up for a black level of “0 IRE” while NTSC analog gear, inclu-
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The Best Source
ding VHS and DVD players, outputs “7.5 IRE.” This mismatch will make your
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analog video lighter when converted to DV and later to DVD. Some high-end
DVCAM gear and some standalone analog-to-DV converters can be adjusted
for a “7.5 IRE” analog input.You can also use a video proc amp between your
analog source and DV gear to set the correct analog black level.
When shooting video try to avoid low light situations whenever possible.
Modern camcorders can shoot in very low light, but the video may have lots
of noise that may result in lots of artifacts when encoded to MPEG-2. BitVice’s
quality options such as DVNC can really help cleanup that noise, but it will
take longer to encode and the production process will be much easier if you
use good lighting in the first place. There’s an old saying in the video produc-
tion business, ”We’ll fix it in post,” which means ”We’ve got a problem during
the shooting stage but we’ll try to fix it in post-production.” That usually leads
to increased production costs and hassles and ultimately to a product that is
not as good as it could have been. Some things you can and should do during
post-production before the encoding process include ensuring that your video
images are of legal picture size, ”broadcast legal” in terms of using blacks at
16 and whites at 235, and color corrected, if needed. Editing programs as Final
Cut Pro and Avid include some very good tools for adjusting your video so the
whites are not too white, the darks are not too dark and in general producing
a final video that will look good on television and meet the technical require-
ments of TV video. Which once again bring us to:
A NOTE ON VIDEO MONITORS

During video production remember: if your final product will be viewed mostly
on televisions, you can’t trust your computer screen to give an accurate pic-
ture of what your video will look like on TV, especially with interlaced video.
Graphics with vivid colors and fine detail may look fantastic on a computer but
end up looking horrible on a TV screen.Video that looks too dark or other-
wise horrible on a computer may look just fine on a TV. When editing, always
monitor your video on a properly calibrated external TV/video monitor. Keep
in mind though that if you use a monitor connected to a DV camcorder or DV
VCR that is in turn connected to your computer via Firewire then you may not
be watching a ”NTSC legal” signal. That’s because in North America televisions
and video monitors expect an analog signal with a black level of 7.5 IRE but all
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NTSC DV and many DVCAM camcorders and VCR’s have an analog output of
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0 IRE. If you’re a North America NTSC user you may have calibrated your mo-
nitor using colorbars generated through your DV or DVCAM gear. However if
you do that and then connect a DVD player to the same monitor or TV your
black levels will look different because DVD players sold in North America do
output an NTSC-legal 7.5 IRE. This difference between the output of DV gear
and DVD players is why many DVD producers often wonder why their DVD’s
look different than their DV tapes. This is not a problem for NTSC users in
Japan and PAL users worldwide: those formats always use 0 IRE. In addition to
using your eyes to judge on a properly calibrated monitor, many video edit-
ing programs now have waveform and vectorscope tools to help ensure you
produce technically-good TV. Learn how to use those and you will get better
DVD’s. More details on this, and screenshots showing the differences between
what you see and what you get, can be found in an article by Bob Hudson at
http://www.signvideo.com/dv-black-levels-dvd-authoringmpeg-2-part-1.htm.
As with all aspects of video production, compressing video and producing

DVD’s is a combination of art and science. The science has, in recent years,
produced incredible, affordable technology, but, as the old saying goes, ”Owning
a pencil does not make you an artist,” and it’s up to each of us to learn about
the tools we have and how best to apply them to our creative needs. So it is
with BitVice. Good luck and if you have questions please contact us or visit
our discussion forum. If you find what you think is a bug or flaw, please contact
us ASAP with as many details as possible and as soon as we get done whacking
ourselves upside the head and saying, ”Doh - how could we have missed that,”
we will give up sleeping and eating until we get it fixed.
What is Studio RGB?

