PAL MPEG-2 to NTSC MPEG-2 - Different Color on TV

[HoosierGuy]

I downloaded a European sporting event - 720x576x32, 25.000fps, Upper Field First, MPEG-2. In this sport there are cars of different colors including RED. I played this on my computer using the VLC media player and it looked fine with the red cars being red.

I used Sony Vegas Studio to render/convert this to 720x480x32, 29.970fps, lower field first, MPEG-2. I then used DVD Architect Studio 5 to burn this to DVD.

When I play the converted NTSC version on my computer the red cars are red. But when I play the DVD in my DVD player connected to my TV the red cars are green.
Also the flesh colors are somewhat off.

Is this a result of my TV or what? The PAL and the converted NTSC files all seem to have the right colors when played on my PC. But the burned DVD version on my TV, the red looks green.

Will adjusting TV settings fix this or does this need fixed before I burn it to DVD? I did play around with the TV settings a little but I didn't see much change.

Thanks

[HoosierGuy]

Also, I just played the DVD on my laptop and the red cars are RED! So plahing the files from my hard drive and from the DVD on my laptop, the colors are correct. But DVD to TV - red is green.

[hech54]

Converting between the two video formats rarely yields good results. PCs don't care about PAL-NTSC issues. What you are experiencing is completely normal and discussed Ad nauseam here.

[HoosierGuy]

So it's not my TV? What can I do to lesson the problem?

[jman98]

So it's not my TV? What can I do to lesson the problem?

I know nothing about PAL->NTSC color issues as I don't do conversions, period. However, I do have a couple of thoughts.
1) You could try converting with different tools, perhaps freeware, and see if you get better results.
2) You could buy a DVD player or a media player that supports PAL to NTSC on the fly conversion and not have to convert your files at all. I've got a Western Digital media player and I've successfully played MKV files at PAL resolutions and frame rates on it.

[davexnet]

I suspect the conversion wasn't done properly. Can you provide a sample of your output ?

[HoosierGuy]

As I said - I used Sony Vegas Studio to render/convert this to 720x480x32, 29.970fps, lower field first, MPEG-2. I then used DVD Architect Studio 5 to burn this to DVD.

I used the default NTSC template in Sony Vegas Studio. The picture quality, besides the color, was great. It was very sharp and looked good. But then I noticed the red cars were greenish and the skin colors were slightly off.

MainConcept MPEG-2, DVD NTSC

Template - DVD NTSC (*)

Description - Audio: 224 Kbps, 48,000 Hz, 16 Bit, Stereo, MPEG
Video: 29.970 fps, 720x480 Lower field first, YUV, 6 Mbps
Pixel Aspect Ratio: 0.909

there is a custom button that you can get more detailed in but I did not
change much.

1. Video - output was DVD 720x480 29.970 4:3 display B-frames 2, lower
field first. Insert sequence header before every GOP box was checked (on),
Variable bit rate was also used.

2. Advanced video - I did not adjust anything here and most of the things I dont'
know how to adjust either. There is a section under Advanced video that says DC coefficitn.
That was set to 9 bit. Under that is Video Format and that was set to NTSC. Under that
is Color primaries and that was set to ITU-R Rec. 624-4 System M. Under that is Transfer
and that was set to ITU-R Rec 624-4 System M. Under that is Matrix Coefficients
and that was set to ITU-R Rec. 624 System B,G. VBV buffer size is 224. Sampling rate
is blanked out but has 4:2:0 listed.


3. Audio. Again I did not mess with this and adudio was fine.

4. System - I did not mess with that.

5. Project. - I changed video render quality from Use "Project Settings? to "Good".



Those are the defaults I used to render the video using Vegas Studio and then burning to DVD.

[HoosierGuy]

I tried something a little different. I put some scenes of the red cars together, about six minutes worth. I used the PAL footage. I rendered it to AVI and then loaded
that to DVD Architect and that program rendered it and then burned it to DVD. Once again on my TV the red cars are green. I played with the TV color, tint, contrast,
and a few other settings and nothing got those cars to turn from green to red.

