Best way to convert NTSC to PAL?

farss wrote on 1/18/2005, 5:14 AM

If it was 24p why not remove the pulldown and speed it up 4% to 25fps and convert from that, Should be smooth as silk. From what I know all film that goes to air in PAL countries is run 4% faster at 25fps and no one complains.
Bob.

Laurence wrote on 1/18/2005, 11:23 AM

Yeah, speed up the 24p 4%. If the higher pitch bothers you, you can use one use a 4%pitch transpose to bring it back down by opening the video in Soundforge, transposing it back down 4%, then resaving the file. Soundforge does audio edits like this on video files beautifully.

fwtep wrote on 1/18/2005, 1:52 PM

Well one problem in removing the pulldown (besides never having done that and not knowing how) is that it's a 90 minute movie, so the render time would probably be a couple of days, then I'd have to render the final PAL MPG too.

scdragracing wrote on 1/19/2005, 11:45 AM

i think that you only need to render it once, straight to pal mpeg2, with procoder, and it'll do a better job than anything you are using in vegas... and it shouldn't take two days to render a 90 minute production, even in two-pass mastering mode... you can frameserve it straight off of the vegas ntsc timeline to procoder.

Coursedesign wrote on 1/19/2005, 11:56 AM

See also today's post "OT: Dilemma... Release my DVD in PAL or NTSC?".

Laurence wrote on 1/19/2005, 6:53 PM

Here's another NTSC / PAL conversion program:

http://www.focusinfo.com/products/firestore/DVConversionSuite/dvcsuite.html

Kind of expensive though at $299. It does have an available "motion detection algorythm" which makes it different from other programs if you use that option. Anyway, you can download the demo (it puts the company logo in the middle of the picture) and try it out.

geo wrote on 3/24/2024, 3:57 PM

If you're on the Vegas timeline, how do you render straight to PAL mpeg 2 using Procoder?

fr0sty wrote on 3/24/2024, 4:51 PM

For frame rate conversions, I prefer to use optical flow resampling.

Former user wrote on 3/24/2024, 5:52 PM

@fr0sty Have you tried that on edited footage rather than individual shots?

It doesn't give good results, download and view frame by frame to see the true horror.

mark-y wrote on 3/24/2024, 7:11 PM

I wish someone would write a script to eliminate the morphed frame at straight cuts; otherwise good for me.

3POINT wrote on 3/24/2024, 8:00 PM

Is it still necessary to convert NTSC to PAL or vice versa? My TV plays both formats!

fr0sty wrote on 3/24/2024, 9:00 PM

@fr0sty Have you tried that on edited footage rather than individual shots?

It doesn't give good results, download and view frame by frame to see the true horror.

If you use vegas' other resample modes, you get ghosting on all movement.

EricLNZ wrote on 3/25/2024, 4:01 AM

Going from NTSC to PAL you are losing frames so maybe disabling resampling will look smoother?

mark-y wrote on 3/25/2024, 3:28 PM

If you are starting with 23.976 progressive source, here are your options for 25p output in Vegas (project and render).

Resample OFF
Observe Bump every second, Clean transition

Resample BLEND
Observe Blur every second, Blended transition

Resample OPTICAL
Observe Clean flow, Morphed transition
An option to skip the morphed frame would be really nice!

EricLNZ wrote on 3/25/2024, 5:17 PM

I have an NTSC project (24fps film with pulldown to NTSC)

@mark-y That was the original OP's comment when the thread was started in 2005. Our current poster "Geo" doesn't say whether this applies to him/her.

Anyway my thoughts are like those of @3POINT. Is it necessary to convert?

mark-y wrote on 3/25/2024, 5:33 PM

Oops! That's where starting one's own thread saves confusion with what was said almost 20 years ago 😱

Hope this still helps @geo

Procoder is a separate, unrelated application, actually a knockoff of Handbrake. As such, I don't think it does any framerate resampling -- drop or dupe only.

For further peer support, you should provide the MediaInfo details as shown here.

https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/faq-how-to-post-mediainfo-and-vegas-pro-file-properties--104561/

Robert Johnston wrote on 3/25/2024, 11:08 PM

If we are still talking about conversion from NTSC to PAL, there is a "trick" you can use that doesn't require resampling. What you do is use the "Add at Project Frame Rate" menu item when you right click on media in the Project Media bin.

What it does, which you may not like for various reasons, is it adds the media to the timeline and slows it down slightly by timestretching. That's for NTSC to PAL. So, every frame from the NTSC media will be on the PAL timeline. No dropped frames. I suppose you would get the same results if you exported the NTSC media to an image sequence at the NTSC frame rate, and then imported the image sequence into a PAL project at that PAL frame rate. When played back, you won't get that stutter when there's motion. Audio sounds good because Vegas will automatically set pitch/shift to elastique. Remember to disable resampling, or try it with resampling if you like.

3POINT wrote on 3/25/2024, 11:57 PM

Anyway my thoughts are like those of @3POINT. Is it necessary to convert?

My 4kTV (and PC) plays every framerate from 24 to 60 fps (except 48fps) fluent and without stutter...

mark-y wrote on 3/26/2024, 12:51 PM

Add at Project Frame Rate
Observe Video and Audio are sped up by 4.3%

mark-y wrote on 3/27/2024, 6:58 AM

What it does, which you may not like for various reasons, is it adds the media to the timeline and slows it down slightly by timestretching. That's for NTSC to PAL.

For NTSC 29.970 to PAL 25 that would be correct, slowed down by -16.6%

For NTSC 23.976 to PAL 25 the playback is sped up by 25/(24x1000/1001) or +4.27%.