PAl To NTSC DGpulldown

[hddvd2]

i have a PAL video and i want to convert it to NTSC. i was wondering if i just encode it as 29.97 fps in TMPGEnc if it would be better that using DGpulldown to make it 25fps<29.97fps or if DGpulldown would be better. i am talking in terms of quality and dont care about time. thats for all your help. if there is a quality difference please tell me what kind there would be.

[civuck]

My understanding is that the DGPulldown method is the best: encoding to 25fps and applying 29.97 pulldown flags. You aren't encoding extra frames which are just a waste of space and there aren't any audio sync issues to worry about.

C.

[FulciLives]

Well one way to re-encode PAL 25fps to NTSC is to slow down the PAL source from 25fps to 23.976fp which is progressive NTSC. This works and works really well if you have a progressive PAL source. Even if the PAL source is interlaced and you have to de-interlace it first ... generally speaking ... you still get good results with the slow-down method.

Only problem is you have to also slow-down the audio and that can sometimes prove to be a trick especially if you have 5.1 AC-3 audio.

With the DGPulldown method the audio does not need to be altered.

Quality wise you can argue that the slow-down method looks better (it should in theory) but I've down both and DGPulldown looks fine and there is no chance of audio sync errors.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[junkmalle]

i have a PAL video and i want to convert it to NTSC. i was wondering if i just encode it as 29.97 fps in TMPGEnc if it would be better that using DGpulldown to make it 25fps<29.97fps or if DGpulldown would be better. i am talking in terms of quality and dont care about time. thats for all your help. if there is a quality difference please tell me what kind there would be.

TMPGEnc will give you jerky results because all it does it duplicate every fifth frame. Try it and see...

[Skynet107]

In my experience, if you have progressive PAL, then it is nearly impossible to do 29.970 NTSC without getting ghosting artifacts and other problems. If it is purely interlaced PAL, then converting to 29.970 NTSC can come out perfectly.

DGPulldown is great for PAL video I am using it more and more. Highly recommended.

[FulciLives]

i have a PAL video and i want to convert it to NTSC. i was wondering if i just encode it as 29.97 fps in TMPGEnc if it would be better that using DGpulldown to make it 25fps<29.97fps or if DGpulldown would be better. i am talking in terms of quality and dont care about time. thats for all your help. if there is a quality difference please tell me what kind there would be.

TMPGEnc will give you jerky results because all it does it duplicate every fifth frame. Try it and see...

If you input a PAL 25fps source into TMPGEnc and select DO NOT FRAME FRAME CONVERSION and encode as a NTSC progressive source (complete with internal 3:2 pulldown) then it will slow down the 25fps to 23.976fps but of course the audio will have to be done in a different program as you will need to slow it down as well.

That would be the correct way of doing it with TMPGEnc but again this works best with a progressive PAL source.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[junkmalle]

If you input a PAL 25fps source into TMPGEnc and select DO NOT FRAME FRAME CONVERSION and encode as a NTSC progressive source (complete with internal 3:2 pulldown) then it will slow down the 25fps to 23.976fps

Jeez, I never noticed the DO NOT FRAME RATE CONVERSION option before!

(I usually do PAL to NTSC conversion by frameserving from VirtualDub or AVISynth to TMPGEnc. VirtualDub and AVISynth have much better resizing filters...)

[FulciLives]

If you input a PAL 25fps source into TMPGEnc and select DO NOT FRAME FRAME CONVERSION and encode as a NTSC progressive source (complete with internal 3:2 pulldown) then it will slow down the 25fps to 23.976fps

Jeez, I never noticed the DO NOT FRAME RATE CONVERSION option before!

(I usually do PAL to NTSC conversion by frameserving from VirtualDub or AVISynth to TMPGEnc. VirtualDub and AVISynth have much better resizing filters...)

Well I prefer AviSynth and CCE myself BUT it can be done with just TMPGEnc and no AviSynth ... at least if the PAL source is progressive. Even if you decide to simply deinterlace it (not always bad with PAL although it is always bad for NTSC) then again TMPGEnc is all you need alhtough for interlaced PAL the "old" Xesdeeni AviSynth script for 25fps to 29.970fps is sometimes the better approach.

Note when I say all you need is TMPGEnc that I am talking about the video processing ... slowing down the video requires adjusting the audio with something like BeSweet or Goldwave etc.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[Skynet107]

Is your source video interlaced or progressive? I can only think of 2 reasons not to encode to 23.976.

