Pal To NTSC Menu Conversion

[Mastiland]

Hey guys,

I am a complete noob. I have spend my whole day on this forum searching for a guide with pictures but mostly all the stuff I find is way to complicated. Is there a guide with images for Pal To NTSC menu conversion. I don't care if procedure is long I got time. I would like to learn this once and for all. Please help me.


Thanks

[guns1inger]

The guides are complicated because the process is complicated. Easier and saner to just go and buy a cheap player that handles PAL

[manono]

As you freely admitted, you're a rookie, a rank amateur. Get some manual MPEG-2 encoding under your belt, learn the ins and outs of DVD creation, editing, and modification. Learn the ins and outs of VobBlanker and PGCEdit. Then come back. You want to know how to do it? OK, have fun:

http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.cfm/Doctor-Ms-berGuide-for-Full-PAL-to-NTSC-DVD...n/topic/10111/

It requires a commercial program that may be no longer available. If you have to ask how to do it, you have no idea of the complexities involved, and you're not ready to do it.

...mostly all the stuff I find is way to complicated.

And you think there's an easy way to do it? What makes you think you can handle this?

[Mastiland]

There is a guide Manono you made back in 2006.

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/254043-Guide-for-extracting-menus-for-editing-and-r...g-edited-menus

you stated

The full PAL2NTSC solution will wait for a later guide.

I have been going around looking for that guide hoping that you would have made it. I am not a complete noob on the software. I just call myself as the level you guys do it at is way different than what I do.


If you say its so hard fine. But could you assist me in a bit simpler task. I have the encoded m2v file already from CCE and already converted the video and audio to NTSC. But for the menu I am facing problem. I have taken Screenshots of the PAL menu and have resized each scene to 720*480 already. Could you please point me to a guide in which I would be able to add My custom image as the menu source and my own chapters from celltimes files into it.

[manono]

The guide was never written. Too many variables, too many questions would be asked that I'd have to answer. Thanks for pointing that out. I've edited the guide to remove the references to PAL<->NTSC.

If you don't mind creating new menus, use a freeware authoring program - ones such as DVDAuthorGUI, GUI4DVDAuthor, or DVDStyler - to create fresh NTSC menus for your converted video and audio. You can use your converted menu M2Vs or BMP backgrounds. The main problem is the underlying subpics which also have to be resized and reinserted into the menus, and with an authoring program new subpics will be created. The celltimes.txt will have to be converted into a format the authoring programs support, but that's not hard to do. If you've already converted the movie video and audio, this is certainly the easiest way to do it, and you should be able to make the DVD come out pretty similar to the source PAL DVD.

[Mastiland]

That is exactly where I am lost. On how to get started with the softwares you have mentioned.

http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/2679/maini.png

Say I have the above image. I would like them to lead to the parts mentioned on the image. Would I be able to use this image directly onto any of the software you mentioned. I have been reading guides on DVD Authoring and they all make new menu's using some software. But I wish to do it with a image I already have.

I don't know how to get the subpics resized and all, but I believe the way to do that is mention in the link you gave earlier for Doctor M's guide on Part IV. And as for celltimes the frames I will have extracted will be at 25 FPS but how would I be able to match them with 29.970 fps. I believe they would be the same.

[manono]

3 Idiots? Just get the NTSC version and save yourself the trouble. Is there something peculiar or especially good about the PAL DVD that you got it instead?

Yes, you can use that or any other pic or motion M2V to lead to other menus. DVDAuthorGUI has a feature where you can load a compliant NTSC BMP (at 720x480) and it'll make a short 1 or 2 frame M2V for use in the authoring program. I use DVDAuthorGUI for this sort of thing with some frequency. However, if the DVD songs menu has a 'Playall' feature, as far as I know you can't implement that using the freeware authoring programs. You can point to each song (by chapter) after which the movie will continue.

