NTSC TO PAL Conversion Software

trappercanada wrote on 6/22/2004, 1:40 PM
Gents (& Ladies)

Where can I obtain "reasonably" priced conversion software to take a Vegas timeline project (DV footage from NTSC camera) and render into PAL format and then proceed in DVD MPEG 2 rendering ?

I would really like to reduce the number of rendering cycles - is this best direct path to a final DVD that will play on European units ?

Hans

Comments

BJ_M wrote on 6/22/2004, 1:56 PM
what do you consider "reasonably priced "?


procoder 2 blows everything else away for under 10grand for conversions ..... and i think it is cheap ...

but there are a lot of other options that can work all the way down to free





taliesin wrote on 6/22/2004, 1:58 PM
Use Vegas to do this. Just import your NTSC stuff and render out to PAL.

(Are you german? - Take a look at our german vegas web-page and forum over at and )

Marco
GTakacs wrote on 6/22/2004, 2:12 PM
What he said! Canopus ProCoder 2 is the way to go!
GTakacs wrote on 6/22/2004, 2:14 PM
I will try one more test tonight, but so far my consensus is that Vegas does a lousy job converting PAL to NTSC. I am sure that it's just as bad going the other way from NTSC to PAL.

For more info see my previous thread.
taliesin wrote on 6/22/2004, 2:24 PM
Don't know what you did there. I made several PAL-NTSC/NTSC-PAL conversions using Vegas for that job. Looked great. Except of some blurry movements which are always seen in such conversions because of the framerate adaption you didn't see differences at all. I compared with some other results being done in external tools but there was no reason not to do it in Vegas.

Marco
WVL wrote on 6/22/2004, 4:14 PM
You don't have to render to PAL. All PAL dvd-players will play NTSC-dvd's, and so will your tv set, unless the tv is older than 10 years, or so.
It doesn't work the other way around, though.

So just finalyze everything in NTSC, you'll be fine.
guns1inger wrote on 6/22/2004, 4:36 PM
Over here in Australia (another PAL country) we have seen a growing trend amongst budget releases of simply re-authoring the original US NTSC release with local region codes. Some of these are from large studios. Obviously they don't see the point in expending the effort in format conversion either.
farss wrote on 6/22/2004, 5:14 PM
Most of the stuff coming out of the studios is 24p which the players play out as either PAL or NTSC.
guns1inger wrote on 6/22/2004, 5:23 PM
Frame rate is only part of the conversion - there is also resolution to take into account. These commercial disks are clearly marked as NTSC.
farss wrote on 6/22/2004, 6:12 PM
I suspect there are some which are indeed true NTSC, but the majority I'm reliably informed are 24p. The player does the 2:3 pulldown for NTSC and I'm not 100% certain what it does to play out in PAL land.

When I've got some spare time I'm going to make a 24p DVD and hook the player upto a scope and tell the player to output PAL and then NTSC.