PAL to NTSC

[twinegar]

I am able to use TMPDEnc to convert a Pal DVD to NTSC but the playback is jerky during pans and other motion. What am I not setting properly? I am using motion estimate search and CBR. Do I need to change the field order or something?

[M66]

TMPGEnc cannot handle PAL to NTSC (and vice versa) conversions.
For that, you need Canopus Procoder.
There's also a great Avisynth script by Xesdeeni that I've been using and which has given good results:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=45459&perpage=20&pagenumber=2

Check out Xesdeeni's conversions page:
http://www.geocities.com/xesdeeni2001/StandardsConversion/index.html
and
http://home.bip.net/gunnart/video/AVSPorts/SmoothDeinterlacer/

[twinegar]

After looking into the process suggested and looking into the number of PAL movies and TV shows that I need I cheated and purchased a region free DVD player. Thanks for the input.

[M66]

After looking into the process suggested and looking into the number of PAL movies and TV shows that I need I cheated and purchased a region free DVD player. Thanks for the input.

You're welcome. Are you in the US?
I've heard that it's rare for DVD players aimed at the US market to be able to play PAL discs at all. Here in Europe, it's unusual to find a player that doesn't handle NTSC. But it may not ouput NTSC to the TV, it can often be quasi-PAL (PAL-60). I made sure to buy a DVD player that outputs NTSC (not PAL-60) and have a multistandard TV too.

I'm curious about what will happen when you play a PAL DVD.
Does your DVD player perform some conversion to NTSC or does it output a true PAL signal to the TV?
If so, can the TV handle it?
How common are multistandard TVs in the US?

[DJRumpy]

It must convert the signal. I also have a dvd player capable of playing pal discs. I've never played a PAL dvd, but I have played PAL encoded SVCD's without issue. I've done this on two different TV's. Both TV's were sony's though (36" Vega, and an 57" Widescreen HDTV). Both TV's are fairly new (less than 4 years old..the HDTV is spankin new). I don't think the player would output a pal signal, as I would think a normal TV would choke on the 50Hz refresh rate. The DVD player is also a Sony.

[M66]

It must convert the signal. I also have a dvd player capable of playing pal discs. I've never played a PAL dvd, but I have played PAL encoded SVCD's without issue. I've done this on two different TV's. Both TV's were sony's

I don't think the player would output a pal signal, as I would think a normal TV would choke on the 50Hz refresh rate. The DVD player is also a Sony.

Sony seems to take this seriously; I have a 29" which is multistandard (PAL and NTSC-capable) and have also tested a 14" Sony which had the same feature.
I don't think the DVD player converts the signal if it is capable of outputting PAL and NTSC and *is set up to output what the disc (DVD, VCD or SVCD) actually contains*.

Why would a non-PAL capable TV "choke on the 50 Hz refresh rate"?
Outputting NTSC to a PAL TV that cannot handle it does not damage (choke) the TV (you just get a black and white picture), so why would it do that the other way around (outputting PAL to a non-PAL capable TV).


If the DVD player and the TV is truly "multistandard", it means that it handles NTSC *and* PAL. Meaning the TV works with both systems.
NTSC is 29.97/59.94, 525 lines, 60 Hz, with the color signal at 3.58MHz.
PAL is 25/50, 625 lines, 50 Hz, with the color signal at 4.43MHz.

The DVD player I have outputs NTSC and PAL (I hav set it up not to convert NTSC to PAL-60). The TV displays both PAL and NTSC correctly.
If your DVD player outputs PAL and your TV can handle PAL, then why would there be any conversion going on?

[DJRumpy]

The question was more along the lines of what if your TV doesn't support pal, but your player does. I don't recall any PAL setup options, but I don't spend alot of time in my players setup menu's, other than turning on 16:9. I'll have to check.

[yg1968]

A number of DVD players in the U.S. can do the PAL to NTSC conversion.
Actually, a lot of the DVD players that can play VCDs are able to do this conversion. You must select NTSC in the DVD player's menu to force it to convert the signal to NTSC (as opposed to automatic or multi-standard). However, not all the DVD players that can do a PAL to NTSC conversion can be made to be region free.

Nevertheless, a number of DVD players can be region hacked by the remote or through a change of the firmware. Among those are the following:

Apex 1100 (hacked region free firmware), Apex-1500 (hacked region free firmware), Philipps DVD-634 (remote hack), Philipps DVD-724 (remote hack), Prima-1500 (remote hack), Norcent DP-300 (hacked firmware), Malata N-996 are among the ones that I know can do the PAL to NTSC conversion and that can be region hacked. For more on this, see:

www.nerd-out.com

[M66]

A number of DVD players in the U.S. can do the PAL to NTSC conversion.
Actually, a lot of the DVD players that can play VCDs are able to do this conversion. You must select NTSC in the DVD player's menu to force it to convert the signal to NTSC (as opposed to automatic or multi-standard). However, not all the DVD players that can do a PAL to NTSC conversion can be made to be region free.

