Simple PAL >NTSC from original PAL DVD?

rsp wrote on 7/6/2006, 8:55 AM

Grazie,

Long time no skype - hope to catch up later

Would start from your PAL wide-screen AVI in Vegas - the various tools i've tried to convert PAL-->NTSC always ended in less quality or other problems.

So also interested to hear if anyone has a faster way to convert!

Rudi

Grazie wrote on 7/6/2006, 9:04 AM

Yo! Groovy Rudi!

Wanna SKYPE? I around NOW . .

And yes, I too am wanting to hear about any advances ..

Grazie

Jayster wrote on 7/6/2006, 9:58 AM

I've heard good things about the TMPGEnc program. I used it to convert from PAL DV to a VCD (half-size as straight PAL) and it was pretty darned quick. Never tried for converting from PAL to NTSC, though. But I know it'll do it. One of their earlier versions on the download page is freeware.

Grazie wrote on 7/6/2006, 10:35 AM

Yes, Jayster, I have used that. But only on MPEG1 stuff.

Jayster wrote on 7/6/2006, 12:24 PM

Now that you mention it, what I was doing (PAL DV to VCD) is all MPG1 too... If anyone does have experience converting PAL to NTSC (as you asked) with this program it would be interesting to know it. Cause it is multi-core friendly and seems rather fast for what little I had used it for.

farss wrote on 7/6/2006, 3:46 PM

Just encode directly from the Vegas 6 T/L to a DVDA NTSC template.
Do this at Best and set Deinterlace to either Interpolate or Blend, I'd try both on a short section to see what gives the best results.

Bear in mind that NSTC will not look all that sharp if you're used to PAL on good gear. Also make certain that you are feeding real NTSC from the DVD player to a monitor that takes in real NTSC, not ALL NTSC compatible stuff is displaying NTSC properly from what I've seen.

It's been a while since I've done any conversion but even back in V5 days the results were pretty good, a high end converter from the like of S&W will do the best possible job if you have the budget to get a good post house to do the conversion.

Bob.

Kanst wrote on 7/7/2006, 12:53 AM

I never see DVD player without option to choose, what color format it send to video output PAL or NTSC.

But if you need conversion, IMXO the best way - export PAL to interlaced PNG image sequence and re-import as NTSC sequence.

farss wrote on 7/7/2006, 1:46 AM

Interesting idea however PAL is 25fps and NTSC 30fps, so you're going to have thing running quite a bit faster. One could do the same thing by disabling resampling without gobbling up all that disk space.

Bob.

PeterWright wrote on 7/7/2006, 1:56 AM

Grazie I've also done this in DVDA simply by Save as XXXNTSC.dar , changing project properties to NTSC and allowing DVDA to convert everything. It was a while ago and I think I may have had to fiddle around with thumbnail size changes, but the overall result was fairly ok, without being stunning, which I didn't expect anyway.

mbryant wrote on 7/7/2006, 6:01 AM

I've also done this both ways - having DVDA convert as Peter described, or converting from the timeline in Vegas per Bob's post. I generally do it from Vegas, I think it comes out a bit better. In DVDA I simply take a copy of the PAL .dar file, change the properties to NTSC, and point it to the NTSC files I've rendered.

apit34356 wrote on 7/7/2006, 6:43 AM

Grazie, vegas t/l is the best way probably. I would consider cropping your critical scenes to insure max sharpest. Also consider going to 24p NTSC if you are already in 25p PAL.

Grazie wrote on 7/7/2006, 7:15 AM

Thanks for all the help - you are truly some very special people!

Unfortunately, Dick-Head here -ME! - had deleted the elements of the DVD and had to reconstruct from what I do have - yes, that meant going back to the PAL-AVI!!! What a prat! So I couldn't just open the DAR and . . well you can guess the rest . . my studio was a bit BLUE for an hour there!! LOL!!

However, I've now got a checked and readable NTSC DVD that is going Westward.

Best regards,

Grazie

John_Cline wrote on 7/7/2006, 9:43 AM

I regularly make PAL DVDs from NTSC .AVI files for distribution in PAL countries. I have also made some PAL > NTSC conversions. No contest, the best software solution I have found is Canopus Procoder. The frame rate conversion is quite smooth and fluid and Procoder's MPEG2 encoder is the best looking of the bunch. I highly recommend it. Procoder is as useful in my toolkit as Virtual Dub. Between Vegas, Virtual Dub and Procoder, there isn't much that can't be done in the way of format conversion and processing.

John

jaegersing wrote on 7/8/2006, 7:59 PM

Hi John. What version of Procoder are you using? Procoder V2 has a known issue with PAL/NTSC conversion, resulting in some jerkiness on moving video (V1 was OK for this). TMPG sounds like the best low cost solution round at the moment for making cross format DVD files.

