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The 24fps trick that fixed my old DVD rips for good | Blast from the Past - Free To Speak

The 24fps trick that fixed my old DVD rips for good

I've been digitizing my dad's old DVD collection from the 90s, and the motion judder was driving me insane. Everything looked like a soap opera, especially during panning shots. I tried every filter and deinterlacing option in my editing software, but nothing felt natural. Then I read a random comment on a forum about how some DVDs are actually 25fps PAL converted to 29.97 NTSC, and the cadence gets messed up. I checked one disc with a media info tool and sure enough, the frame pattern was all over the place. I set the playback to force 24fps and did a slow pulldown conversion, and it looked like a proper film again. Has anyone else run into this PAL to NTSC mess with older releases, or am I just cursed with my dad's bargain bin picks from 1997? I've got about 40 more discs to go and I'd rather not check each one manually.

2 comments

2 Comments

xena_bailey181mo ago

Yeah I've been through this exact mess with a stack of old martial arts flicks from the 90s. The trick that saved me was batch checking the audio track for that telltale 25fps pitch shift, if the voices sound slightly higher than normal, it's a PAL transfer. You don't need to open every disc in a media tool, just rip a 10 second clip from each and look at the frame timing with VLC's statistics panel. Took me like an hour to go through 50 discs that way. Also make sure you're not accidentally forcing 24fps on true NTSC discs, those will just get worse. Some of those bargain bin labels did actual NTSC masters, not just conversions, so the pattern is totally different. For the 40 you got left, just do a quick spot check on the opening credits, the studio logos always mess up the cadence first if it's a bad transfer. Saves you the pain of sitting through every single chapter.

umar491mo ago

Honestly, the pitch shift check is gold, that saved my whole collection last year too.