Making a copy with DVD santa

[1234567]

Hi everyone

I got some DVD from Europe, and will like to make copy of them from PAL to NTSC. I have no experience with DVD santa. So I do not know how to manage the copy of VOB files. Can somebody help me? Thanks a lot

[tomlee59]

Unfortunately, you can't just make a copy. PAL and NTSC are different enough, both in framerates as well as in frame size, aka resolution, that you will need to convert, which is a bigger deal, and which will inevitably degrade quality. Some NTSC DVD players will play PAL discs, so I would recommend considering that option first.

If you absolutely must convert the DVDs, then here are the basic steps you'd need to follow (some software may do a couple of these steps at once, but underneath, this is what's likely going on):

1) Rip the original PAL DVD.
2) Transcode to some intermediate format, with generous bitrate and resolution to minimize loss.
3) Transcode to NTSC DVD-compatible specs. Author and burn.

Another possibility is to try the hack described in another thread here: https://forum.videohelp.com/topic221928.html

The appeal of the method is that no re-encoding is required, so it's very fast. However, from the messages, you can see that it works only in some cases, and only with some players. But you may wish to give that a try, since it requires so little effort.

[borax]

There is one option 'in between'. Demultiplex the vob files, change the frame rate with dgpulldown (apply suitable pulldown flags) and reauthor as pseudo 'NTSC'. Of cause the resolution is still wrong (720x576 instead of 720x480), but that's something which can be handled by a lot of SA players. If it doesn't work, you can still reencode the video.