I Have a Hunch
I have a hunch that studio masters are only used for iTunes movie encoding, and not music videos. This would explain the contrast between movies *always* having 23.976 fps, and music videos having frame rates all over the place.
For example, if I ripped a music video off one of my DVDs, it could be PAL (720x576, 25 fps progressive), or it could be NTSC (720x480, 29.97 fps interlaced or 23.976 fps progressive). The truth is, all film is mastered at 23.976 fps, and the difference with PAL is that it's played back 4% faster to achieve 25 fps. Considering that music videos from the iTunes Store commonly have 23.976, 25, and 29.97 fps, I'm guessing that DVDs are allowed to be used as sources. If I had a PAL source, it would be a pretty simple cropping and scaling procedure that would result in a 25 fps music video. However, if I had an NTSC source, I would need to deinterlace. If I chose to deinterlace through using deinterlacement filters, I would end up with a 29.97 fps music video with slightly blurry motion. If instead I used a detelecine filter, it would delete frames, restoring the original 23.976 fps.
What I'm trying to say is that using DVDs as sources is something which is very much a bad move for Apple, not only because of the inherently lower quality of using DVDs rather than lossless masters as sources, but also because it implies that we will never see HD music videos on the iTunes Store, at least not for a very long time.
And I have further proof - once I downloaded a music video which had not been properly deinterlaced, displaying horizontal lines whenever movement occurs (Shadowfeet by Brooke Fraser, if you wanted to know). Also it would explain the cropped off copyright messages at the end of videos. In getting rid of the letterboxing lines, they've subsequently cropped off the copyright, a message that isn't even required at the end of videos because of the embedded copyright information in the file you download. This realization really truly disappoints me, because I would have loved to see HD music videos available on the iTunes Store.
Thoughts?
For example, if I ripped a music video off one of my DVDs, it could be PAL (720x576, 25 fps progressive), or it could be NTSC (720x480, 29.97 fps interlaced or 23.976 fps progressive). The truth is, all film is mastered at 23.976 fps, and the difference with PAL is that it's played back 4% faster to achieve 25 fps. Considering that music videos from the iTunes Store commonly have 23.976, 25, and 29.97 fps, I'm guessing that DVDs are allowed to be used as sources. If I had a PAL source, it would be a pretty simple cropping and scaling procedure that would result in a 25 fps music video. However, if I had an NTSC source, I would need to deinterlace. If I chose to deinterlace through using deinterlacement filters, I would end up with a 29.97 fps music video with slightly blurry motion. If instead I used a detelecine filter, it would delete frames, restoring the original 23.976 fps.
What I'm trying to say is that using DVDs as sources is something which is very much a bad move for Apple, not only because of the inherently lower quality of using DVDs rather than lossless masters as sources, but also because it implies that we will never see HD music videos on the iTunes Store, at least not for a very long time.
And I have further proof - once I downloaded a music video which had not been properly deinterlaced, displaying horizontal lines whenever movement occurs (Shadowfeet by Brooke Fraser, if you wanted to know). Also it would explain the cropped off copyright messages at the end of videos. In getting rid of the letterboxing lines, they've subsequently cropped off the copyright, a message that isn't even required at the end of videos because of the embedded copyright information in the file you download. This realization really truly disappoints me, because I would have loved to see HD music videos available on the iTunes Store.
Thoughts?
Comments
I guess no one cares. *shrug*
I don't think music videos are all that important to people. They usually aren't directorial masterpieces, just disposable media so the quality doesn't have to be great. It does annoy me when people don't take care with the basics like deinterlace and cropping but these guys will have to run through thousands of videos so they will likely focus on the big selling tracks.