www.makemkv.com

Hello,

I'm toying with the idea of ripping my DVD collection and have tried MakeMKV a few times. Really easy to use and the only headache lies in knowing what subs do what (often multiple sub of the same language), but I can live with that. My problem is that I just discovered that when I play a DVD and its mkv side by side, the... how could I say it in English... two images at the same time in the movie are not the same.
I mean, let's say I pause the movie at 30min I won't have the same image on the original DVD and on the MKV. I assume it is a difference in frame rate but strangely the two versions of the movie display the same length. Wouldn't the length be different if the fps is not the same ?

So, like you see, I'm not tech savy, could someone explain to me what is happening here and ultimately if this is indeed a problem or nothing to be worried about (I don't want to watch my movies at a higher speed than the original). The beauty of MakeMKV to me is that it is meant to rip the source as faithfully as possible.

DVD players correct the video to match TV scan rates. In countries other than North America, PAL format is used, which is essentially 25 full frames per second, split into 50 interleaved frames per second. North America uses NTSC, which is just under 30/60 fps.

Films are usually recorded at a bit under 24 fps, though... In the NTSC world, they will "telecine" the output (adding extra frames) to get the proper speed, but PAL often simply plays the 24fps source at 25fps, so the video moves faster and ends sooner.

Where this telecining is done is usually in the disk mastering, which is why region-specific disks won't be exactly the same. PAL won't have it, NTSC will.

What the playback software does with the results can vary all over the place. Some will try to remove the telecine to play at 24fps on your computer, others will play it at whatever rate the files says to play it at.

Programs like Handbrake the transcode the video have settings to determine whether or not they change the FPS.