PAL DVDS to NTSC?

[KaiserD2]

I realize there have been many threads on this--I did a search, but there were so many, and so many of them were years old, that I was not sure where to begin. If some one points me to a recent thread that will be fine.

I have a number of privately produced DVDs in PAL format -- the files are standard folders with Audio (empty) and Video TS inside, and vob files. I need to 1) rip them and 2) convert them to NTSC. Running Windows 7 with a pretty powerful desktop.

I just tried to copy the DVD with DVD Fab--copying it to disk--but it only copied about 100 bytes for some reason. I was able to copy the file onto my hard drive with windows explorer, in theory at least, and it's sitting there now at 3.2 GB, but DVD styler refused to load all the files, claiming it was much too large. Bizarre.

Thanks in advance.

[hech54]

1) PAL to NTSC is a waste of time.
2) Re-read #1

[DB83]

Well I would not go quite as far as Hech54. Since I also live on the other side of the pond we do not have such problems since all our PAL VCRS/DVD players can handle NTSC playback.

Just because the topics you find are old it does not mean that the information within them is 'old'. The question comes up here more often than a toilet seat rises at a mixed party and the answers are the same.

There exists no magical software to do this properly and to do it requires a fair amount of manipulation with frame-rates, frame-sizes, pull-down ........

Some years ago, this may have been the only real option but I do understand that now there are some quite inexpensive dvd players available in the US that can handle PAL playback and that is where my friend above is coming from.

[KaiserD2]

Well, the problem is, everyone (including me) is going to blue-ray players now, and a multistandard blue-ray player is, as yet, a considerable expense. Thus my interest.

[AlanHK]

Well, the problem is, everyone (including me) is going to blue-ray players now, and a multistandard blue-ray player is, as yet, a considerable expense. Thus my interest.

So now it will be very cheap to buy a used multi-standard DVD player.

[jman98]

Well, the problem is, everyone (including me) is going to blue-ray players now, and a multistandard blue-ray player is, as yet, a considerable expense. Thus my interest.

But a multi-standard DVD player is NOT expensive. Really, my rule is that if you have to do this more than 2 times, you need to just buy a new DVD player. Stop being cheap.

Don't know why DVDFab behaved strangely, but perhaps you are not giving us enough information here. Maybe these "privately produced DVDs" are actually protected porno DVDs that DVDFab does not know how to deal with because they use a type of bad sector copy protection that the major studios do not use. Your method of copying via Windows Explorer is highly unlikely to work correctly if DVDFab barfed on your DVDs.

[KaiserD2]

Well, the problem is, everyone (including me) is going to blue-ray players now, and a multistandard blue-ray player is, as yet, a considerable expense. Thus my interest.

But a multi-standard DVD player is NOT expensive. Really, my rule is that if you have to do this more than 2 times, you need to just buy a new DVD player. Stop being cheap.

Don't know why DVDFab behaved strangely, but perhaps you are not giving us enough information here. Maybe these "privately produced DVDs" are actually protected porno DVDs that DVDFab does not know how to deal with because they use a type of bad sector copy protection that the major studios do not use. Your method of copying via Windows Explorer is highly unlikely to work correctly if DVDFab barfed on your DVDs.

Let me reassure you that they are not porno. They are sports. I'm not sure exactly how they were originally generated. I don't think they are copy protected at all.

[hech54]

Naked mud wrestling?

[KaiserD2]

Soccer, actually.

[victoriabears]

I have come across a few DVD's produced privately that exhibit weird behavior, they run round my garden naked and scare the neighbors.

Seriously, what do you seek as a final result?

If it is to simply play them, do they play fine on your computer and do they display some sort , albeit simple menu ? have you tried vlc media player?

Are they clean of smudges and scratches?

Have you tried playing them in the dvd/blu ray player that you have?

We reject the idea of converting mainly due to the difficulty in maintaining menus, if menus are not an issue it should not take long, I have used TMPG products with auto setting to convert for years and never had any issues.

The long explanations I have seen on here of how to do it make me shudder, simple works fine for me, no picture judder , no aspect ratio problems, may be its just that my dvd players fix all these issues, what I do know is I have never suffered from them.

[KaiserD2]

I have come across a few DVD's produced privately that exhibit weird behavior, they run round my garden naked and scare the neighbors.

Seriously, what do you seek as a final result?

If it is to simply play them, do they play fine on your computer and do they display some sort , albeit simple menu ? have you tried vlc media player?

Are they clean of smudges and scratches?

Have you tried playing them in the dvd/blu ray player that you have?

We reject the idea of converting mainly due to the difficulty in maintaining menus, if menus are not an issue it should not take long, I have used TMPG products with auto setting to convert for years and never had any issues.

The long explanations I have seen on here of how to do it make me shudder, simple works fine for me, no picture judder , no aspect ratio problems, may be its just that my dvd players fix all these issues, what I do know is I have never suffered from them.

Seriously, I would have liked to be able to play everything on the Blue-ray player. I admit part of the reason was that I thought that would give better quality, but it's beginning to look as if I was wrong about that. (I thought that Blue-ray doubled the lines on a standard DVD, but that doesn't seem to be the case for home-run DVDs.) I can see you may have a point.

[jagabo]

You can get region 1 NTSC Blu-ray players that can play PAL DVDs for well under US$100 -- as long as the DVDs aren't region coded. My LG BD550 has no problems with PAL.