Thanks to all who took time to respond...

................Reply by: Spot
In your explanation above, I didn't see what you don't like about the conversion. Could you describe only what you don't like about the conversion that you are doing? I'm getting a conversion that looks very much like the original. I'm viewing on two different monitors, both PAL and NTSC capable. The footage is highly compressed in original form, and it displays some macroblocks. As far as I can see, I'm not going to get anything better..........

- I don't like the video. It looks blurred and jerky. I took a file showing a starfiled (at the ESA site) and converted it in 2 ways for testing purposes:

1.AVi 25>VidtualDub change FR to 23.976>AVI 23.976 to MPEG2 film pulldown 2-3 in Vegas = result HERE is perfect (even though haven't seen it on TV yet).
2.AVI 25>Vegas timeline>Project properties NTSC DV progressive (file is progressive)>encode to MPEG2 29.97 as Farss has said (reduce interlace flicker)>video seems jerky. This MPEG2 compared to the other one above is clearly inferior, anyone can notice the diference. That one above is crystal clear, this one is blurred and not smooth. That's it. Macroblocks? I have noticed some banding on original videos from ESA but nomacroblocks at all. Note: I've got Vegas 5 here.

..............Reply by: John_Cline
Regarding the macroblocks... the "MSU deblocking filter" for VirtualDub (and Vegas via the WAX plugin) does a pretty decent job of removing/smoothing macroblocks. MSU Filters..............
- Thanksfor the input. MSU filter - last version 2.1 - for macroblocking is buggy - is not working here, at least for me.

.............Reply by: farss
If it's THAT cruddy and you'r that worried about it I think NASA will give you a DB or SP dub for a reasonable fee..............
-LOL, not at all these videos are from the European Space Agengy - please try some googling....

............Reply by: Laurence
For regular video, it's a tough call on whether Vegas or a program like DVFilm Atlantis is better for converting PAL to NTSC. For animations, I think that DVFilm Atlantis does a better job. It does it by applying deinterlacing, interpolating the extra resolution, slowing the video down 4%, then applying a 3:2 pulldown to make the 24fps int 29.97.This makes for quite smooth motion which is really obvious on an animation. To use DVFilm Atlantis with Vegas, you'll also need something like the Main Concept DV Codec which costs about $40, or the free Huffy lossless codec.................
-I didn't know anything about this Atlantis..Anyway, thanks for the input.

BTW, I was reading a detailed explanation on Telecine at doom9....

..............So, now we have an Mpeg-2 Video stream CONTAINING 24 FRAMES per second and TFF and RFF flags in action. This will create a CONFLICT between 24 fps versus 30fps and the VERBATIM 29.97fps NTSC Video standard. To solve this, there are 2 other advantages of Mpeg-2 Video stream than can be applied, the FPS flag and the DROP_FRAME flag.
When the FPS flag value is PROGRAMMED in the header of an Mpeg-2 Video stream, it will ORDER the player to PLAY this Video stream at an exact SPEED. So, if the FPS flag is set as 29.97fps, the Video stream will play at exactly 29.97 frames per second.
When the DROP_FRAME flag value is 1, it will ORDER the player to REMEMBER that the 00 and 01 frames are dropped at the start of each minute except minutes which are even multiples of 10. The result is much the same as applying the 29.97fps value...............

Does MainConcept built-in have these options (I'm not at home now so I cannot check it out)?

http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/synch.htm

Thanks a bunch.

Cunhambebe, it doesn't matter WHO the video comes from, it's very, very compressed. Yes, it's a DV codec, but it's a poor codec. This is why the macroblocks show up.
the only thing I'm seeing that I don't care for is in the PIP segments there is some fine interlace artifact that is part of the original compression, and it's visible in PAL or NTSC.

Sure Spot, it doesn't matter where the video came from....so why is the first conversion (NTSC film) looks better than the second way (25 to 29.97)???? I' m sorry but the Macroblocks you refer to have nothing nothing to do with this converSion. The artifacts can be there, but it was not what I meant when I said the video was jerky.
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Thanks

BTW, converting with Vegas from PAL 25 to NTSC 29.97 (direct conversion, merge fields,etc...) might be OK, since the result looks the same as the one you see on our local TV when networks convert PAL 25 to PAL-M 30. But anyway, being Vegas or local TVs, the video is definitely jerky.
One more thing, I still dont understand what do 25; 29.97 or 30 fps have to do with color sytems since these may rely on other settings.....this subject matter is definitely difficult. Anyone? Spot, Farss? BTW Spot, you didn'r made it clear your own way to go from 25 to 29.97.
Thanks to all

I'm not seeing jerky video, either. There is a small bit of frame interpolation going on, as you'd expect, but it's not at all jerky, it's quite smooth on my external monitor.
Or do you mean it's not playing back from the hard drive smoothly?

I've not got the original material to judge but I like many others have done plenty of PAL -> NTSC conversions. Mine and Spots methods are a little different but the results are equally acceptable. I've had two guys who work in broadcast who are pretty picky about quality look at it and neither of them found any fault with it. I had to mention to them the small amount of motion blur due to frame interpolation before they even noticed it, after all for all they knew that could have been due to slow shutter speeds when the source was shot anyway.

