23.976 to 25 video OK, audio time compress best of my 2 cents?

[dinkob]

This is more of an information to share, but also does anyone know of any other engine/software?

According to some manuals and information that I found here, which I thought I would never had to deal with, if I am not mistaken it is recommended to;

Video that is 23.976 change to 25 fps (VirtualDub) so its shorter
Audio that originated from there simply speed up but prevent pitch using Cool Edit or so.

Well it happened, I need to convert one NTSC Film music video so I can append it to my VCD that is PAL.

Video part is ok, I am fine there (VirtualDub > Frame Rate > Change to 25 (not convert)).

Audio, well that's a bit of an issue.

Cool Edit Pro is good but it doesn't quite process the audio to the level of acceptance (choppy, phasey)
Sound Forge is the least acceptable (plugin XFX1 - Time Expand - Same as Sound Forge > Preset A02 - Music 2 was my choice)

The absolute best was Logic Audio 3.6.

Very few drops but sound quality has been retained for the most part.

I wonder if there is anything better though?

I am currently using Logic Audio 3.6 to test this out, which only works on Windows 98 (even if I wanted to upgrade now, this software is not made for Windows anymore - wonders me if they would get rid of stupid dongle). I also wanted to find out if anyone tried this "Procedure" using Wavelab, Waves or even something like Cakewalk or some other application (such as Mixing apps - Traktor DJ Studio, PCDJ, VirtualDJ) since I have seen some of these have a good engine to process this task.

Here's the screenshot of my Logic Audio and the percentage used (according to a simple calculation 4.27 is the percent needed to speed it up);



I am quite positive there is something rather high end used in production studios, but what would be the best for home users?

Should I share the sample of the three tests I did (If someone would like to see)?

Just a note if someone has never used this software but wishes to try - it is NOT user friendly.

[DarrellS]

Virtualdub isn't mean't for converting NTSC to Pal or viseversa. You're better off using a program that is made for this task.

[FulciLives]

I use GOLDWAVE and it's time stretch feature which has always worked well for me when doing PAL to NTSC so it should do NTSC to PAL just as well.

You have to enter a percentage in the time stretch.

For PAL (25fps) to NTSC (23.976fps) I use 95.904

For NTSC (23.976fps) to PAL (25fps) you would use 104.271

In the end your audio file should be approximately 4% shorter when doing NTSC (23.976fps) to PAL (25fps).

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[FulciLives]

Virtualdub isn't mean't for converting NTSC to Pal or viseversa. You're better off using a program that is made for this task.

Nothing wrong with using VirtualDubMod (my personal favorite of the VirtualDub flavors) to do FPS changes as long as you are doing it with a DivX/XviD file and save to a new file using DIRECT STREAM MODE.

There are other more "direct" ways if you are converting from one format to another like XviD to DVD but there are more ways to do things always it seems so ...

The tricky part is the audio and yes I would not use VirtualDub (or any of it's flavors) to do anything to audio but mux/demux it.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[DRP]

I use GoldWave too but I don't try to avoid the pitch change. The methods that claim to be able to alter the playback rate without changing the pitch don't do so accurately enough to avoid any loss of synch at some point in the video. I find any loss of audio synch much more annoying than an almost imperceptible change in audio pitch.

That said however, I don't ever convert music videos from PAL to NTSC or vice versa. In the case of music the pitch change is obvious and when the music is the most important thing I don't muck around with it.

A faster way of doing the same thing in GoldWave is to change the PlayBack Rate to 50050Hz (if 48000Hz originally) - which is done instantly - and then resample back to either 48kHz or 44.1kHz depending on your intended output format. This way only one resample is performed.

[jagabo]

Nothing wrong with using VirtualDubMod (my personal favorite of the VirtualDub flavors) to do FPS changes as long as you are doing it with a DivX/XviD file and save to a new file using DIRECT STREAM MODE.

I agree there's nothing wrong with using VirtualDub to change the video frame rate. But since the frame rate in an AVI file is simply two integers in the header you can just use AVIFrate (which only changes the header) which works as fast as you can select the setting.