Does your black come out too bright, looking washed out?
The following is an attempt to explain one of the possible reasons why this
may happen and how to fix it. There are several other possibilities not discus-
sed here, including the ”setup” used in NTSC analog TV signals. On our discus-
sion forum you can search for words like ”setup”, ”illegal”, ”washed out” and
so on, to find more information.
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Encoding movies, with a standards compliant MPEG2 encoder, from a codec
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that decompresses into the non-standard StudioRGB format, will produce dark
grey instead of black. That is because the MPEG2 encoder is not aware of the
shifted black and white levels of the StudioRGB format, which some codecs
may use instead of standard RGB. To make BitVice aware of the fact that your
codec produces StudioRGB, when asked to de-compress the pictures, you
should check the StudioRGB option.
Background
Regardless of which QuickTime (QT) codec you used to create your movie,
BitVice will always read the input pictures in a fully de-compressed ARGB
format (32 bits/pixel, reduced to 24 bits/pixel because the Alpha channel is
just omitted). Therefore BitVice does not do anything different with pictures
coming from different QT codecs like DV, MJPEG, Animation or ”NONE”. The
codecs use their own methods for de-compression. Some of them may be
good, fast and expensive and others poor, slow and cheap. As the processing
times vary from one codec to the other, the choice of a specific codec will
affect the overall encoding time you see with BitVice. Once the Alpha channel
has been removed, but before the actual compression starts, BitVice does a
RGB to YCbCr transform.
RGB is the generic color space in which both the camera and the CRT’s RGB
gun of a TV monitor live. However, RGB is neither suitable for transmission
nor for compression. Therefore all kinds of transmission and compression
techniques, both digital and analog, use various derivatives of the YUV color
space, where the luminance Y is separated from the color information. The Y
value represents the grey-scale level from black to white.
MPEG2’s flavor of YUV is called YCbCr, in which Y=16 means black and Y=235
means white.Y values outside this range are illegal in PAL as well as in NTSC.
These colors are called super-black and super-white.
A pixel with equal values, x, for all three RGB channels (x,x,x) has no color
information, only different shades of grey. For 8-bits/channel systems x can take
values in the range 0-255. Normally, the conversion from RGB to Y is done
according to the CCIR601, later renamed to ITU-R601, and MPEG2 video
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The Best Source
specifications. The effect of this normal conversion is that:
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black ( 0, 0, 0) corresponds to Y=16
white (255,255,255) corresponds to Y=235
This is where StudioRGB enters the arena. Conversion between RGB and
YCbCr color spaces is a somewhat lossy process due to the sensitivity to
rounding errors, especially when repeated several times back and forth. There
are numerous ways to do this, but not so many really good ones. Even with
the best of algorithms and implementations there is always the problem of
mapping 255 RGB levels to only 224 Y levels and then converting back to 255
in RGB again. In the StudioRGB format, that last step is never done. It uses only
219 levels instead of 255. Compare these numbers with those given above for
true RGB:
black ( 16, 16, 16) corresponds to Y=16
white (235,235,235) corresponds to Y=235
This means that, even though StudioRGB is a kind of RGB format, the black
and white levels are inset from the normal full range. Note the similarities to
the numbers for Y, the luminance. The StudioRGB format makes repeated color
conversions less lossy. The cost for this is that it is not standardized and that
the device that should further process the StudioRGB data (BitVice in this
case) must treat it in a different manner than standard RGB data. Otherwise
the range of levels would be narrowed down even further. So, it has to be
informed, by the user, which of the two formats to expect. This is why you now
have the option of checking the StudioRGB box when applicable.
More details about 2:3 Pulldown