A lot of the thing that you're saying make no sense to me at all, comments like 'the speedup is noticeable', if I start with 10 mins of PAL and convert that to 10mins of NTSC how can there be any speedup? Sure I've got more frames than I had to start with but so what.

Bear in mind though that ALL the sources I've worked from was DV25 50i, I've never tried working from 25p film sourced material. No immediate issues come to mind but you never know. If I had to I'd probably convert it back to 24p and use 2:3:3:2 pulldown to convert to 60i. I have gone from 18fps to NTSC but as the film was so bad to start with all I was hoping for was coloured blobs that moved.

PAL <-> NTSC <-> SECAM conversion happens all the time in the world of broadcast. All international feeds are sent in the originating countries format, any network therefore has banks of converters. The results are pretty good, Joe Average never notices but anyone who works in broadcast will tell you straight away what format it originated in, there's no perfect way to convert any of these formats. How it was done in the early days was a NTSC monitor with long persistence phosphors with a PAL camera pointed at it!

My advice, just go with what you've got, if it's going to be viewed on a typical NTSC TV do you think anyones going to notice :)

Bob (back in PAL land).

Just out of curiosity Cunhambebe, are you looking at the results of your conversion on an NTSC monitor or a regular computer monitor? They're going to look a lot smoother on the NTSC monitor than they do on a computer screen.

Thanks to all who took time to respond.
Reply by: Spot
.................I'm not seeing jerky video, either. There is a small bit of frame interpolation going on, as you'd expect, but it's not at all jerky, it's quite smooth on my external monitor. Or do you mean it's not playing back from the hard drive smoothly?.....................

-So, if you call it frame interpolation, that's it. Nothing to do with hard drive. It's the first time I try to convert PAL to NTSC that's why (of course) I'm not familiar with this process. Thanks for your help, Spot. I really appreciate it.

Reply by: farss
.................I've not got the original material to judge but I like many others have done plenty of PAL -> NTSC conversions. Mine and Spots methods are a little different but the results are equally acceptable. I've had two guys who work in broadcast who are pretty picky about quality look at it and neither of them found any fault with it. I had to mention to them the small amount of motion blur due to frame interpolation before they even noticed it, after all for all they knew that could have been due to slow shutter speeds when the source was shot anyway. ...............

- Thanks for the input.

..............A lot of the thing that you're saying make no sense to me at all, comments like 'the speedup is noticeable', if I start with 10 mins of PAL and convert that to 10mins of NTSC how can there be any speedup? Sure I've got more frames than I had to start with but so what................

- The so-called speedup happens when I simply tried changing the framerate from 25 to 29.97 in VirtualDub. That was a wrong way - newbie you know.......sorry. The inverse happens when you simply convert 29.97 to 23.976, file is bigger, look as almost slow motion. But that was the wrong way of doing things. I'm trying to get familiar with pulldown 2-3 or 3:2 (same) and IVTC....

......Bear in mind though that ALL the sources I've worked from was DV25 50i, I've never tried working from 25p film sourced material. No immediate issues come to mind but you never know. If I had to I'd probably convert it back to 24p and use 2:3:3:2 pulldown to convert to 60i. I have gone from 18fps to NTSC but as the film was so bad to start with all I was hoping for was coloured blobs that moved...........

- interesting.

................PAL <-> NTSC <-> SECAM (......) , there's no perfect way to convert any of these formats (...) My advice, just go with what you've got, if it's going to be viewed on a typical NTSC TV do you think anyones going to notice :)

- Thanks for the advice. I'm trying converting PAL 25 to 23.976 and then render the file as MEPG2 NTSC film pulldown. I guess the result is gonna look much better.

Reply by: Laurence
Just out of curiosity Cunhambebe, are you looking at the results of your conversion on an NTSC monitor or a regular computer monitor? They're going to look a lot smoother on the NTSC monitor than they do on a computer screen.

- On a PC monitor, but even here anyone can notice the difference. I guess - as I've remarked - rendering as NTSC film is the best bet.

- Now I've got another problem with 2 of my sources.

1.Vegas tells me that one of them is IVTC 23.976. I've already tested a conversion to MPEG2 NTSC film 24 with pulldown. Since the result is perfect, I guess tehre's nothing wrong with what I am doing. If you think there's something wrong hre, please let me know. ;)

2.The other source is NTSC interlaced at 29.97. Converting to MPEG2 NTSC film 24 may not be a good idea, I've noticed the result is blurred. How can I go from 29.97 to 23.976 to make it compatible with all other sources? Should I use IVCT for the file? Ive already tried that and the result is blurred.
?
Thanks in advance

2. I'm no expert in this area but having read through a few posts elsewhere I don't think there's any good way to go from 60i to 24p, that's the whole reason why panny made the DVX100!

I'm suspecting your best bet would be to convert everything to 60i, as you've seen 25p->24p->60i works pretty well by adding pulldown. I'd leave the 60i material as it is.

Bob.