US DVD PLAYER OWNERS PLEASE...

[darthbane2k]

I am from the UK and am a filmaker. I am looking to take DVD copies of a film I have produced to the USA in search of a distributor, the problem is that we use PAL TV/Video system here.. when authoring in ULEAD DVD WS from a PAL Mini DV source I changed the project option to NTSC and burned the disc.. problems on my standalone player in scenes of fastmotion I get dodgy scanlines, after a bit of research I discovered that this was because my source video was PAL and had to do with different framerates etc... I thought DVD WS would convert to NTSC properlty.

Anyway, now it looks like we have no choice but to bring PAL DVD discs with us to the states, so I just wanted to know whether DVD players in the USA are capable of playing region-free PAL Discs.. will a distributor be able to view this disc okay?

[SLK001]

The DVD player by itself has no limitations on playing PAL or NTSC videos (at least my Pioneer DV-343 doesn't). The problem is, is that there are virtually no multi-standard TV's in the US (we SET the standards!!), so your US client will have to watch the video on a computer.

If your video is shot on 24fps film, then there should be no problem converting to NTSC 30fps with drop frame (ie, 29.97fps). Just crop to 720x480 and apply a 2:3 pulldown with drop frame flag.

[darthbane2k]

DAMN!

No my source video is 25 fps PAL , I captured into ULEAD DVD WS via firewire and changed my project settings to NTSC..
Initally I burnt a DVD and it plays but with funny scanlines in certain areas of movement.. Im stumped, Is this something to do with field orders?

I cant take a load of dud discs all the way to LA?

[snowmoon]

Your best choice ( if possible ) is to re-encode the master PAL video directly to either 23.976 film rate NTSC or 29.97 NTSC DVD compatible mpg and bring that along with you.

You have interlaced or progressive PAL WS materal?

If it's progressive it will be easier, but interlaced should not be a problem either. Both can be converted to NTSC using AVISynth and a little patience.

[darthbane2k]

Okay how about this..

I still have the original MPEGS Ulead DVD workshop converted to NTSC for the burn. Is there a way I can amend these files to get rid of the scanlines.. I dont see the lines on my PC just my TV,

[snowmoon]

Hold on a second..

You see scanlines on your PC or a TV? If you are just seeing lines on your PC then chances are it's fine ( though I would find a NTSC DVD/ multi-system TV to be sure ). What you are seeing is ULEAD adding fields to your video to bring it up to 29.97 FPS. I believe the pattern is 4 interlaced, 2 progressive for 25->29.97.

[darthbane2k]

NO I ONLY see lines on my TV.

How can I remedy this?

I have the NTSC Converted files ULEAD created.. how can i disable the scanlines

[snowmoon]

HRm...

Without going back to the original PAL DV I don't think it can be done.

I think what happened is that ULEAD did a dumb frame duplication to bring it up to 29.97 so if your source was interlaced it would duplicate the interlacing 2 frames in a row, this will cause 5/6 frames of "interlacing" per second to bleed through into what you see on the NTSC TV.