Richard Hunter

John_Cline wrote on 7/8/2006, 8:39 PM

Richard,

I'm running Procoder v2.04. I haven't noticed any jerkiness to the video after conversion.

John

NickHope wrote on 7/9/2006, 1:00 AM

I've been round and round the houses with PAL > NTSC conversion.

TMPGenc does not do a satisfactory job. Forget it. Super jerky during high motion scenes no matter what blending settings you use.

Procoder 1 was not really satisfactory. They improved the algorithm and Procoder 1.5 was much better. From what I can tell, Procoder 2 still uses the same algorithm. I don't see any jerkiness but I can tell that there's a slight quality drop from the original PAL version. I make all my NTSC DVDs with Procoder. Sold quite a lot to stateside folk and no complaints so far.

As mentioned in the posts above some have successfully used plain old Vegas to do the job. Haven't tried it myself. I suspect it's somewhere between TMPGenc and Procoder.

I've heard that Twixtor software can make an even better job than Procoder with it's advanced interpolation capability, but probably quite complex to configure. I think you need to plug it into something like After Effects. Would love to hear if anyone has tried it.

Nick

Grazie wrote on 7/9/2006, 1:58 AM

Nick, thanks for that.

What you have done for me is to confirm my suspicions about this subject and that one person's success may not be transferable to another person's platform. I appreciate your candid and no nonsense statements.

My final "solution" was to need to take the PAL avi and reformat as NTSC. Nothing clever about this decision, as I had deleted all the files except the PAL avi. From here I made a DVDA NTSC project - came out around 5.7gb - and then used DVD Shrink which smashed it down to 4.6gb.

jaegersing wrote on 7/9/2006, 2:07 AM

Hi Nick. The Canopus Procoder forum has had several discussions about this PAL/NTSC transcoding problem since last year. A Canopus mod has even said that there is a patch available to fix it, but nobody knows why it has not been released yet.

Tmpeg 3 Xpress (recently become Tmpeg 4 Xpress) has been mentioned by a few respected users on the same forum as a very good solution and it's quality held up as an example for Canopus to follow. Not sure if that was the same programme that you evaluated.

Anyway I suppose the main point is that you are happy with the PC2 conversions. Seems the results on the Canopus forum are quite different. Please don't think I'm saying you are wrong, I just find it very strange.

Richard

Grazie wrote on 7/9/2006, 2:34 AM

And again, Richard, more/other experiences.

baysidebas wrote on 7/9/2006, 8:18 AM

How quickly we forget just how good we have it today. Any of you remember PBS offerings in the 60s of PAL originated material? You could instantly tell by the immediate softening of the image as soon as any motion ocurred, then relative sharpness returning as soon as motion ceased. And this was the best they could do at the time for broadcast "quality" material. Anyone into BBC programming at the time ran the risk of blindness or apoplexy.

NickHope wrote on 7/9/2006, 11:22 PM

Haven't used anything since TMPGenc 2.5 Plus. Will check out the Canopus forum and the later TMPGenc offerings. Things have obviously moved on!

jaegersing wrote on 7/10/2006, 2:02 AM

Hi Nick. After my previous post, I downloaded the demo version of Tmpeg 4 Express and did a PAL to NTSC conversion, straight DV to DV. I'm not very impressed with the results.

It doesn't soften the image as much as my last conversion I remember doing in Procoder (I don't have to do this often which is why my post was all based on hearsay), but overall the appearance is quite jittery on slow moving subjects and there are obvious interlacing artifacts on faster motion. I wouldn't like to deliver a DVD with content that looked this this.

I'll do a similar test using Procoder 2 and compare the results when I get the time. If you do try out the latest Tmpeg please let us know what you think of it.

Richard

NickHope wrote on 7/10/2006, 3:06 AM

Well I jumped in and bought it. $79 for existing TMPG user. I figured that it will be another useful tool to have for various conversions even if the PAL > NTSC isn't great.

First impression... all my source is 720 x 576 25fps interlaced lower field first. Sadly TMPGEnc 4.0 Xpress is seeing them as 360 x 288 25fps. The "analyse" button is unavailable so I am manually changing display mode to "Interlaced, lower field first", but the resolution can't be changed so I don't know if the program is using the full resolution of my files.

Screen grab is here

Procoder and TMPGEnc Plus 2.5 both analysed my source files correctly. So I'm disappointed with this and don't know why it's happening.

Will try some NTSC conversions next and head over to some Xpress forums to investigate.

Grazie wrote on 7/10/2006, 3:12 AM

. . .and so it goes on I guess .. ?

Nick thanks for your "persistence".