A faster way of doing the same thing in GoldWave is to change the PlayBack Rate to 50050Hz (if 48000Hz originally) - which is done instantly - and then resample back to either 48kHz or 44.1kHz

Interesting. I'll have to try that sometime.

[sbtuttle]

I do alot of PAL to NTSC, to do so I use Virtualdub , to change up the audio I use Besweet and the Besweet w/GUI and have never had a problem - in fact Besweet has a built-in preset for NTSC to PAL 25fps.

All you have to do is open the file in Virtualdub, then file, save WAV (you have to specify a location if you want it in another folder) You have to name the saved WAV.

When Besweet is done you now have a new file and it will append the original name and add new

Example Startrek becomes Startreknew

Then run it through Besweet.

Then in Virtualdub, video, Direct Stream Copy, video, frame rate, change to 25.00

Then in Virturaldub Audio, Wav audio(it will then ask for the file, pick the one that ends in "New"

Then file, Save AS avi

your done you have just converted 23.976fps to 25.00fps

[DarrellS]

I personally don't believe that speeding up or slowing down the audio is the correct way to convert PAL to NTSC or viseversa. There are programs that will perform the task correctly.
If DVD is your final output then DivxToDVD will properly convert from one to the other.

If you follow this thread on the Virtualdub forum, you find that using Virtualdub is not the correct way of doing PAL to NTSC conversion.

http://forums.virtualdub.org/index.php?act=ST&f=5&t=272&hl=pal+to+ntsc&s=7b774a1c0668f...37f87af66f6906

and if you do a search of the Virtualdub forum, you'll see that this topic is very slim.

http://forums.virtualdub.org/index.php?act=ST&f=2&t=11010&hl=pal+to+ntsc&s=7b774a1c066...37f87af66f6906

[DRP]

That's nice that you don't believe it but that doesn't make it wrong. It is well accepted that the proper conversion from NTSC to PAL is a simple speed change. All TV stations and studios do it this way for broadcasting. You need look no further than the running times for most movies on IMDb. The times differ typically by ~4-5min for the US theatrical release and the subsequent PAL DVD release. The same difference is evident when they compare running times for otherwise identical US & PAL DVD releases.

[manono]

Yep, and have you never heard of the so-called "PAL speedup", or the fact that PAL audio is often a semi-tone higher than it's supposed to be.

Besides, those old VDub Forum threads to which you linked are about converting interlaced 25fps VCR tapes to 29.97fps interlaced, not the same thing as the 23.976fps->25fps progressive subject of this thread

[mats.hogberg]

When I've done NTSC to PAL (as part of AVI to DVD conversion) conversions, I've just changed the frame rate of the AVI with avifrate. First extract audio, then apply the frame rate change, process tha audio with WavWorks (a dedicated Java app for this task) to make it shorter (without pitch change) and finally encode. Can't see many alternatives to the general workflow. (Although other tools can be used.)

/Mats

[FulciLives]

Well if you are converting to MPEG-2 DVD spec then there is always the DGPulldown method where you change the frame size but not the frame rate when encoding ... then use DGPulldown to "adjust" the frame rate.

In other words to go from PAL to NTSC you re-encode at 720x480 but at 25fps then set DGPulldown to 29.970fps

For NTSC (23.976fps) to PAL you re-encode at 720x576 but at 23.976fps then set DGPulldown to 25fps

This way the audio does not need to be adjusted as the new converted video has the same running time as the original video.

Of course this really only works well with a progressive source and forget this method for NTSC (29.970fps) as a source.

I have to admit that I almost always do the DGPulldown type of conversion these days when going from PAL to NTSC. It is veryhelpfull with PAL DVD conversions where you might have 5.1 AC-3 or DTS etc.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

P.S.
Some posts on doing PAL to NTSC with DGPulldown:
1.) THE HOLY GRAIL? ... A new method of PAL to NTSC conversion!
2.) PAL to NTSC problem

[mats.hogberg]

To boot, generally most PAL gear (TV and DVD players) handles NTSC materials without problems, so a conversion may not be necessary at all.

/Mats