The DVD specification simply does not support video marked as 23.98
fps (which is how Apple wants to call it) or even 23.976 fps (which is what
MPEG-2 calls it). This means that for NTSC DVDs you can only use MPEG-2
video files, which are marked as 29.97 fps. This is true whether your encoder
(like Compressor) is letting you be aware of it or not. There is no ”native 23.98
frame rate” on a DVD.Using 2:3 Pulldown instead, is the right way of making
the decoder believe it is 29.97. Any other method would just be wasting band-
width/bitrate or picture quality, depending on which way you want to look at it.
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INNOBITS
The 2:3 pulldown process, as specified by MPEG-2, is a way for the encoder of
describing to the decoder which of its already decoded fields it should be re-
peating (displaying once more) and when. These field repetitions are designed
to increase the displayed frame rate from 23.976 to 29.97. This ”new” frame
rate must be explicitly written into the .m2v stream, to be accepted by a DVD
authoring tool, e.g., DVD SP.
Some of you may wonder why it is called ”pulldown” when in fact the frame
rate seems to be going ”up” from 24 to 30. The way to wrap ones head around
this, is to think about what would happen if you just mapped 24 fps film frames
onto the NTSC TV standard which has to display frames at nearly 30 fps on
a TV. Of course the movie would run 25% FASTER on a TV than it did at the
cinema/picture theatre. In that perspective, the solution had to be to SLOW
DOWN (pulldown) the presentation speed on a TV. The engineers of that time
(this was long before color TV was even invented) were faced with a need for
film (Hollywood movies) to be translated for TV broadcasts). Of course they
could not change the 30 fps used for TV broadcasts (29.97 fps came much
later when colors were added;-), so they had to come up with a scheme which
made each film frame seem to last 25% longer on the TV screen, than it would
have otherwise. ”Pulling down” the display frequency from, the physical 30
fps to match the experienced 24 fps was accomplished by letting every other
frame be displayed for 50% longer on the TV. On average this trick gives a 25%
(slower) display frequency than otherwise when viewed at NTSC frame rates,
which was the goal, of course.
Elegance of MPEG-2’s solution

In an analog NTSC broadcast signal you have to transmit all the extra (repea-
ted) fields to the receiver because a plain old analog TV set cannot remember,
or look back in time to see what the signal looked like some 33 milliseconds
ago. In a digital world, though, it would be a terrible waste to send exactly the
same information again to a decoder, which already has this picture informa-
tion in its memory, decoded and ready to display without any extra effort at all.
In the pulldown mode an MPEG-2 encoder will toggle the so-called pulldown
flags (only 2 bits per frame) in a certain pattern. These flags tell the decoder
exactly which fields to repeat (reuse) and when.
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That is why you don’t want to MPEG-2 encode a progressive (24P) movie that
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has already been converted for TV (telecined). In such cases it is often better
to do an inverse telecine first and then encode the original progressive images,
using the pulldown flagging technique.
Historical note
Initially it was called 3:2 pulldown, because in the early days they used to start
the field repetition already on the first frame - 3,2,3,2. Nowadays it is usually
done the other way around, like - 2,3,2,3. Therefore you may have seen that
both 2:3 and 3:2 are being used.
For every picture_header, in the MPEG-2 video stream, there are always two
1-bit flags present, a.k.a. pulldown flags. When encoding in the 2:3 pulldown
mode, the encoder sets these flags according to a certain pattern, as explained
below.
The DVD player just obeys them blindly. However, when the decoder/player
is NOT connected to an interlaced (but a progressive) display it may ignore
the pulldown flags. The names of these flags are repeat_first_field (RFF) and
top_field_first (TFF).
When a field should be repeated (i.e., for every other frame) it is always the
first field that gets repeated.
So if RFF equals one, it tells the DVD player to display the first field one extra
time, which is very easy because the whole frame has already been decoded
and sits there in the decoder’s memory ready to be displayed again. So there
is no extra effort for the decoder. All it does is to set a pointer to its memory,
where the previously displayed field data is still stored.
This RFF flag alone is not enough, because the decoder also needs to know
which field should be displayed first, and/or next. Every time an extra field is
displayed the field dominance gets reversed. The decoder has no logic of its
own to determine the field dominance, so instead it always looks at the other
flag, the TFF, for each frame to determine if the top or bottom field should be
displayed first.
Below you see the typical sequence of how the pulldown flags are ”toggled” by
the MPEG-2 encoder and how they are interpreted by the decoder.
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TFF RFF Fields displayed
0 0 B-T
0 1 B-T-B
1 0 T-B
1 1 T-B-T
(Interpretatation: B = Bottom field, T = Top field)
Field dominance
Normally, when pulldown is NOT used, the TFF flag represents the field domi-
nance of the source video and is set by the encoder user and left unchanged
throughout the whole stream. When set to ”1”, TFF means “Upper”- otherwise
“Lower” field dominance. The encoder does not really care what you choose,
but you better choose the field dominance that characterizes your interlaced
movie. Otherwise the player will display the fields in the opposite order, resul-
ting in very jerky motion.
The individual fields need to be displayed, by the DVD player on a TV, in the
same order as the camera originally registered them. That is if there is motion
in your video, which we have to assume.
It is important to understand that the Field order/dominance is a PROPERTY

