PAL -> NTSC, I need a straight-forward answer

[mojo2185]

I got a problem... I encoded a dvd rip, and when I tried to play it, I discovered I had encoded in PAL when I really need NTSC.

Apparently there is a way to convert the PAL to NTSC (looking at 2 guides on this site). Does it come out looking smooth? My main question is, how long will it take, whats the fastest way to do it (without losing quality)? I started doing the virtualDub frameserver with TMPGEnc encoding, and it said it would take 25 hours?!

Follow-up questions: What's the best way to do this? Using virtualDub, Premiere, the list goes on...

Thanks

[todgerme]

convert pal(25) to ntsc film (23.976) thats your best bet in my opinion, by playing the film slower.
your film will play about 4% slower but it will be smooth otherwise, and unnoticable to yourself! otherwise converting to pal(25 to ntsc(29.97) gets ugly either with player your movie 23% faster or using padded frames!!

hope that helps
todgerme

[g_shocker182]

Encoding usually depends on what speed your processor is. Chances are if it's two hour - long movie and it's taking you 25 hours, then I bet you have a slow processor (~300-600Mhz?)

[i_am_dave]

otherwise converting to pal(25 to ntsc(29.97) gets ugly either with player your movie 23% faster or using padded frames!!

hope that helps
todgerme

I recently went in the other direction, NTSC -> PAL and noticed that the PAL version was a little jerky. Could this be the reason? I was assuming it was my APEX attempting to convert the PAL stream back to NTSC when I played it.

[mojo2185]

Encoding usually depends on what speed your processor is. Chances are if it's two hour - long movie and it's taking you 25 hours, then I bet you have a slow processor (~300-600Mhz?)

Yeah, thats around the ballpark I'm in. But... when I've ripped DVDs and encoded them, it has taken only 8 hrs. So why so long when its actually dropping some frames (25 fps to 23.976)?

Also, when I'm doing the virtual Dub frameserver method, the frameserve numbers in virtual dub change, but in TMPGEnc, the "source time" stays at 0:00, while the estimated time skyrockets from 12 hours up to 23+ hours. I'm not sure whats going on here.

[Adder_78]

[offtopic]
I'm so glad that my dvd-player+tv can play both PAL and NTSC without any problems. 8)
[/offtopic]

[mojo2185]

I'm so glad that my dvd-player+tv can play both PAL and NTSC without any problems.

Unfortunately I don't have that luxury.

So does anyone know why a rip would take 8 hours to encode, and a PAL->NTSC conversion would take 20+ hours?

[flaninacupboard]

Yes, because you're taking the totally unnecasry step of frameserving with Vdub!

Simply set the output framerate in TMPGenc to 23.976fps, and in the advanced tab check the option "do not fram rate conversion"

Now run your audio seperately through Bsweet, making sure you set the frame rate change from 25 -> 23.976 fps, and it will all come out in sync, and nice and smooth.

Another user who's quite happy his system plays both flawlessly

[mojo2185]

Ok, so it sounds like that maybe virtual dub is causing some of this extra time.

Simply set the output framerate in TMPGenc to 23.976fps, and in the advanced tab check the option "do not fram rate conversion"

But during that encode, quality settings would not be changed, and therefore qualtiy and bitrate would be lost.
-------------------------------------------------
Ok, essentially what I need is to only convert my PAL mpeg video to NTSC mpeg video. Its very easy to go into TMPGEnc, change the framerate and encode. Doing this though will change my bitrate, and other settings as well. The problem is, I need the bitrate from the original PAL, the quality from the original PAL, and generally all of the settings (except for framerate, cause thats what I need changed) to stay the same. I'm afraid that in the process of re-encoding quality will be lost, and the size of the file will shoot up. This is no good because my movie is set perfectly to fit on one VCD. Is there a way to only change the framerate and nothing else while encoding?

What I wrote may be a little confusing, so please tell me to rephrase this if you don't understand what I'm trying to do.

Thanks to everyone who's taking a look at this!

[flaninacupboard]

You can't do what you wish with MPEG. it may be possible with .avi, but not MPEG. if you want to change the framerate, you need to re-encode. if you need s specific filesize, use a bitrate calculator. TMPGenc will do everything you need, if you take the time to learn what you're doing.

