Making PAL project into NTSC

PeterWright wrote on 2/16/2004, 9:06 PM
Following up on "HalfDead"'s thread in the Vegas forum, I have almost completed a PAL DVD, with about eight Menus and maybe 48 chapter thumbnails.

This project will also be marketed in the US, so I'm trying to find the most painless way of also making an NTSC version.

What I'm hoping is to use Save As to create an NTSC version of the project - changing Project Video Properties to NTSC.

I'll first create NTSC versions of the MPEG clips and hopefully be able to "point" the new project at these in a way that maintains the same Menus, Text labels, markers, chapters, IN/OUT points etc. - it would be a pain to have to do all this twice!

I'll be giving this a try soon, but wondered if anyone had already been through the process. If not, I'll report back when I've had a go ...

Peter

Comments

RBartlett wrote on 2/17/2004, 3:59 AM
is your source footage in fact PAL progressive by any chance?

There are some gains in doing the format conversion in Vegas (mostly smart resampling, but supersampling and blur can assist you [although more so with NTSC to PAL transfer for the latter mentioned ss+blur tools].

I tend to render busy or highly visual clips in the other format (to DV or MPEG) to see how Vegas will cope. Then select 4% speed reduction/pitch-up-conversion or frame rate adaptation as suits my project. Being PAL progressive helps as this is a valid route to 24p NTSC DVD. Even if it isn't progressive, de-interlacing and applying that pulldown thingie can be more pleasing than frame rate adaptation from 50i to 59.94i. It depends on the source material and how you shot it.

You have a choice of resize or crop and whether you adjust the colour gamut to NTSC.
PeterWright wrote on 2/17/2004, 4:23 AM
No, my source is standard PAL DV.

But my question wasn't so much concerned with the quality of the conversion - it's now many hours later and Vegas has converted my two PAL 30 min clips into NTSC MPEG2, and they look fine. Took 3 hours for each clip.

What I was hoping to avoid was having to construct the same DVDA project twice - I just wanted to substitute the NTSC clips for the PAL ones - finished!

But so far the way to do this is proving elusive.

I found that I could have simply changed the DVDA project settings of the original project from PAL to NTSC, then "Prepare DVD" would have re-encoded from PAL MPEG2 across to NTSC MPEG 2. I may try doing this out of interest, but I suspect that the quality will suffer as the source is already MPEG2.

The alternative seems to be, as I hoped it would not be, reconstructing the same project all over again using the NTSC clips. This will avoid DVDA having to re-encode the video, as I've already done this in Vegas.

But it will mean repeating all the following tasks, which I've already done once:

* Changing the 48 thumbnails to the style and visible frame I want

* Changing the font sizes and positions of the text to go with each thumbnail

* Re-setting the out points of each of 48 chapters so that the player returns to the Scene selection menu at the end of each chapter.

* Changing the sub-menu navigation arrows and adding text

I still hope I've missed something and that it is easier than this, so I'll avoid going through all this labour till tomorrow, in case another solution turns up ...



RBartlett wrote on 2/17/2004, 5:31 AM
You will likely notice the quality hit if you change the project settings in DVDA.
I'm not sure if DVDA takes thumbnails from the frame number or the timecode. Either way you might need to correct the thumbs.
You'd have to give the rendered file/files the same name when you started up DVD-A in order to gain any workflow benefit.

When going between standards/languages, nothing is exactly easy.
It is even more annoying when you consider that (even) closed GoP IBP MPEG-2 has a real frame rate lower than 25/50 or 29.97/59.94. Just that it is effectively 25/50 or 29.97/59.94.
PeterWright wrote on 2/17/2004, 5:58 AM
Thanks - you're right - I had to "fool" the PAL Project by putting the NTSC clips in the same folder with the same name before opening, then Save As and change Proj settings to NTSC.

It's Rendering right now - says it'll take just under 20 mins.

Earlier I tried just changing the PAL settings to NTSC the re-rendering - it started off, due to take 4 hours, and as you say still produce inferior quality.

My only remaining puzzle is to find a way to get the original PAL project to find the PAL MPEG2 clips - I've "parked" them in a temporary folder and replaced them with identically named NTSC clips. I know I can do the double switch and put 'em back, but it would be good to tell DVDA to find them in a separate location.

Maybe if I hide the NTSC ones too, DVDA will ask where to find replacement clips .... I'll try that when the render's done.
PeterWright wrote on 2/17/2004, 6:48 AM
Ah well - the NTSC project took 45 mins to prepare, but it works and looks fine.

And, after moving the NTSC replacement clips out of the way, I reopened the PAL project and it asked me where to find replacement clips, so both projects now open without shuffling clips around.

Hope this helps others - it certainly helped me!