FPS Conversion? Pal to NTSC?

[Heineken]

Hey guys, I have a few .AVI movies that have a 25fps or 23fps.

I didn't realize this, so when I compiled a DVD with DLP, a particular 25fps file along with another 29fps NTSC file, the 25fps file's audio was wayyyy slower and the video seemed to go real fast.

Is there a good way to convert that .avi file from PAL to NTSC which won't lose any quality, so that I can run the .avi file through CCE?

Thanks!

[guns1inger]

PAL is 25 fps. NTSC is either 23.976 or 29.97fps. AVI files can be anything.

Assuming you intend to target NTSC for output in all cases, you need to get your output framerate to 29.97 fps. DLP has nothing to do with this - you just have to get your assets right before you author. DLP will allow you to author a non-standard DVD with both PAL and NTSC material on it, however it may not play well or at all on some players.

You have two choices. The easy way, and the hard way.

The hard way is conceptually the simplest. You encode your 25 fps at 23.976 fps (avisynth can slow it down for you, CCE can encode), then use besweet to alter the audio to match. You then just author the two together at the end. In theory, this works, and restores film sourced material to it's natural state. In practice, it often results in ugly image issues with non-film sourced material, and it can be difficult to get the audio sync'd correctly.

The easy way guarantees (if done correctly) no image or audio sync issues. NTSC material playback at 29.97 fps. However a lot of this material is encoded at 23.976 fps, and flags are added to the video stream to tell the player to create frames on-the-fly to give a 29.97 fps output. You can do the same for 25 fps material using a program called DGpulldown.

Re-size your avi to fit a 720 x 480 frame (FitCD can create a script to do this). Edit the script in notepad to remove any references to framerate (such as assumefps etc). Encode this in CCE at 25 fps. Once you have your .mpv file, open this in DGpulldown, and select the 25fps -> 29.97 fps option. Save a new file, and use this for authoring. When you add it as an asset in DLP, you will see it thinks it has a 29.97 fps video file. Because you have not actually changed the framerate, the audio still matches exactly.