To convert a 25fps Celltimes.txt, multiply each number by 29.97/25=1.1988. That's if you kept it at 25fps and just ran DGPulldown on it afterwards for 25->29.97. If you slowed it to 23.976fps then multiply each frame number by 29.97/23.976=1.25 Then to convert those frame numbers to the times accepted by most of the authoring programs, take your CCE 25 or 23.976fps AviSynth script and add ChangeFPS(29.97) at the very bottom, open it in VDub(Mod) and scroll to the frame numbers from the edited Celltimes.txt and write down the times in the format used by the authoring program.

[AlanHK]

I have the encoded m2v file already from CCE and already converted the video and audio to NTSC. But for the menu I am facing problem. I have taken Screenshots of the PAL menu and have resized each scene to 720*480 already. Could you please point me to a guide in which I would be able to add My custom image as the menu source and my own chapters from celltimes files into it.

If you have your video done and a menu background, you can easily author this in GfD.
The celltimes: in GfD click on "text based chapter editor" and paste in your list of time, in the format hh:mm:ss.000

00:00:00
00:02:22
00:04:44
00:07:06
00:09:28
00:11:50
00:14:12
00:16:33
00:18:55

Then open the "Visual chapter editor", and you can click on each of these times (under "file list", add then to "Chapterlist" -- this is the easiest way to get the list into the visual editor, which is really a separate module), adjust it if necessary, make a screenshot.

Then you can make your menu with thumbnails, all explained in the manual.

I don't know what your "Songs" menu does. If it's a different list of chapter points, you can do that too -- presumably these would be a subset of the full chapter list.

[Mastiland]

Manono. I do agree with you for waiting for NTSC version, but I can't wait that long anymore. 6 Months of torture was enough.

Anyhow AlanHK. Let me show you what Manono meant by "Play All" in songs.

http://img840.imageshack.us/img840/6702/songs.png


Anyhow back to topic. I converted the celltime frames like Manono told me using the original frames and times that by 1.1988. I have encoded the m2v at 25fps and just did a simple pulldown with dgpulldown for 25-->29.970. I got the following result. I use a spreadsheet to do this as it was easier. If anyone looking for it. It is attached to this post at the very bottom.

PAL    NTSC 
1608   1928       
12052   14448       
15666   18780       
19279   23112       
26056   31236       
33417   40060       
41529   49785       
43229   51823       
45299   54304       
51127   61291       
53501   64137       
64183   76943       
86287   103441     
95691   114714       
106848   128089       
113004   135469       
116326   139452       
122472   146819       
127302   152610       
139458   167182       
148280   177758       
155043   185866       
161351   193428       
170031   203833       
185788   222723       
189587   227277       
199749   239459       
208194   249583       
227192   272358

Now if I already did pulldown from 25 to 29.970 do I still have to use assumefps(29.970). As I would be loading the pulldowned M2v file into VirtualDubMod and not the unpulled down version so the framerate would already be 29.970.

[manono]

Well, if you make the D2V from the reencoded and pulled down M2V using Honor Pulldown Flags then, yes, it'll be 29.97fps and you can use that. I was assuming you still had your original 25fps script to use. I believe you should do it that way. I think if you just load the M2V into VDubMod, it ignores the pulldown flags and you'll get a 25fps video. You can confirm (or disprove) by noting the presence (29.97fps) or absence (25fps) of interlaced frames. If you use VDub, there's a place where you can set it to keep the pulldown flags or to skip them. Don't ask me where because I don't use it.

[Disco Makberto]

Hi, there!

I hope it is not wrong to comment on a thread almost 6 moths old which is not a long time to me...

According to eHow at:

http://www.ehow.com/how_6754313_convert-pal-dvd-ntsc-menus.html

There are some ways to convert a PAL DVD to a NTSC DVD while keeping the exact same menu with, for instance, D2MP. The result will most likely have repeat frames. However, there might be a way to avoid such within D2MP.

If you are familiar with D2MP, please post to the group. Your contribution is greatly appreciated.

Carlos Albert
Disco Makberto