of the SOURCE MOVIE, i.e., before it gets encoded into MPEG-2. This proper-
ty is acquired during the capturing, digitizing or editing phase of the workflow.
It happens when each pair of fields is grouped together to form a ”Frame” in
the movie. This can happen in one of two ways and it is determined by which
of the fields contains the temporally first or oldest picture information of the
two, the odd/top/upper or the even/bottom/lower field. If you are not careful
about your field dominance, or just unlucky, you may end up with a movie with
mixed field orders, some clips may have upper and others may have lower field
dominance. This kind of problems must be dealt with before you are ready to
do any successful MPEG-2 encoding.
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The MPEG-2 encoder cannot change or fix a field dominance problem, be-
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cause it is a property of the source video. It can only forward the information
to the decoder/player, correctly or incorrectly. If the encoder gets incorrect
information about field order of its input clip, then this error will just propaga-
te unaltered to the decoder, which will therefore display the fields in reversed
order.
The MPEG-2 encoder doesn’t care about the field dominance of your source
video. It just encodes a Top and a Bottom field as one frame, regardless of field
dominance. The problem doesn’t occur until after decoding, within the player.
When the player has successfully decoded a frame it has to decide which of
the two field types to output first onto the TV screen. That is the real reason
why the MPEG-2 encoder asks for the field dominance, to be able to tell the
display order to a decoder that is connected to an interlaced type of monitor,
like a TV.
On a progressive computer display, though, the field dominance has no mea-

ning. The ”Top Field First” flag is therefore ignored by a decoder, which is con-
nected to a progressive display. That is because both fields must be displayed
at the same time on such a device, so the field order is irrelevant. The pictures
will look just the same, regardless of the field dominance.
Jerky Motion due to reversed field order

It is clear that the reversed field order means that, compared to the natural
temporal order, the fields will be displayed in a rather weird pattern.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 .... (temporal field order)

2, 1, 4, 3, 6, 5 .... (reversed field order)
(Using PAL timings here for easier numbers)
Instead of displaying fields in the natural sequence, stepping forward by 20 ms

for each field, you get a pattern like this:
20 ms back, 90 ms forward, 20 ms back, 90 ms forward and so on. That is why
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motion pictures become so terribly jerky when the field order is reversed.
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The only purpose of the ”Top Field First” flag in MPEG-2, is to let, e.g., a settop
player know which of the two fields is supposed be displayed before the other
on an interlaced (TV) monitor, on which fields NEVER get displayed at the
same time. They are always displayed one field after the other on a TV, which
explains why the order (dominance) matters.
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For Your Notes

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Users Guide BitVice 2

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USER´S GUIDE BitVice 2.4

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Advanced encoding engine

BitVice can do one-pass constant bitrate (CBR) encoding, which is faster,

A NOTE ABOUT AUDIO FILES

Droplets (for batch processing and speed

How to create a new droplet

A NOTE ABOUT WORKFLOW

To start encoding, you first need to

A NOTE ABOUT LOG VIEW

Chapter markers in BitVice 2.4

If you shot progressive video, converted to progressive (for example by using

A NOTE ABOUT MULTI-ANGLE WORK

Use Studio RGB

Use gamma 2.2

The actual MPEG-2 encoding process starts with an input of decompressed

Use 1-pass CBR

Drop Frame Count

Start code offset

Spatio and Blur

surprising because, until the advent of affordable desktop DVD production,

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A NOTE ON VIDEO MONITORS

As with all aspects of video production, compressing video and producing

What is Studio RGB?

Encoding movies, with a standards compliant MPEG2 encoder, from a codec

specifications. The effect of this normal conversion is that:

More details about 2:3 Pulldown

Elegance of MPEG-2’s solution

It is important to understand that the Field order/dominance is a PROPERTY

On a progressive computer display, though, the field dominance has no mea-

Jerky Motion due to reversed field order

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 .... (temporal field order)

(Using PAL timings here for easier numbers)

Instead of displaying fields in the natural sequence, stepping forward by 20 ms

For Your Notes

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