Interesting information. But how does a PAL to NTSC on-the-fly conversion look? Pretty bad.. Jerky, especially in in pan scenes, I guess?
PAL-60 isn't beautiful either. The best thing is to set the DVD Player to "multi" (or whatever the standard of the disc one wants to play is) and have a TV set capable of both PAL and NTSC.
Apart from the Sonys mentioned earlier, how common are TVs that are capable of both PAL and NTSC in the USA?

Also, how come you Americans are interested in region free players?
Most of the good stuff comes out on the US market, but many movies, television series, music, and other DVDs never get a European release.
So for me (I'm in Europe), a region-selectable player was a must.
But what is it you Americans buy on Region 2 PAL DVD? And why?

[DJRumpy]

Good question. The only PAL material is I've played is a laserdics capture of Star Wars (PAL), downloaded from the internet (I have the VHS tape), which I burned to SVCD without converting back. I would never actually have a reason to buy a PAL dvd.

[madeyalook]

well sometimes people in usa/canada go back to other places like hk where dvds are NOT in region 1... but then again.. most of the copied dvds are already region hacked..

[BrianK]

I thought TMPGenc could do a PAL to NTSC conversion. I have a bunch of PAL divx files that I have converted using the DVD (NTSC) profile in TMPGenc, and they work great. I extract the audio to 48 Khz .wav file using Virtualdub and use that as the audio file. I convert it to a .mpg file and it has been working great. Is this not doing a PAL -> NTSC conversion? If not, what is it doing?

Thanks!

[M66]

@BrianK
There is more to converting between PAL and NTSC than getting the framerate and resolution for the media (DVD. SVCD, VCD) right.
Yes, TMPGEnc can change a file's framerate from PAL (25 fps) to NTSC (29.97) or vice versa.
And it can resize the video to match the system too.
But does it do a *proper* conversion? One that looks good?
No. If you've seen a good conversion, as from Procoder, you'll see the difference with converting with a software not designed for it (TMPGEnc) and one designed for it (Procoder).

If you have fed it a PAL, 25 frames per second DivX-compressed avi, and selected the NTSC DVD profile, then TMPGEnc has made its best to create new frames, so you get a mpeg with NTSC-framerate 29.97.
Perhaps it threw away frames (from 25 fps to 23.97), then set the player to perform 2-3 Pulldown.
It's also had to resize in order to get proper DVD resolution, which DivX files rarely ever have. So, it probably had to interpolate up to a higher resolution than the original avi-file had. This upsampling of the resolution will make the video very blurry.

The resulting files of TMPGEnc's conversions look absolutely awful to me and any motion is unsmooth for sure.
I don't think I would appreciate the quality, but if you're happy...

Converting from PAL to NTSC takes a little more than just changing the framerate and the resolution.

If you want to make proper conversions, you need to buy Canopus Procoder or learn Xesdeeni's script which I posted a URL for.

[BrianK]

Thanks for the info. I guess ignorance is bliss. I am converting PAL DVD rips and to me the quality has been much better than I expected on my 61" Sony HDTV. I'll take a look at the guides you mentioned if the quality starts to suffer doing it this way.

Thanks!!

[yg1968]

M66,

To answer your question, I am not American. I am French Canadian (Canada is also region 1). So I import movies from France from time to time.

Also, sometimes the DVD from other regions are better. For example, I ordered a BBC documentary called the Planets. The U.K. narrator was Ewen McGregor (OB1 in Star Wars Episodes I and II). The U.S. versions has an annoying women as a narrator. If you read comments on amazon.com, they tell you that you should order the U.K. version. The narrator is much better. Plus it has extra footage on the Soviet space program that the American DVD doesn't have. So I followed their advice and ordered it through amazon.co.uk.

Even for Holywood movies for certain DVDs, the region 2 or region 4 DVD is better than the region 1 because it has extra features. There is a website that compares the DVD from each region and tells you which region is the best one. I forget the name of the website.

But to answer your other questions, a PAL DVD looks OK on these DVD players (it is not jerky) but it is a bit stretched on most of them. From what I have heard, this is because the DVD player cannot do the PAL to NTSC conversion at the same time as the 16:9 to 4:3 conversion. I believe the Malata is an exception to this (i.e. it doesn't stretch the image).

