[mike.cf]

My new AE100 setup's source is an Toshiba interlaced DVD player connected through component cable. The artifacts I am seeing are best described as flashing dots, often black but sometimes white on a dark background. They appear anywhere on the screen in random patterns. I see them mostly on film transfers (rather than digital animation) like Crouching Tiger, O Brother Where art thou, Godfather etc. At first I thought these were film related but they show up in pretty recent DVDs which I think should have pretty good film source. What are these and what could be the source? Could it be interference from other cables or equipment sharing the same power source? Or are they just plain defects from the film to DVD transfer?

 

[Morbius]

Mike,


The fact that it shows up mostly on film transfers is a clue that it might be 3:2 pulldown artifacts.


Film cameras run at a framing rate of 24 frames per second. Video is effectively 30 frames per second [ 60 half-frame

fields per second ].


Because of this - the process of telecine - conversion of film material to video - repeats certain fields in order to

match the framing rate of video.


The interlaced fields from the DVD player have to eventually be turned into progressive at some point to drive the projector.

These repeated fields can confuse some de-interlace processors - and they end up weaving together 2 fields that

came from different frames of film - thus creating a picture that never really existed. These mis-matched frames can

have "artifacts".


See if you can get a good outboard scaler/line doubler to put between the AE100 and the Toshiba - and see if that helps.


A good scaler/HTPC knows how to deal with the repeated fields from 3:2 pulldown - and won't weave mismatched

fields together.


Dr. Gregory Greenman

Physicist

 

[mike.cf]

Thank you for that excellent explanation, Dr. Greenman. I think this may speed up my acquiring a progressive dvd player or scaler/line doubler.