S & W is better -- but tweaking procoder can get you not to bad (ntsc to pal , procoder is awesome) ..

for true interpolation you should look at products like Phoenix Tools TimeMaster or shake or fusion or combustion or AE with various plug ins like twixtor

Thanks for the tips B_JM. I started to check out Twixtor etc. but for the time being I don't think my wallet or my brain can take any more new software, especially as my $700 outlay for Procoder has yet to pay back :)

Would be interested to know how I might 'tweak' Procoder to do a better job regarding the smoothness. As I recall there wasn't a lot of scope. I'll pose the same question on the Canopus forum.

Well... the DVD replicators seem to be one of very few owners of a Snell & Willcox box in Thailand. They charge 20,000 baht (520 US$) flat fee whether they're doing all the DVD authoring (which I'm doing myself) or simply a PAL > NTSC translation. It doesn't seem too bad for a video that's nearly 2 hours.

So I have 2 further questions re. the Snell & Willcox CVR450...

1. Does this thing require a tape input? I guess it might as (I think) it's a realtime machine. I have to decide whether to give them the file as 2 x mini-DV tapes or as a big AVI on a hard drive. And will it output a DV-AVI to a hard drive or would I need to recapture from an outputted tape?

2. Does it also do MPEG2 encoding as well as PAL > NTSC translation? If it does then will it do VBR with a minimum, average and maximum like software does? And what about it's MPEG quality vs good software such as CCE, Procoder or MC?

I suspect I'd be better off just getting them to do the PAL-AVI > NTSC-AVI bit and handling the MPEG2 encoding myself.

The CVR450 is only a standards converter.
I'd just give them a DV tape of the PAL and they can give you back an NTSC tape. I'm assuming you do have a VCR (DSR-11?) that'll handle NTSC?
Also the S&W box doesn;t have 1394 so make certain they've got a VCR like the DSR 2000 that'll do SDI so as far as possible your footage stays in the digital domain.
Bob.

Before you spend all those dollars, have you tried converting with Vegas?

I've done one conversion with Vegas and another with DVDA and was pleased with both.

If the service company were using one of the larger Snell & Wilcox converters with the phase correlation motion compensation aswell as the AR/field-rate conversion then I would consider putting my hand in my pocket.

The conversion algorithm of the CVR450 is rather more simple than perhaps you've been led to believe. This is a "professional low end" linear conversion box that has plenty of connection options that itself makes up for its simpler approach to conversion. The Alchemist with the S&W patented Phase Correlation motion compensation algorithm is "where it is really at".

I won't name names but I'm led to believe by people who have worked with the BBC and Snell & Wilcox that the Alchemist Ph.C and M.Sc units are phenomenal compared to almost anything else. Where there is motion and a different target field rate to the source, these puppys do a fantastic job of conversion with negligible resolution loss or artifact/aberration.

The CVR450 and Alchemists cost significant amounts of money so you would expect either to carry a premium. I'd wager that a carefully tuned Vegas veggie project could match the CVR450 but I think you'd need to follow BJ_M's recommendations to beat the Alchemist class of converter. As you don't mention the Alchemist being an option, I'd go for PeterWrights suggestion for conversion.

From what I've read only, I'd place Procoder somewhere between a fairly carefully configured Vegas conversion project and the Alchemist. I wouldn't buy Procoder if I didn't have to though.

Sliding OT:
If your source was 25p you could consider a 24p conversion in NTSC SD resolution. Remember that NTSC folks don't seem to mind pulldown insertion. So you could scale/AR convert to NTSC size and then make a 24p project that runs for 4% longer than your PAL project counterpart. Pitch convert the lengthened project up in frequency by 4% too. Then you can use the 24p profile of Vegas and DVD Architect to make a 24p DVD that will work in most players (and even better on progressive compatible player/TV combos and PCs).

I've thought about doing a universal 24p DVD myself. What puts me off 24p only works at NTSC res from what I can see. Most of the Hollywood stuff you see in PAL land seems to be 50i, perhaps because of this issue?
Bob.

25p is normal in PAL resolution and perhaps your impression has been skewed by a tool that misreports the format of what you are watching. 25p PAL resolution shown with a 50Hz rendition is normal telecine fair for us lot -agree?

Just that for most folks the frame is still scanned in two halfs by most large screen, non-PC playback equipment in PAL regions. The eye will tend towards the 25p original even on interlaced playback equipment, such is the persistence of vision of our eyeball receivers!

24p is NTSC oriented in Vegas. However it is just because the templates are not there for 24p PAL or 25p PAL. There is also the fact that so much progressive kit in PAL regions had a caveat to only work when running in NTSC oriented playback modes. Just to add to the confusion of this premium capability. Computer/Internet/TV convergence hellps this over time.
The term "broadcast-phosphor" is going to be a reference to a confusing concept when flat panels have reached us all.

WhitePaper-including-DTV-popular-formats

24P is easy to convert to PAL25, just speed it up and render it also progressive 25P - or you can also render it out as 25i , depends if a little or a lot of motion and which tool your using for conversion ...


As for procoder conversion:
The conversion in Procoder works with interlaced footage - I found out that i can get better results if I flip the field order on the output (procoder will properly crop the top line for field order conversion) , but make sure you have set the INPUT field order correctly - procoder only guesss at the field order based on the last same type file you used or reads the header on mpeg files .. This is for NTSC 29.97i to PAL 25'i .. also - set the function in procoder to not resize the image , but to letterbox the ntsc for pal ..

Set the re-time function to 10%. Use mastering Quality .

For Pal to NTSC, i would either de-interlace the PAL and convert to 24P NTSC or run the output through fusion or along those lines ... Fusion does the best de-interlacing (and interlacing) also on anything and its fast (and not that expensive really if you get the DFX package with only the things you need, plus it works with most AE plug ins and a huge assortment of hardware devices) , I consider it a good companion to Vegas, along with Virtualdubmod and avisynth ..

Thanks for all the replies.

I don't have an NTSC mini-DV tape capability, only PAL (The Z1 will change that for me, but not for a good while).

And after reading that the CVR450 is no Alchemist, I've decided to stick with the software route for now.

I'll experiment with some of these other methods. Cheers