Multi-system TVs are not easy to find in North America. You can find them in specialized shops. In Montreal, there is stores in Chinatown that have them. But you can't find them at Walmart.

[DJRumpy]

Just as an FYI, I've seen posts, where you can convert PAL to NTSC using TMPGenc. You use the 'do not frame rate convert' option, and the FILM template. I don't know the specifics, as I don't use TMPGenc, but it is possible. Search the forum for with those keywords ( do not frame rate convert ) for specifics. This method should be slowing the video down by 1 frame per second, to convert it back to FILM. I haven't tried it myself though. Your mileage may vary...

[M66]

Just as an FYI, I've seen posts, where you can convert PAL to NTSC using TMPGenc. You use the 'do not frame rate convert' option, and the FILM template. I don't know the specifics, as I don't use TMPGenc, but it is possible.

Yes, it is possible. I've never said it's not possible.
But the result won't be good, because TMPEnc is not qualified to do conversions between PAL and NTSC/NTSC and PAL.
If one unticks the 'do not frame rate convert' TMPGEnc's popup help is quite clear on what will happen: audio and video will not be in sync any more. For serious PAL to NTSC/NTSC to PAL conversions, TMPGEnc is not a tool to even consider using in my view.

I have now tested outputting a PAL SVCD and a 16:9 PAL DVD as NTSC.
The DVD Player I have works with both sytems, so I simply set it to output NTSC. The DVD-players conversion left a lot to be desired.
The AR looked a bit weird. The picture quality was just awful on the SVCD, but not so bad on the DVD, but motion was generally a bit odd-looking on both the DVD and SVCD.
I also tested the same material as on the PAL SVCD, but converted from PAL to NTSC using Xesdeeni's script and looked a million times better.

I would not go the TMPGEnc or DVD-player-on-the-fly-conversion route. It's better to buy a multistandard DVD player and a multistandard TV (Sony TV seem to be a good choice) or properly convert between PAL and NTSC with Procoder, Avisynth, etc.

Different strokes, for different folks.

[Xesdeeni]

M66

Interesting information. But how does a PAL to NTSC on-the-fly conversion look? Pretty bad.. Jerky, especially in in pan scenes, I guess?

I've looked closely at the PAL to NTSC conversion that my DVD player (GE 5803p) does, and I think I know how it is being done:

I believe they throw out one of the PAL fields, giving them 288 lines. Then they use the built-in scaler. In DVD players, the scaler is normally hard-wired for anamorphic to letterbox, so it normally converts from 480 or 240 to 360, making the scaling ratio 3:4 or 3:2. Using the 3:2 scaler, the 288 lines is scaled to 432 lines. Then the player slows the video to 24 fps and does 3:2 pulldown to telecine. The audio is slowed without changing pitch, which this DVD player can do with any audio because of its Karaoke features.

All of this applies to my DVD player, so other players can certainly do thier conversion differently. But this explanation matches my observations:

- The video doesn't have full vertical resolution, but it's not quite 240-line either.
- There are small black bars at the top and bottom of the PAL converted screen.
- When viewing a 16:9 PAL video, it is not letterboxed (the scaler is already in use).

The results are not too bad. Obviously half of the temporal information is missing, so pans are not as smooth as the original. But the 3:2 pulldown looks pretty much like movies, which NTSC viewers are used to. And of course there is a loss in vertical resolution. This is very noticable on nearly horizontal lines, especially on my 36" TV.



As for explicit conversions, remember that the best technique to use and the quality of the results depend on the type of source material you have. You can certainly use TMPGEnc alone if you are converting 25 progressive fps to 24 progressive fps and vice-versa with good results. You'll have to tweak the audio (see the time scaling utility referenced at http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=49800), but the quality of the video will be very good. But if the source is interlaced, TMPGEnc can't handle this. Interestingly, TMPGEnc has all the right pieces to duplicate my conversion process, but it just can't be configured to use them in the correct order.

Xesdeeni

[yg1968]

Xesdeeni said:

When viewing a 16:9 PAL video, it is not letterboxed (the scaler is already in use).

So essentially, you agree that it stretches the image vertically. Right? I have heard that the Malata N996 (unlike other players that do this PAL to NTSC conversion) doesn't stretch the image.

I imagine that if you had a 16:9 TV, the image would not be stretched vertically.

[Xesdeeni]

yg1968:

So essentially, you agree that it stretches the image vertically. Right?

I don't think I would agree with that. I believe I would say that it does not shrink the image (again). Technically I believe the 16:9 TV does the stretching.

