Converting PALFilm to NTSCFilm keeping AC-3 soundtrack

[borghe]

I searched and couldn't find anything on this. What I am looking to do is convert a Region 2 PALFilm DVD to a Region 0 NTSCFilm DVD while maintaing the 5.1 audio. Can I do this?

Here is the long way that I have come up with. If anyone knows a shorter way, please let me know.

The film is Matilda which is 16:9 anamorphic (the R1 release is P&S only). What I was planning on doing was simply reenocde the video at the slower framerate, decode the AC3 file in Soft Encode, run each channel through BeSweet doing a pal conversion, reencode through Soft Encode, then reauthor the disc.

My questions are: Can I change the speed of the MPEG2 without reencoding? Is there a flag somewhere in the file that declares the framerate? Second, is this my only option to change the AC3 audio to NTSC? Thanks for any replies.

[Baldrick]

No, you must reencode the video if you are going to change the framerate.

[Xesdeeni]

As Baldrick states, you have to re-encode the video, not just for the frame rate, but also because of the difference in resolution.

But, you can save yourself the trouble of re-encoding the audio, if you re-encode the video without any speed variation (frame rate and resolution are different, but duration is the same). You can use a technique similar to the "PAL (Video) DVD (25i Fps) -> NTSC DVD (29.97i Fps)" section of my Standards Conversion page (http://www.geocities.com/xesdeeni2001/StandardsConversion/index.html#PALVideoDVD2NTSCDVD) with the following changes:

10. Add the following lines, filling in the location and filename of the file you created above:

      LoadPlugin("MPEG2DEC.dll")
      MPEG2Source("DRIVE:\PATH\VTS_xx_x.d2v")
      LanczosResize(720,480)
      ChangeFPS(59.94)
      SeparateFields()
      SelectEvery(4,1,2)
      Weave()
      ConvertToRGB()

13. [delete]
18. a. In the "Aspect ratio:" field, set "16:9 Display."
20. a. In the "Video source type:" field, set "Non-interlaced (progressive)."
20. b. In the "Source aspect ratio:" field, set "16:9 Display."

The video will show a bit of jutter on smoothly panning shots, but otherwise should be fine. The jutter will only be mildly worse than film's 3:2 pulldown (telecine), which you (like most NTSC viewers) are probably already used to.

Xesdeeni