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101 Damations II - Combing Artifacts? (1 Viewer)

Brian L

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Curious if anyone has noticed any odd behavior with this disc. At the outset, I will say that I have a Pioneer 45A, which is known to have various problems with its de-interlacer and 3:2 Pulldown detection.

What I think I am seeing is called combing, and it is NOT subtle. What is odd is that I have watched hundreds of discs with this player, and this is the first time I have seen this, and thus far only with this one particular disc.

While watching this disc, I see moments where certain sections of certain scenes show huge horizontal line structure, and then it goes away. This happens throughout the entire disc.

I wish I could post a screen shot, but if you have this player, and have this disc, you will see it (assuming your player and mine have the same software, and Pure Cinema is turned on).

Right at the start of chapter 2, the dad walks through an open doorway....his shirt will suddenly have horizontal lines across it. In Chapter 5, there are some poodles that jump around...there are all sorts of horizontal lines that appear, and then clear when they stop moving.

What I have discovered is that the problem seems to relate to 3:2 Pull Down (Pure Cinema in Pioneer speak). If I turn off Pure Cinema, that problem goes away.

On the 45A there is a flag that appears when you turn on the disc display (where you see elapsed time, sound format, etc.). It sets a # in the display if the disc is flagged as Film based.

On this disc, that flag is constantly, erratically turning on and off. And what I have noticed is that when I see the combing (assuming that that is what I am seeing), it turns off.

I checked a few other titles, and found that in some cases (Hunchback of Notre Dame II) the flag does toggle, but in a somewhat consistent pattern, and I never see combing on that disc. For comparison, I also popped in Apollo 13 and found that the flag was constant which is what I would expect since it is film based (the picture looked pretty good too).

I know the Secrets write up said that this player was a flag reader, and that this was NOT a good thing with DVDs that were improperly flagged.

I suspect I have found a disc that is seriously screwed up with regard to flagging, and it really shows this shortcoming of the player.

I would be curious if anyone with any other progressive player (Pioneer in particular) could take a look, and perhaps try it with 3:2 pulldown on and off.

Brian
 

Neil Joseph

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Hmm, I think I am going to move this to Audio Video Sources where I know there is more discussion on this sort of phenomenon.
 

Brian L

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No problem, but I actually started a thread (Pioneer 45A Combing?) here with a link to HT Software. I was not sure where it would be best to place the thread.

BGL
 

JohnnyHK

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Hi Brian,

That's one of the discs I viewed while I was trying out a Panasonic S35 a few weeks back. I noticed the same dreadful combing artifacts as you witnessed. I wrote it off as poor deinterlacing performance by the S35, but now I'm not so sure where the fault lies. It was just a rental so unfortunately I can't try it out on the XP30 that I now have.
 

Brian L

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Thanks Johnny!

Given that bad rap that the 45A gets, I am glad that at least one other user with another brand of player has seen the problem with that disc.

Really odd that this is the only disc I have seen this with, and I have a couple hundred in the library at the moment.

BGL
 

Lyle_JP

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Yeah, my copy of 101 Dalmatians II combs like a MoFo too. Pioneer Elite DV-37. Fortunately, the DV-37 (unlike the 45) has a very good motion-adaptive video-mode deinterlacer, so I just have to manually set the player in video mode (Pure Cinema Off) to enjoy it.
 

Brian L

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Fortunately, the DV-37 (unlike the 45) has a very good motion-adaptive video-mode deinterlacer, so I just have to manually set the player in video mode (Pure Cinema Off) to enjoy it.
Thats what I have to do as well on the 45A (Pure Cinema Off). Of course, then you have to put up with occasional line twitter, but thats a lot better than the combing.

Out of curiosity, are there any other titles where you have seen this? I have had the 45A since October (my first progressive player), and have never seen this before.

Brian
 

Neil Joseph

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I never really noticed anything but after reading this, I will have to check it out, hopefully tonight. I have the JVC 500.
 

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