If “FILM” is shot at 23.97 frames why are films on DVDS 29.97 frames!!??

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So I’ve noticed something that doesn’t make any sense to me, when converted a DVD of a film that I KNOW was shot at 23.97 frames it gets converted as 29.97 for some reason when set to auto…

This blew my mind because I for sure thought it was handbrake’s fault but apparently I’ve heard that DVDS are actually 29.97 but that doesn’t make sense since pretty much all movies are shot in 23.97…

The one in question was Jackie Chans Drunken Master….

So for some reason when forcing handbrake to convert the film (which is shot at 23.97) TO be the correct 23.97 frame rate at which it was shot, it has dropped frames, somethings not right, its as if the DVD was specifically made to actually truly be 29.97!?

Sure enough when comparing scenes from a 1080P bluray version (which is 23.97 and this 29.97 dvd version you can tell that the 23.97 ORIGINALLY SHOT VERSION somehow has LESS frames? The 29.97 dvd frame rate version literally has more frames than the original has? (in detail, when comparing a fight scene there is just more frames \*actual real frames\* in the 29.97 version, the 23.97 has less of them)

So my conclusion is that when people say old movies are filmed in 23.97 (or 24 frames) that its mostly a lie then? Because if that were true its literally impossible to convert a 23.97 shot movie to play smoothly as 29.97.. Makes no sense?

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4 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

The difference is between film and TV. Analog SD TV runs (or ran, since it’s largely been retired at this point) at 29.97 fields/sec, and is further complicated by historically being an interlaced format. Film is 23.97. DVD is a media that primarily supports video sequences. You’re absolutely correct that there is ‘work’ needed when trying to map film frames to video fields. This has historically been a ‘3:2 pulldown’ encoding process.

This all changed with HDTV and things like blu-ray which were able to break the constraints of conventional analog TV transmission and built in support for progressive frames (rather than interlaced) and flexible frame rates.

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