How to convert NTSC AVI to MPEG and burn to a PAL-DVD ?

[richfei]

Hi,

Apologies first of all for my lack of knowledge
1) I've managed to import some DV video from my NTSC video camera using TMPGEnc and this has come in as a series of AVI files
2) I used Ulead VideoStudio 7 to arrange those AVI files into a project containing lots os transitions and saved this as a file of type NTSC Mpeg 2
3) I've created multiple Mpeg-2 files
4) I've gone into Ulead PictureShow2 and taken all those MPEG-2 files and arranged them with the buttons and background I like
5) I can burn this to dvd and it plays on my NTSC DVD player. So no problems so far

However I'd like to burn those MPEGs to a DVD that can be played on a PAL DVD player in the UK.

There is an option within Ulead PictureShow 2 to save to PAL format. However I'm having problems with Pictureshow 2 in reading the files when I choose the PAL option.

I think my problem is that the MPEG files which are in NTSC MPEG-2 can't be burned directly to a PAL DVD, and I need to do some conversion before that can take place.

I was really hoping to just take those NTSC MPEGs and find an application that just allows me to burn to a PAL DVD without having to convert the MPEGs. My thinking is that I would need another application to do that conversion and there would be some picture degredation. But I don't really know

If anyone can suggest an alternative. Perhaps even use a different authoring application which allows me to take NTSC Mpegs and burn to a PAL DVD, I'd be interested.

But even better, if I can follow the steps above and still use the ULEAD products, I would prefer that

Any help appreciated

Thanks
Richard

[bugster]

Take a look here
https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=155163&highlight=inverse+telecine

This thread discusses using inverse telecine in virtualdub to change your source from 29.97fps to 23.97 fps. Once you have done that you can use the info in this guide:
https://www.videohelp.com/forum/userguides/78178.php
to encode to DVD compliant mpeg at 25fps for Pal

Hope this helps.

[richfei]

Hi Bugster,

I appreciate the note, and will try that

However one thing I'm not sure about is the quality at the other end, after the conversion

I obviously know what the quality of my source NTSC MPEG-2 videos are, because I can play them and check them out, but if I use virtualdub (which I have not used before), and do this conversion to PAL, will I be able to check the output of my conversion i.e how it looks from a PAL perspective

Incidentally do you know if there are any DVD authoring apps which can help me do this NTSC-MPeg2 direct to PAL-DVD and burn in the same application. I tried with a combination of Ulead products (Video Studio and DVD Pictureshow) since I like the transitions, backgrounds and general ease of use, but I'm unfamiliar with what else is out there ?

I'm basically trying to simplify and expedite my workflow, since I have a lot of these DV tapes to bring across into NTSC-DVD and PAL-DVD

Thanks

Take a look here
https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=155163&highlight=inverse+telecine

This thread discusses using inverse telecine in virtualdub to change your source from 29.97fps to 23.97 fps. Once you have done that you can use the info in this guide:
https://www.videohelp.com/forum/userguides/78178.php
to encode to DVD compliant mpeg at 25fps for Pal

Hope this helps.

[bugster]

You source material is NTSC DV right. In this case your best bet is to do as much of the framerate conversion as possible whilst still in avi mode. The inverse telecine, as far as I understand it, deletes so many fields per second, using some sort of algorithm, to reduce the overall framerate to 23.97fps. Normally this would be then played back at 29.97fps on an NTSC system by doing a 'telecine'. This is achieved when encoding to mpeg by adding flags to tell the player which fields to repeat (known as 3:2 pulldown). However in your case the reason for doing this is to get the framerate much closer to that required for PAL. I think the quality loss at this stage should be minimal.

So you should now have an avi at 23.97fps. You can encode this directly to mpeg-2 at 25fps for Pal. Using TmpGenc, simply load the PAL dvd template and make sure the 'do not framerate conversion' on the advanced tab is checked. Of course the audio will be out of sync if you do this, so encode video only at this stage. Any quality loss here will be similiar to what you get encoding your NTSC avi to NTSC DVD. If anything it should be slightly better as 25fps allows more bits per frame than 29.97fps, for any given bitrate.

You now need to shrink the audio. Seperate it from the video with virtualdub or goldwave and save as uncompressed wav at 48Khz. Now use goldwave 'timewarp' to shrink the audio, or use Besweet as mentioned in the guide I linked, to convert the audio to the correct length.
Note that this process actually speeds up the entire video and audio slightly but its not normally noticeable to the average viewer.


A properly done framerate conversion such as this should be pretty much the same quality as encoding directly to NTSC.

I don't know of any application that will do all this in one go for you, sorry.

[richfei]

Hi Bugster,

Thanks so much for your prompt response and your help. It is very much appreciated. I will try Tmpgenc and go through that process and see what happens. I also heard about a tool called MotionPerfect.

http://www.dynapel.com/com/private/mp_overview.htm

It's not shareware, but supposedly it does this framerate conversion and is supposed to smooth out any jerky frame.

I'm not sure if this would be any different than Tmpenc, but I will also give that a try. Do you have any experience with this application. Any thoughts ? I searched the forum, and a few people suggested its use, but no one has really commented on how well it works

thanks again
ttyl

[bugster]

Hi Bugster,

I also heard about a tool called MotionPerfect.

Do you have any experience with this application.

Sorry, never heard of it so can't comment. If it does work well, let us know, it might be useful to me in the future.