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  1. Member
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    I have a DVD that won't play right in my player (bottom half of the screen is solid green while the top half is scrambled). I'm thinking that problem is that it is that the DVD is in PAL format. What's the easiest way to see if that's the problem?
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  2. What happens when you play this in your computer?
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  3. Member CaZeek's Avatar
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    The best way to get all the info you want is to download GSpot 2.52 and load one of the VOBs. It will tell you PAl/NTSC and a bunch of other good stuff. There are plenty of other ways too, but this is pretty quick and easy.
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    Open a .vob file in your editor and look at the file properties

    It sounds like that's what it is. You need to transcode and framerate convert the video. You'll take a quality hit doing that, just so you're not disappointed.
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    Sorry, forgot to mention that, when I play in my computer it works perfectly.

    Also forgot to say that in the standalone, the sound works perfectly and the menu looks/works fine except that it's offcenter a little.

    Oh, and thanks for the quick response.
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  6. Master of Time & Space Capmaster's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by vbguru_12000
    Sorry, forgot to mention that, when I play in my computer it works perfectly.

    Also forgot to say that in the standalone, the sound works perfectly and the menu looks/works fine except that it's offcenter a little.

    Oh, and thanks for the quick response.
    That's because the PC doesn't care what format it is. It'll play anything. It's also progressive and not interlaced.

    The sound isn't going to change between NTSC and PAL. The only difference between them is resolution of the video and the framerate. The audio is the same for both

    It's also worth adding that all DVD players will read NTSC or PAL discs ....but some are configured to output only one format....NTSC in the states for example. But it's no surprise that the player will read the PAL DVD and output the correct sound
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    Ok, just ran it through GSpot and couldn't find where it says Pal or Ntsc. However, I did find that it is 352 x 240. Can someone confirm that this is PAL? One more question, can someone point me to a good guide/walkthrough on converting to NTSC?
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  8. Member CaZeek's Avatar
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    That's an NTSC resolution, so chances are the framerate is an NTSC framerate too.. make sure you download GSpot 2.52 (it's beta). The first download link will take you to the older model which won't help you. The PAL, NTSC detection is in the bottom right somewhere.. the format the disk is in will be lit up in green.
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    Yes, I was using that version of Gspot. Here's a screenshot:
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    So can someone confirm that this is indeed a NTSC? And if so, any ideas on what's causing the problems?
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  11. Member CaZeek's Avatar
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    From that, it is definitely NTSC. It is a VCD recorded on to a DVD. Maybe your player doesn't support VCD? Try re-encoding to MPEG-2, not MPEG-1.
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    I believe my player supports VCD, just not SVCD. Anyway, is it easy to convert to MPEG2? And do you know of any good guides?
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  13. Member CaZeek's Avatar
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    Can you post a screenshot of what your DVD folder looks like.. do you have VOBs or a straight MPEG-1 file.. or a DAT, or an mpg with video and audio muxed?
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    They are VOBs, IFOs, and BUPs, just like any other DVD.
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  15. Member CaZeek's Avatar
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    All right.. it should be pretty simple then. Demultiplex the VOBs with TMPGEnc, that will give you an mpeg-1 video, and and MP2 audio. Take the MPEG-1 video, load it into TMPGEnc and encode to an MPEG-2. You can probably keep the same bitrate (1150kbps), but I've never done this personally. Then just reauthor the DVD with whatever authoring program you wish

    I'm just making suggestions, so if anyone else has actually done this personally feel free to jump in!
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    Thanks very much, I'll do that in a day or so and let you know the results.
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    Well I'm pretty sure this DVD you have won't work because the video has a DAR of 2.086(!!!) which is hardly compliant. That value must be set to 4:3 (1.333) to meet the DVD specs. You can change that without re-encoding, but if the picture proportions on your computer are displayed correctly, then you will have to re-encode letterboxing the picture to a 4:3 frame.
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    Originally Posted by midnightsun
    Well I'm pretty sure this DVD you have won't work because the video has a DAR of 2.086(!!!) which is hardly compliant. That value must be set to 4:3 (1.333) to meet the DVD specs. You can change that without re-encoding, but if the picture proportions on your computer are displayed correctly, then you will have to re-encode letterboxing the picture to a 4:3 frame.
    How do I go about that? Sorry, I'm not very experienced when it comes to this kinda stuff.
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    first, does the movie look "correct" on your computer? What I mean is do people and objects look stretched (like a circle which is displayed like an ellypse) or is everything the way it should look?

    This is important because if it's displayed correctly then you have widescreen material, which can not go with 352x240 resolution, unless you letterbox (i.e. put black bars at the top and bottom) to fill a 4:3 frame.
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    Now that you mention it, it does seem kinda squashed (vertically). btw, it is supposed to be letterbox, but it looks likes the black, letterbox, bars are too big.
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    This is getting tricky if you say it looks compressed vertically, since we can't know for sure what the correct display aspect ratio of this footage should be.

    You can try this before you go encode something which could turn out unnecessary to do: grab dvddecrypter and load your dvd. Set mode to IFO and select only the main movie (if there should be other material on the disc). Then click decrypt (even though there's nothing to decrypt since I'm assuming this is not a protected disc). You should now have an .mpg file which is your movie.
    Now get a hold of dvdpatcher, load the file you have just created, change the display aspect ratio to 4:3 (leave the other options alone), check patch entire file and run "patch now". After a while it will spit out a new file. Play it with some decent player (zoomplayer, powerdvd, windvd...) and check if it looks fine to you or it's too compressed horizontally. If the former, the new file you have is ok and ready to be authored, otherwise it's gonna be trial and error to find out what the aspect ratio should be!

    PS I'm going out right now so I won't be able to get back to you for the next x hours. I'm sure other experienced people will be able to assist you anyway.
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    Having a little problem, how do I get DVD-Decrypter to output a .mpg file? All I can get is it to output a .ifo and .vob file.
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    Nevermind that last post, I figured it out. I patched the file to 4:3 and it looks good. So now all I have to do is recompile the dvd and it'll work?

    [edit] went ahead and recompiled and burnt it. Works great now! Thanks to all who helped, you're the greatest! [edit]
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  24. Member
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    good to hear you worked it out just fine
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