HELP! Having trouble with PAL

ciarrochi wrote on 9/7/2006, 5:01 PM

I'm trying to burn a PAL version of a wedding video. It's being sent to Poland.

Is there any resource where I can learn the basics of PAL? I can't get DVD Architect to do it without settings going nuts!

Comments

bStro wrote on 9/7/2006, 5:30 PM

And by "settings going nuts," you mean what? The simplest way is to just add the NTSC video to your project and set the project itself to PAL. Use an AVI, rather than an MPEG2, file if you can since DVDA is going to have to render it.

At any rate, most systems in Europe can play NTSC video with no trouble at all. You could save yourself some headaches by asking the intendended recipient if theirs can. If so, you don't need to convert anything.

Rob

ciarrochi wrote on 9/7/2006, 8:03 PM

Going nuts, meaning that, say my project is 4.3G, after I insert it into DVD Architect, it reads out as 6.8G. I've tried rendering my project in the basic ntsc mpg-2 and then setting DVD Architect to PAL. I've tried rendering my Vegas 6.0 project as PAL but it never seems to work out.

bStro wrote on 9/7/2006, 9:14 PM

my project is 4.3G, after I insert it into DVD Architect, it reads out as 6.8G.

There are two reasons for that:

1) Because DVDA has to re-render the video as a PAL file, and by default it uses a fairly high bitrate. You can change the bitrate by going to File -> Optimize DVD.

AND:

2) The little "Disc Space Used" indicator in DVDA is only an estimation, and DVDA happens to be lousy at these estimations. How lousy, I havn't yet determined. It's usually easy for me to check how far off DVDA is because I do everything I can to avoid having to let it recompress. For the most part, what I put in is what I'm going to get out, so I know when DVDA is lying. ;)

I would definitely recommend going back to Vegas to render a PAL MPEG2 file, though.

I've tried rendering my project in the basic ntsc mpg-2 and then setting DVD Architect to PAL

You used the NTSC MPEG2 template or the PAL MPEG2 template? You certainly don't want to render out to an NTSC file if you want to make a PAL DVD. Use the PAL settings, that's why Vegas has them. :)

But don't use the PAL MPEG-2 template, either. Use the DVD Architect PAL Video Stream template for the video. Then render the audio as either AC3 or WAV / PCM. (DVDA prefers the audio to be separate from the video, and it's none too happy with MPEG audio, either.)

I'd also recommend asking on the Vegas forum for tips on making an NTSC video into a PAL one.

All this is assuming you can't just send an NTSC disc, and I'm betting you can. ;-)

Rob

jvincent wrote on 9/25/2006, 12:34 PM

Hi bStro,
Reading your reply i see that you know DVDA well so i have a question: I create a compilation like this : with dvdShrink i extract scenes (i obtain Vob files that i insert in my project) from 3 different dvd (1 & 2 are PAL/PCM the 3rd is PAL Dolby 5.1) and my project is PAL/AC3 when i prepare my dvd all audio tracks from the 3rd dvd are re-compressed wich seems logic then i burn my DVD.
When i read the DVD i done on my PC i have a light delay between soud and video in all my tracks except those wich have been re-compressed. This delay is perceptible on the mouth of the singers (it's a concert compilation). Do you have any idea about this problem ?
Thanks in advance.
VINCENT

bStro wrote on 9/25/2006, 1:43 PM

All I can say is that VOBs are not your average MPEG2. They contain quite a bit of additional information, most of which DVDA probably isn't expecting to see in a source file. Personally, I always bring in either AVI or MPEG2 files for the video and AC3 or PCM for the audio. (Okay, I never use PCM, but it is a valid option.)

One thing you might want to try is put those VOBs into Vegas, render the audio portion to AC3, and replace the audio in your DVDA project with those. By default, when you bring a file into DVDA that contains both the audio and the video, DVDA tries to grab the audio from that and recompress it as an AC3 or PCM, depending on your project. Taking that burdon off DVDA may or may not help.

The alternative, I think, would be to use something like TMPGEnc, VirtualDubMod, etc to demux those VOBs first so you have regular MPEG2 files for DVDA to use.

Rob

jvincent wrote on 9/25/2006, 11:12 PM

Hi Rob,
Great thanks i will try these 2 solutions.
Thanks again.
Vincent

jvincent wrote on 9/26/2006, 12:09 PM

Hi Rob,

I used Vegas7 to render audio apart and it works fine. It's longer to create the project but it works (no delay sound/image). Thanks a lot for the idea.
Just an other question: I created an introduction media in my project and to do it i created a video with vegas and rendered it using template PAL DVD Architect, when i insert it in DVDA i have a message : this file is not the type required.. Strange message ...My project is in PAL format. Any idea.
Thanks again.
VINCENT