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DVD profile -
Tartan (UK) Special Version
Special Edition

What's this "ghosting" all about?

You see a ghostly image of the frame before the frame you're actually watching--two film frames interlaced over each other. Watching closely, this actually happens intermittently several times a second, causing a pulsing, stuttering effect.
Here's how I figure the effect happens:
When a film is converted to NTSC video, the 24 frames per second of film is distributed out over the 30 (29.97, if you wanna be picky) frames per second of NTSC. Fortunately, NTSC isn't exactly 30 solid frames of video, but 60 "fields," with two interlaced fields forming one frame. What film to NTSC conversion does is it distributes the film frames thus:

Film Frame 1 = NTSC Fields 1, 2, and 3
Film Frame 2 = NTSC Fields 4 and 5
Film Frame 3 = NTSC Fields 6, 7, and 8
Film Frame 4 = NTSC Fields 9 and 10

So

NTSC Frame 1 = Film Frame 1
NTSC Frame 2 = Film Frame 1 + 2
NTSC Frame 3 = Film Frame 2 + 3
NTSC Frame 4 = Film Frame 3
NTSC Frame 5 = Film Frame 4

Repeat this process six times, and you'll have the 24 frames distributed over 60 fields. You'll notice, however, that Film Frame 2 doesn't exist as a single NTSC frame--it's split up, interlaced with NTSC frame 2 (Fields 3 and 4) and 3 (Fields 5 and 6). Usually DVD's and DVD players sort this out so that you don't see the interlaced frames when you step through the footage frame by frame (NTSC frames 2 and 3 out of the five produced above), but sometimes (in the case of the BR UK NTSC DVD) they don't. But I digress. Anyway, the way the NTSC frames flow by one after the other, one doesn't notice the effects of the transfer, as interlaced frames (i.e. frames that consist of fields derived from two different film frames) are sprinkled uniformly on a small level--2 frames, followed by 3 non-interlaced frames.
But in converting from NTSC's 30 fps to PAL's 25 fps, there are two issues: PAL has more lines of resolution than NTSC, meaning that some lines will have to be duplicated and interpolated. Moreover, one out of every six fields has to be dropped, and this is especially problematic because there's a vertical offset between odd and even fields, and we'll get frames where two odd NTSC fields are in the same PAL frame, and PAL frames that have an odd NTSC field in the even PAL field and vice versa.

Film to NTSC Field:
Film Frame 1 = NTSC Fields 1, 2, and 3
Film Frame 2 = NTSC Fields 4 and 5
Film Frame 3 = NTSC Fields 6, 7, and 8
Film Frame 4 = NTSC Fields 9 and 10
Film Frame 5 = NTSC Fields 11, 12, and 13
Film Frame 6 = NTSC Fields 14 and 15
Film Frame 7 = NTSC Fields 16, 17, and 18
Film Frame 8 = NTSC Fields 19 and 20
Film Frame 9 = NTSC Fields 21, 22, and 23
Film Frame 10 = NTSC Fields 24 and 25
Film Frame 11 = NTSC Fields 26, 27, and 28
Film Frame 12 = NTSC Fields 29 and 30
Film Frame 13 = NTSC Fields 31, 32, and 33
Film Frame 14 = NTSC Fields 34 and 35
Film Frame 15 = NTSC Fields 36, 37, and 38
Film Frame 16 = NTSC Fields 39 and 40
Film Frame 17 = NTSC Fields 41, 42, and 43
Film Frame 18 = NTSC Fields 44 and 45
Film Frame 19 = NTSC Fields 46, 47, and 48
Film Frame 20= NTSC Fields 49 and 50
Film Frame 21 = NTSC Fields 51, 52, and 53
Film Frame 22 = NTSC Fields 54 and 55
Film Frame 23 = NTSC Fields 56, 57, and 58
Film Frame 24 = NTSC Fields 59 and 60

NTSC FIELD TO PAL FRAME (Film Frames in resulting PAL frame)
1,2 = PAL FRAME 1 (FF1)
3,4 = PAL FRAME 2 (FF1 + FF2)
5,7 = PAL FRAME 3 (FF2 + FF3, fields mismatched)
8,9 = PAL FRAME 4 (FF3 + FF4, fields reversed)
10, 11 = PAL FRAME 5 (FF4 + FF5, fields reversed)
13, 14 = PAL FRAME 6 (FF5 + FF6)
15, 16 = PAL FRAME 7 (FF6 + FF7)
17, 19 = PAL FRAME 8 (FF7 + FF8, fields mismatched)
20, 21 = PAL FRAME 9 (FF8 + FF9, fields reversed)
22, 23 = PAL FRAME 10 (FF9, fields reversed)
25, 26 = PAL FRAME 11 (FF10 + FF11)
27, 28 = PAL FRAME 12 (FF11)
29, 31 = PAL FRAME 13 (FF12 + FF13, fields mismatched)
32, 33 = PAL FRAME 14 (FF13, fields reversed)
34, 35 = PAL FRAME 15 (FF14, fields reversed)
37, 38 = PAL FRAME 16 (FF15)
39, 40 = PAL FRAME 17 (FF16)
41, 43 = PAL FRAME 18 (FF17, fields mismatched)
44, 45 = PAL FRAME 19 (FF18, fields reversed)
46, 47 = PAL FRAME 20 (FF19, fields reversed)
49, 50 = PAL FRAME 21 (FF20)
51, 52 = PAL FRAME 22 (FF21)
53, 55 = PAL FRAME 23 (FF21 + FF22, fields mismatched)
56, 57 = PAL FRAME 24 (FF23, fields reversed)
58, 59 = PAL FRAME 25 (FF23 + FF24, fields reversed)

So out of 25 PAL frames in a second, only six are perfect frames made up of two properly matched fields from the same film frames (there are 18 out of 30 perfect frames in Film->NTSC conversion). 12 out of 25 frames are interlaced (12 out of 30 in Film->NTSC), and 15 of them have fields that are mismatched or reversed (none in Film->NTSC). Add to this the fact that PAL frames obviously linger in your eyes slightly longer than NTSC frames. Moreover, the distribution of all these different types of frames is uneven over the span of a second, and if you look closely you'll actually notice this pulsating change in quality in the film (when to a casual observer it's just ghosting throughout).
I think that to someone who's never seen BR on DVD, and who isn't told about the problem, this may not be bothersome or even noticeable--they'll more likely blame this on the quality of the film itself and not a result of the transfer. But to someone who's seen one of BR's other DVD releases, you can notice the difference right off the bat, and it's going to bother you a lot.