Which Pal - NTSC route

[Flakse]

Hi all

I know it have discussed so many times, but the latest threads I've read has not material complete similar to mine - therefore the question:

Which way will I get the best possible picturequality that can play on all NTSC DVD players?

My material is: AVI DV PAL
(the AVI DV is ofcourse interlaced but the pictures origin is telecined 35mm film and therefore progressive)

I want to convert to: NTSC DVD

I use Premiere Pro to make PAL Mpeg2 DVD encodings and it looks very good. I have possibility of using Tmpgenc+ cinemacraft also. I don't like the Premiere Pro version of making NTSC Mpeg's directly from the AVI PAL (bad quality). I use Encore as authoring and I can also use Audition for the sound.

Should I convert the AVI PAL to AVI NTSC first?
Should I convert PAL mpeg's to NTSC mpegs?

Thanks
Flakse

[bugster]

There is a guide on the required process here

[Flakse]

Thanks

The guide tells me how to framerate-change my 25fps material to 23,976 or 29,97.

Question: Which framerate should I use. (I guess 29,97)

Question: I don't know if my material source is interlaced or progressive (I guess it is interlaced since it is AVI DV) but the origin is progressive?

Question: All NTSC dvd players play interlaced don't they?

Flakse

[bugster]

For NTSC DVD the required framerate is 29.976fps. However, what you can do, and this is the preferred route, is convert to 23.97fps and then use 3:2 pulldown on your mpeg video stream. This adds flags to the video which instruct the player to repeat certain fields in a pattern which results in a final framerate of 29.976fps. So use this as your target framerate. (target 23.976 fps as this is much closer to 25fps than 29.976 so the change in duration and speed is much less than it would be otherwise.)

Your DV material is interlaced, irrespective of how it originated. DV is always interlaced.

All DVD players (PAL/NTSC/Other) play interlaced material, this is the norm. True progressive material and playback is actually still quite a rarity.

[Flakse]

Thanks

This is the information I need.

- Does all NTSC players understand the 3:2 pulldown?
- Where should I make the framerate conversion - on my AVI or Mpeg?

-All my material is en other formats than 4:3 TV - its 1:1,85 or 1:2,35. Instead of letting the material be squezed from 576 to 480 should I make a kind of unsqueze in Premiere Pro before converting it? or is there other smart ways of doing that?

Flakse

[bugster]

- Does all NTSC players understand the 3:2 pulldown?

Yes. Its a requirement.

-- Where should I make the framerate conversion - on my AVI or Mpeg?

Do the framerate conversion to the Avi, VIDEO ONLY, the eother save a new copy with the new framerate or cut this step out by frameserving to your encoder.

If you are useing Tmpgenc as your encoder, let that resize for you, it does a decent job of it. If you are using a different encoder, use vdub filters or avisynth to resize.