[jagabo]

Is it only reds and greens that are reversed? What about blues? Are all of them reversed or only very bright or highly saturated colors?

I don't use Vegas -- does it have rec.601 colors? If so, try that.

[edDV]

If you would post a clip from the MPeg2 export that shows the car colors, we can probably figure it out.

By importing a PAL clip into an NTSC project, the conversion occurred during import and preview. Something happened during encoding or when imported into DVDA.

[jagabo]

Inverting the V channel would cause red to become green and greens to become red. But that would happen on all players:

normal V / inverted V


But I'm not familiar with rec.624. What if it uses an inverted V channel (compared to rec.601) and some players are ignoring the chromacity flags? Then players that pay attention to the chromacity flag will display the colors correctly, and players that ignore the flag will reverse the reds/greens.

I've seen a few players which screw up colors when illegal YUV values appear in the video. But that only shows up on very bright areas with extreme saturation.

[HoosierGuy]

I'll see if I can post a pic or something.

My DVD player that I still use is I believe a first generation or close to it DVD player.

[HoosierGuy]

If you would post a clip from the MPeg2 export that shows the car colors, we can probably figure it out.

By importing a PAL clip into an NTSC project, the conversion occurred during import and preview. Something happened during encoding or when imported into DVDA.

I could upload a clip from my converted material. I just did that on you-tube but the color was correct. I could post a pick but the screen pic I took of a frame has
the red cars. The only way to see the green cars is on my DVD player. Could it be my DVD player? It is sort of old - one of the first generation DVD players.

[edDV]

It could be the player. We could test the clip on our players.

You can attach up to 30MB.

[jagabo]

My DVD player that I still use is I believe a first generation or close to it DVD player... Could it be my DVD player?

The fact that it's a very old player makes it more likely the player is at fault.

[HoosierGuy]

Ok, I tested my DVD's on my sisters portable DVD player. It's one of those small DVD players that sit on your lap. Anyway, the red cars are red! All the colors look like they should look. So do you think this 99% confirms that the problem is my very old DVD player? I say my DVD player is first generation because I got it when DVD's were starting to come out, around the time when the James Bond films were first put on DVD's. I don't remember how long before then DVD films were out, so maybe my player is second or third generation.

[edDV]

Ok, I tested my DVD's on my sisters portable DVD player. It's one of those small DVD players that sit on your lap. Anyway, the red cars are red! All the colors look like they should look. So do you think this 99% confirms that the problem is my very old DVD player? I say my DVD player is first generation because I got it when DVD's were starting to come out, around the time when the James Bond films were first put on DVD's. I don't remember how long before then DVD films were out, so maybe my player is second or third generation.

We don't know if it is that one player or a class of chips or many players. The essence of scientific research is to test a theory to a larger and larger sample to reduce uncertainty. So far you have a sample of two.

[HoosierGuy]

I found the problem, oh yeah!!!! And why did you guys not tell me? It was a loose cable!!!!! My cars are red now and skin colors are right!!!!!!!! Oh yeah!

Sweet!!!

[edDV]

??? Why would a loose cable do that?

[HoosierGuy]

??? Why would a loose cable do that?

I don't know. What I did was burn another DVD with other material that was similar to the first material - PAL. I converted three minutes and burned it and played it on my
DVD player. Again the cars were green. I got mad and decided to look at my cables and see if I could change from whatever I was using ( Y-Pb-Pr) to S-video. I did not see any free S-video cables so I unplugged the component Y-Pb-Pr cables from the DD player and TV and plugged them back in. I played the DVD again and sure enough the cars were red and flesh tones were correct on both my original DVD I burned and this new material.

[jagabo]

If the red (Pr) cable of a component connection is unplugged reds can turn green.