Xesdeeni

[yg1968]

Maybe your DVD player is different from mine but on my Apex-1500, people look taller than they should and a circle looks like an egg when I play a PAL anamorphic DVD on my regular NTSC TV. If you read posts on www.nerd-out.com, this is a common complaint among DVD players that can do the PAL to NTSC conversion but your DVD player might be different.

[vcd4ever]

Xesdeeni Wrote:

You can certainly use TMPGEnc alone if you are converting 25 progressive fps to 24 progressive fps and vice-versa with good results. You'll have to tweak the audio (see the time scaling utility referenced at http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=49800), but the quality of the video will be very good.

I'm using this method myself and the quality is very good.

If anybody is interested in some pal to ntsc samples encoded with this
method, please go to https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=151355

Vcd4ever.

[DJRumpy]

Yes, it is possible. I've never said it's not possible.
But the result won't be good, because TMPEnc is not qualified to do conversions between PAL and NTSC/NTSC and PAL.

M66, the method used by TMPGenc is also the same method used by every other decent conversion tool. The audio shouldn't be processed in TMPGenc for this kind of job, hence the warning for the option. BeSweet will easily convert audio from PAL to FILM with the click of a button. I use AVISynth + BeSweet for the same affect, with excellent results. I'm sure it works fine. People entering here wanting to know how to convert using their tool of choice would have a bad time of it, if everyone just dismissed their software out of hand as unusable for the task. It can do these conversions, however, you must process the audio externally. I'm sure the output using TMPGenc, and BeSweet would look fine.

In regards to the PAL display on an NTSC television, I noticed no difference in aspect ratio (Sony DVD), but a small change of 40 or so lines of resolution is just a drop in the bucket, all things considered. It may be just a player dependent thing, with some handling the conversion better than others...

[Xesdeeni]

yg1968
DVD resolutions are not different for 4:3 vs 16:9. All the supported resolutions (720x480/576, 704x480/576, 352x480/576, 352x240/288) can be either 4:3 or 16:9. There is a bit in the stream that indicates what the aspect ratio should be.

Most DVD players simply output a standard NTSC/PAL signal, with a horizontal trace of about 15.7KHz (NTSC and PAL are slightly different). If you have a conventional TV, then this is displayed as 4:3. To help handle anamorphic (16:9) movies, the DVD players include a downscaler to letterbox the movie. But the output from the DVD player is still a standard NTSC/PAL signal.

A typical 16:9 TV has some choices built in. It can stretch or shrink the image it receives. A 4:3 image can be shown with bars on the left and right to preserve the aspect ratio. It can also be stretched to fill the screen. Some TVs allow the middle 360 lines to be stretched so that letterboxed content actually fills the screen. And of course 16:9 content is displayed across the entire screen.

But all of this is a function of the TV. The only thing a typical DVD player can do is shrink to letterbox.

[Progressive scan DVD players add a few variables to the equation. Typically they output double the NTSC/PAL timing, or about 31.5KHz horizontal sync, but they still output the same signal, regardless of the aspect ratio.]

DJRumpy, M66
Using TMPGEnc to do standards conversion will produce very good results if the source is from film. But if the source is actually interlaced video, the quality will not be so good. See my Standards Conversion Page (http://www.geocities.com/xesdeeni2001/StandardsConversion).

Xesdeeni

[yg1968]

Xesdeeni,

I think that we basically agree. I am saying that an amorphic PAL DVD looks stretched vertically on my regular 4:3 TV. You are going into more details by saying that the reason that this happening is that the downscaler is already at work for the PAL to NTSC conversion, so it is unable to shrink the anamorphic DVD to be displayed as letterbox on my 4:3 TV.

Am I right to assume that a PAL anamorphic DVD would look OK on an NTSC 16:9 TV (provided that the DVD player has a PAL to NTSC converter)?

Thanks for the explanations. They are informative.

[DJRumpy]

Xesdeeni, if the source was true interlaced, then deinterlacing, and then reducing framerate would still be an option, although I've never run into an intelaced PAL source (I rarely find PAL sources at all for that matter). I don't know how good the output would look due to the deinterlacing. I'm not a big fan of deinterlacing.

[Xesdeeni]

yg1968

I think that we basically agree. I am saying that an amorphic PAL DVD looks stretched vertically on my regular 4:3 TV. You are going into more details by saying that the reason that this happening is that the downscaler is already at work for the PAL to NTSC conversion, so it is unable to shrink the anamorphic DVD to be displayed as letterbox on my 4:3 TV.

