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  1. Member Sugar's Avatar
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    May 2002
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    I have been looking for months for a good software conversion of DV PAL footage to NTSC.
    I film with my PAL camcorder and want to eventually produce an NTSC DVD for playback on a US NTSC DVD player.
    I capture and edit my footage with Premiere Pro and found a solution to convert the footage to NTSC (basically I extend the length of the clip, export it to avi and then reimport it in NTSC mode). The result is relatively satisfactory but I feel I am loosing too much in video quality.
    I recently got AfterEffects and was expecting to be able to do a better job with this software. Either what I am doing is not right or this is the best that can be done but I did not find the result to be any better than my 1st conversion in Premier Pro. I used the Expression template and change the parameters of the footage to export in NTSC and rendered it into a new file. Video quality is definitively affected.
    Has anybody tried the same or can point to a satisfactory solution?
    I am happy to convert the original clips to NTSC before editing if it helps.
    Thanks.
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  2. To convert PAL to NTSC for DVD is best done at the encoding stage. Open your 25fps DV-AVi in virtualdub (install a DV codec such as the Panasonic DV codec to make this possible. On the Video menu set framerate to 23.976fps, the framserve to your mpeg encoder. Yes you will need a standalone mpeg encoder, not the one built in to Premiere. In The mpeg encoder, set it to encode ntsc, Video only, 23.976fps with 3:2 pulldown.
    Encode.

    Now extract the audio track from Premiere to a wav file and use Besweet and its built in presets to encode the audio to either mp2, Ac3, or wav and from PAL to NTSC (all it does strecth the audio to match the equivalent video length). Now use your seperate audio and video files to author your DVD.

    If you don't understand any of the terms used, check the glossary. All the methods described are in various guides on this site and all the tools can be found in the tools section.

    Hope this helps.
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  3. Member Sugar's Avatar
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    May 2002
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    Thanks Bugster.

    I was hoping I would be able to apply a method without having to adjust the audio.

    I applied your method in the past but was led to believe there was also a solution with AfterEffects... and actually found one which is kind of a derivative of your approach. I guess I will try them both and compare.
    http://www.creativecow.net/forum/read_thread.php?threadid=188955&forumid=2&postid=1034...&archive=_2002

    Thanks again.
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  4. Well it all depends on why you want this conversion. If you really need DV-Avi format material converted from PAL to NTSC, and to remain DV-Avi, then the method you linked to looks ok. But if you have a finsihed product in PAL DV-Avi and simply want and NTSC DVD, then the method I described seems easier as you are effectivley combining two steps in one (conversion and encoding), only the audio becomes a bit of a pain.

    Anyway, good luck with your endeavours.
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