1. The source is progressive material originally shot on video.

2. The source is interlaced PAL.

If it's option 1, then the best way is to use DGpulldown after you encode the video to 720x480 25.0 fps PAL format (sounds wierd I know)

If option 2, then convert to 29.970 de-interlaced using avisynth. Actually no matter what encoder you use, always use avisynth if you can the filters/resize algorithms are generally far better than any encoder.

[digitalfreaknyc]

Question:

How do you convert AND change the audio? I love the job that DGpulldown does but PAL Speed-up drives me mad. Is there any way to convert pal to the proper frame rate AND change the speed to "normal" as well? Can this only be done with TMPGenc?

[FulciLives]

Question:

How do you convert AND change the audio? I love the job that DGpulldown does but PAL Speed-up drives me mad. Is there any way to convert pal to the proper frame rate AND change the speed to "normal" as well? Can this only be done with TMPGenc?

If you use TMPGEnc then yes, you could do the video with just TMPGEnc and no other tool.

The audio does need to be slowed down though and for that you need to use another program. You can use a WAV audio editing program, such as GOLDWAVE, or you can use something like BeSweet or AC3Machine (which can work with 5.1 AC-3).

However unless the original audio is 2.0 Stereo or Mono I suggest using DGPulldown and leave the audio as is.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

P.S.
When the original PAL audio is "normal" 2 channel audio it is best to convert that to a 16-bit 48k Stereo PCM WAV file. Then convert that WAV to a new WAV of the proper length. Here you would use BeSweet or something like GOLDWAV. Once you have the corrected WAV you can then convert it to 2.0 AC-3 for the final DVD. Don't try to convert from AC-3 to AC-3 unless you have multi-channel AC-3 like 5.1 AC-3 but even then you might have sync issues. No matter what the original sound is (AC-3 or MP2 or MP3 if from an AVI etc.) always convert to WAV first before trying to adjust the length ... except for 5.1 AC-3 in which case try AC-3 to AC-3 using AC3Machine.

[digitalfreaknyc]

Question:

How do you convert AND change the audio? I love the job that DGpulldown does but PAL Speed-up drives me mad. Is there any way to convert pal to the proper frame rate AND change the speed to "normal" as well? Can this only be done with TMPGenc?

If you use TMPGEnc then yes, you could do the video with just TMPGEnc and no other tool.

For some reason, every time I try and convert it, it stays the same length, though. What am i doing wrong?

[FulciLives]

Question:

How do you convert AND change the audio? I love the job that DGpulldown does but PAL Speed-up drives me mad. Is there any way to convert pal to the proper frame rate AND change the speed to "normal" as well? Can this only be done with TMPGenc?

If you use TMPGEnc then yes, you could do the video with just TMPGEnc and no other tool.

For some reason, every time I try and convert it, it stays the same length, though. What am i doing wrong?

As I already said ... in TMPGEnc you enable the DO NOT FRAME RATE CONVERSION option then you set up your encode as if your source is a progressive NTSC source even though it really is a progressive 25fps source the DO NOT FRAME RATE CONVERSION will slow it down to 23.976fps ... if the PAL source is not progressive then you de-interlace it.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[digitalfreaknyc]

OK this worked great on one movie...but now it's not at all with another. for some reason (and I had this problem with another one), it's not processing the whole m2v file. Meaning...when i convert from PAL to NTSC, the resulting m2v file is probably about 5-10 second shorter than the original PAL. Any reason for this?

[Abond]

OK this worked great on one movie...but now it's not at all with another. for some reason (and I had this problem with another one), it's not processing the whole m2v file. Meaning...when i convert from PAL to NTSC, the resulting m2v file is probably about 5-10 second shorter than the original PAL. Any reason for this?

This can happen if you unintentionaly specify 29.97 fps NTSC output. Than the video will be speed up and be shorter.
If you could not see the last 5-10 sec in the outputed video, then, well, I don't know, many things can be wrong.

[digitalfreaknyc]

OK this worked great on one movie...but now it's not at all with another. for some reason (and I had this problem with another one), it's not processing the whole m2v file. Meaning...when i convert from PAL to NTSC, the resulting m2v file is probably about 5-10 second shorter than the original PAL. Any reason for this?

This can happen if you unintentionaly specify 29.97 fps NTSC output. Than the video will be speed up and be shorter.
If you could not see the last 5-10 sec in the outputed video, then, well, I don't know, many things can be wrong.

That's exactly what's happening. This one movie that I'm trying to convert...each of the VOB files is shorter when I try and convert it. Probably whatever the length is that the file would be extended by is cut off. So if there is a 30 second difference between PAL to NTSC because of the speed-up, the resulting NTSC file will be missing that amount.