Absolutely. I was probably just picking nits.

Am I right to assume that a PAL anamorphic DVD would look OK on an NTSC 16:9 TV (provided that the DVD player has a PAL to NTSC converter)?

That's the way it's supposed to work, although honestly I don't have access to a 16:9 TV to be sure

DJRumpy

Xesdeeni, if the source was true interlaced, then deinterlacing, and then reducing framerate would still be an option, although I've never run into an intelaced PAL source (I rarely find PAL sources at all for that matter). I don't know how good the output would look due to the deinterlacing. I'm not a big fan of deinterlacing.

I suspect my personal activities don't mirror others, since all I do run into are interlaced sources. I love British sitcoms, so I buy PAL DVDs of those shows that are unreleased in the US and are unlikely ever to be released (mostly older titles). Actually, they are generally a hybrid of film (outdoors), and video (indoors), but the interlaced-to-interlaced conversion works pretty well for the film part.

But yes, deinterlacing and then reducing the frame rate would be an option, although you would probably lose a bit of "effective" vertical resolution and I'm not sure whether the resulting motion would be much better.

The resolution would be lost on any high motion, because you would essentially be taking every other field and interpolating it to fill two fields in the destination (that's what the smart deinterlacers default to when there is lots of motion). If you keep all the fields, you're still interpolating, but on every field. So you get more information in two successive destination fields than you would by throwing out every other source field (most of the time...it depends on the nature of the motion).

Temporally, you might lose the jutter of the interlaced-to-interlaced conversion, but you introduce the 3:2 pulldown jutter (which NTSC viewers are already used to). But more importantly, remember that when film is shot at 24 fps, it is exposed for longer than the video fields shot at 50 fields per second. That means greater natural motion blur that compensates for the lower frame rate and helps the motion appear more smooth. But video would have been shot at 50 fields per second with a shorter exposure time, so the images will be more crisp. This might result in more noticable strobing when you remove every other field. I'd have to do some experiments to see which would be worse...and even that might be in the "eye of the beholder."

Xesdeeni

[DJRumpy]

I'd be curious to here about your results. I'm suprised that with all of the hobbyist's out there, there are not better deintelacing methods available. I find the motion blur, and artifacts unacceptable.

[Xesdeeni]

What would you suggest? Given a succession of fields, how would you make up the missing lines?

The more sophisticated techniques using motion detection/estimation/compensation to recreate the missing lines based on information in fields before and after. But the processing power is much too high for current PCs to do in a reasonable amount of time. (Worse, even if they could do it, the technique is so technially challenging, I'm very sure we'd never see it for sale at less than 4 or 5 digits, much less free.) For the rest of us, we have to try different techniques to guess at the missing pixels.

I've been doing some research on some progressive video source. I throw out every other field to simulate an interlaced display. Then I've been trying different statistical gathering techniques to see if I can find an algorithm based on the information remaining that will get me close to the data from the actual missing lines. So far, I can't find enough correlation to do even as well as the deinterlacers we already have.

But if you have some more ideas, please share them and we'll give them a try.

Xesdeeni

[M66]

I'd be curious to here about your results. I'm suprised that with all of the hobbyist's out there, there are not better deintelacing methods available. I find the motion blur, and artifacts unacceptable.

I totally agree with you. Deinterlacing is a bad, bad thing.
I capture a lot of interlaced video and keep it interlaced when creating Mpeg-2 (DVD, SVCD). The only time I've used deinterlacing is with Xesdeeni's script to convert PAL to NTSC (I've just sent my first PAL to NTSC converted SVCD to a friend in the States and await word if it'll play OK).

Conversion from PAL to NTSC is producing results that are not 100% satisfactory (the converted file does not have as high quality, especially on motion as the original), which is annoying. Yes, I blame deinterlacing for it and have read about the advanced motion estimation deinterlacing techniques used by pro's. This may not ever be available to us enthusiasts, if I understand Xesdeeni's response correctly.

I feel strongly that the best thing, if one is seriously interested in getting the best possible quality, is to get a multistandard TV and multistandard DVD-player, so no conversions are needed.

Still, Xesdeeni's script produce nice results and it's free, which Procoder isn't.

Xesdeeni, if you need interlaced PAL-material for testing purposes, I'd be glad to supply some.
Also, if TMPGEnc cannot handle the audio part in television system conversions, how does your script manage to keep the audio in sync when going from PAL to NTSC?
Is this even a difficult task? Since the length of the converted video is the same as the original, what needs to be done to make the audio fit?
I have only used your script on interlaced 25 fps PAL video. No film conversions, the footage was shot on native video.