[mojo2185]

Thanks, thats the answer I was looking for. I knew MPEG was difficult to edit and such, but I thought that there might be a slim possibility to change the framerate without adjusting the bitrate and everything else.

Final follow up question:
Now, to aid me in encoding without changing much of what I have, is there a way to tell the bitrate and other settings of the PAL movie that I already have? I'm pretty sure that the video is VBR, is there a way to determine the max/min bitrates?

Thanks to everyone that took a look at my question, it really helped out!

[flaninacupboard]

download bitrate viewer from the tools section, it wil have bitrate data, and stuff like interlace, top field, DCT etc.

[mojo2185]

Thanks for all of your help. It is much appreciated!

This should just about finish off this topic.
Thanks to everyone who has taken time to view my topic and offer helpful tips.

-mojo-

[scottymac]

Dont worry about filesize or additional re-encoding artifacts when you go from PAL to NTSC. Since you're lowering the vertical resolution from 576 to 480, that will eat some of the artifacting that may happen since the bits will no longer be allocated to the lost resolution. Just use the TMPGenc wizard or a bitrate calculator, do multiple pass VBR and filesize will be a null issue.

Plus, Pal movies play 4.03% faster, so going from 25fps back to the original 23.976fps is converting back to the way the movie was really meant to be seen.

[mojo2185]

Thanks for the input scottymac

Since you're lowering the vertical resolution from 576 to 480, that will eat some of the artifacting that may happen since the bits will no longer be allocated to the lost resolution.

Unfortunately, my PAL encode was encoded at 480x480 (not a PAL resolution I think) by mistake. Hopefully, this won't cause many problems.

[flaninacupboard]

Scotty,
Actually the original movie was supposed to be seen at a square 24fps, so you NTSC guys see it slightly slowed down! :P

Mojo, 480X480 is NTSC SVCD resolution, but as you're re-encoding to NTSC this is in no way a problem

[scottymac]

Scotty,
Actually the original movie was supposed to be seen at a square 24fps, so you NTSC guys see it slightly slowed down! :P

What are you talking about?

NTSCfilm IS 23.976fps (close as damnit to 24fps)
You PAL folks see 25fps (not as close to 24fps) which would mean that you are watching it 4.03% faster.

[flaninacupboard]

yeah, NTSC Film is 23.976, but Film film is 24fps. so we actually only see it 4% fater.

[madpoet]

So do you play around with any of the Advanced settings in tmpg when doing this? I've yet to get a clean picture with multipass VBR. I get all sorts of jerkiness in motion scenes. Are there general settings to use for min/avg/max bitrate, or is that what you use the calc for? Just trying to learn!

Thanks,
MP

[mojo2185]

Are there general settings to use for min/avg/max bitrate, or is that what you use the calc for? Just trying to learn!

I still have yet to find an answer to my question: is the calculated bitrate from the calculator the min/max/or average?

But, from playing around, I'm pretty sure that the calculated bitrate is the AVERAGE bitrate.
Using 2 Pass VBR, I've acomplished pretty good results: Max:2500 Averagewhatever bitrate calc tells me) Min:100

Apparently, VBR does give better quality than a CBR would (especially in terms of VCDs, when you need to fit a lot on a CD). Using VBR, I've crammed a 2hr 12min DivX DVD-r Rip onto one CD with pretty good results (except it was in PAL and played jerky on my NTSC DVD player). The picture looked very good on my TV. Note, it does take longer to encode using VBR though. I also set my Motion Search to High Quality.

[flaninacupboard]

The figure output from a bitrate calc can be used as either a CBR figure or an average figure in multipass.

Madpoet,
Some players don't handle VBR on VCD or SVCD too well, either because the MPEG-1 decoder isn't designed for it, or because the speed the CD is spinning needs to alter, and it can't cope with it.

You shouldn't have any problems with VBR DVD's though.

[mazinz]

also keep in mind that going from a pal framerate of 24 or 25 frames to the ntsc of 23.97, will not work for ntsc dvd. it is not a standard bitrate for ntsc dvd and plays back highly jerky. this is why some of the posters mentioned the 29.97 rate for conversion (which is what i use)

Svcd is a liitle different and allows the 23.97 framerate