How can I convert NTSC DVDs to PAL?

[Hairless Heart]

Hi

I'm wondering if it's possible to convert an NTSC DVD into PAL format, and if it is, how to do it. The reason I want to do this is because my Dad only gets black and white playback of NTSC films on his TV. I know that he could probably buy a new TV or DVD (or both) to resolve this, but in the meantime I'd like to be able to burn all my movies in PAL format only.

Any help or advice would be much appreciated.

Cheers

[SatStorm]

DVD2DVDR can do this "automatic"

The theory behind is simply: You Inverse Telecine your source from 29.97 which probably is to 23.97. Then, you boost the framerate to 25fps and you adjust the audio lenght the same. Finally, you resize to a PAL framesize and you encode as PAL to mpeg.

In praxis is a complicated and really slow proccess (even with today's modern PCs).
The best way to succeed it is by using avisynth. Search for guides about it.

An alternative, is to load your mpeg 2 files to virtualdub mpeg2, IVTC using a reconstruction adaptive method from fields, save this to a new avi (decompress to avi that is, expect huge files, better use PicVideo at 19 for minor only loss), load the new avi to virtualdub, save wav (the audio), use avifrate to boost this IVTC avi's fps to 25fps (from 23.97), load wav to an audio editor, time compress it to the boosted avi's new timesize, load this boosted avi to virtualdub, use the filter "resize" to resize it to a PAL framesize (352 x 576 or 704 x 576 or 720 x 576) using Lazcos method, feed virtualdub at the same time the boosted audio ("Audio"> "Wav"), and now frameserve both to TMPGenc or any other mpeg 2 encoder, to encode it to a PAL DVD.
It is the best alternative method I know to avisynth, using only freeware tools.

[Hairless Heart]

Thanks Satstorm

I'll give DVD2DVDr a bash. What I'm really looking for is something which can take a bunch of VOBS and change them over without losing the DVD structure. I guess that when you convert to AVI and then create a DVD from that you need to make your own menus, track markers etc, which is better than nothing, but a real hassle.

Cheers