PAL to NTSC Help!

cofrpayne wrote on 2/9/2004, 10:10 AM
Ok I have a Pal movie that is 2 hours long coming off DVD I am using the .VOB files right on the time line , I need to transfer it to NTSC should I
A: Render it out to AVI NTSC then to MPEG 2 NTSC
B: Render it out to MPEG 2 NTSC
C: Demux the DVD to AVI then Render the AVI (PAL) to MPEG 2 (NTSC)

I started to render the .VOB files striaght to MPEG 2 NTSC it was going to about 14 hours.

Just looking for advice. Thanks

Comments

GaryKleiner wrote on 2/9/2004, 10:21 AM
No point in rendering to avi first. Render straight to Mpeg, and yes, it's going to take a while.

Gary
donp wrote on 2/9/2004, 8:12 PM
I have a PAL DVD that a friend sent to me from the UK, so from what I have read here is to take the pal Mpeg2 and render it to a NTSC mpeg2? Will there much of resolution loss? Vegas show the video time line as:

720x576x32, 25,000 FPS, Alpha=None, Field Order=Upper field first, Mpeg 2

I have never delt with trying to make a NTSC DVD from a PAL DVD before.
GaryKleiner wrote on 2/9/2004, 9:44 PM
Re-rendering an Mpeg to another Mpeg is not going to yeild very high quality results. You are compressing something that is already compressed.

Gray
johnmeyer wrote on 2/9/2004, 9:53 PM
If you are really technically oriented, there is a guide for doing this here:

PAL to NTSC guides

It involves using some tools that aren't real user friendly, especially AVISynth. However, the approach used by these guides takes care of many of the field issues that I think may not be handled using a more generalized tool like Vegas.

I didn't have Vegas the last time I had to do a PAL to NTSC conversion, so perhaps it will do a pretty good job.
farss wrote on 2/9/2004, 10:07 PM
As far as I can tell it does as good a job as anything at any price, well at least when going from AVI to AVI or mpeg.
I sure hope it does, I'm just about to do a set of 6 DVDs for sale in the US using Vegas.

But I think a FAR bigger question is going mpeg to mpeg, maybe it's time for US stores to get with the program and start offering dual standard players and TVs like the rest of the world has.

I cannot believe it's economic for the factories in China to be making DVD players that play everything for the rest of the world and cobbled one ofr the US markets. TVs might be a slightly different issue but again I'm sure it's only a few ICs different or is there a bigger issue here? Is someone nervous about too many folks in the US getting used to another 100 lines of vertical resolution and not having to adjust hue all the time?

Sorry, just couldn't resist a dig.


PS if we really wanted good looking television then we should be lobbying for SECAM!
donp wrote on 2/10/2004, 6:42 AM
Thanks John I looked at it and I try it out tonight. Vegas accepted the vob's to the time line as vob files ( I didn't rename them to .mpg) but not without some crashes and lock ups. Never had that happen on anything I have done before (all NTSC then). I beloeve that was caused by my processor peaking out (1.5 gig Athlon XP), Loading to the timeline my drive light burned steady and bright red. I don't normally do this sort of thing but in order to view the DVD on my set top player I need to convert it to NTSC and reauthor a NTSC DVD.
johnmeyer wrote on 2/10/2004, 9:37 AM
Vegas accepted the vob's to the time line as vob files

I agree with your approach: Try to see if Vegas can do everything itself before you try the highly technical approach. Of course, as you doubtless know, with the Vegas approach you will still have to strip the audio out of the VOB file and put it on the Vegas timeline. You can do this with DVD2AVI, or MPEG VCR, or MPEG Video Wizard (the last two are $$$ programs from Womble, the first is freeware).
donp wrote on 2/10/2004, 9:44 AM
Yes this is the first time I have worked with Mpeg 2's on the time line. A really non standard for me. Vegas(and my PC) seem to have a hard time with thse as I stated previously. I played the vob on the time line but got no audio, then I realized the the audio was embedded in the Mpeg2 file. I'll give DVD2AVI a try. Anyone used it on PAL vob's?
donp wrote on 2/11/2004, 7:19 AM
OK last night I down loaded DVD2AVI amd ran it on the VOB's. After some experimentation I used DVDlab to combine the 5 VOB's into one. Then in DVD2AVI I had to select the Canopus codec for the video because none of the others it sensed on my pc worked very well. DVD2AVI sensed the Pluginpac Frameserver VFW codec but since I could not actively frameserve outside of Vegas the avi it produced didn't no good

I found however the Canopus codec leaves a Canopus water mark on the video, which I cropped out in Procoder Express. It also broke the big VOB back up into smaller pieces, but no matter. The audio was extracted as PCM stereo but can be extracted as ac3, which I did originally but decided to do PCM in order for Vegas to see it and then mix it to Surround 5.1 later.

Thanks for your suggeations I will soon have a NTSC version of this PAL DVD.
johnmeyer wrote on 2/11/2004, 8:19 AM
DVD2AVI I had to select the Canopus codec for the video

If you are using DVD2AVI merely to get the audio out of the VOB file, then you do NOT need a codec. I bet that you are trying to save the file as an AVI file. Don't do that. Instead, save it as a project file. This will create a small project file that can be used by some programs (like TMPGEnc) as a signpost to frameserve the video from the VOB file, and then combine it with the audio. However, you don't need the project file for this purpose. For you, it just provides the fastest way to get DVD2AVI to extract the audio without doing any unnecessary work. All you need is to get the audio track out of the video, and then place the resulting WAV file onto the timeline. Just make sure that, in DVD2AVI, you select Audio -> Output Method -> Decode to WAV. Also, make sure you select the track number that corresponds to the audio track you want. Then select File -> Save Project [F4]. In addition to avoiding creating a large, unnecessary AVI file, this also speeds the processing so that it only takes a few minutes, even on HUGE VOB files.

You then put the WAV file below your VOB file(s) on the Vegas timeline, and line it up. It should match exactly. If you find that Vegas is sluggish (it isn't well-optimized to deal with MPEG2 files on the timeline, and even less well-optimized for VOB files), then do a render to a DV AVI file (NTSC or PAL), and then use that as your editing source.
donp wrote on 2/11/2004, 9:27 AM
...If you find that Vegas is sluggish (it isn't well-optimized to deal with MPEG2 files on the timeline, and even less well-optimized for VOB files), then do a render to a DV AVI file (NTSC or PAL), and then use that as your editing source. ...

I did that first, Vegas crashed from some unknown error when trying to render the VOB to NTSC mpeg both times i tried I found it was less of a headache to make the DVD2AVI .avi files and the audio file and put them in the time line. The first pass through DVD2AVI I did only do PCM .wav file and tried to add it to the time line, but Vegas locked up wile loadin the vob veg file.

You are right Vegas is not well optimized to work with mpeg2 and vob's. It took Vegas to 5 minutes to load the 1 hour vob and some would sometimes lock up doing that. Even just selecting the render as produced instability I had never encountered before or since. I went back to the .avi file form the vob. So even if creating the AVI is an extra step it's well worth it not having to to put up with the issues the vob causes.

The PAL DVD has a second disk the I will need to do so after wading through all this with the first disk this is my take:

Copy VOB's from Video TS folder on the PAL DVD
Combine them into one VOB (optional) still PAL
Create AVI video files and PCM .wav audio with DVD2AVI (Still PAL)
Import into Vegas and mke any needed edits and surround mixes
render audio to ac3 5.1 Surround
Frameserve to Procoder Express and render (to NTSC DVD)
Author NTSC DVD