Burn Home Video on PAL DVD

[vtraudt]

I want to share my digital home videos with friends in Europe by
mailing DVDs in PAL format.

I am using Pinnacle Studio 8 to capture and edit the video and put
out an AVI file.

I create a PAL format .m2v and .wav file of the avi file (using
TMPGenc).

In DVD Complete I make a PAL DVD from it.

All this works, but the resulting PAL videos show a large amount of
motion "jitter", i.e. all straight lines become extremely zigzagged
when the object moves, the camera zoomes or turns. (I acutally think the "jitter" is already in the video file created by TMPGenc).

I have tried interlaced and non-interlaced, but this disturbing
error remains.

Note: video with almost still object and no camera movement are in
good quality. NTSC DVD's created in Studio 8 or DVD Complete work fine.

Can someone advise how to get rid of the "jitter"?

Do I use the wrong concept/software?

Any advise how else to create a PAL DVD from my home video?

Thanks a lot.

Volker

[nsdn]

it sounds like there may be one of 2 things ...or both.....field order may be wrong, conversion from NTSC to PAL may not be occuring properly...

Easiest and best way of converting is use DVD2SVCD, use it in AVI2DVD mode (option in the misc tab). Once you have your NTSC mini DV AVI file on your harddisk, open it in DVD2SVCD (in AVI2DVD mode) Check the convert from NTSC to PAL on the encode tab. Use Procoder if you can but TMPGE or CCE will work well as well. This also has some great filtering capabilities to make your mini dv look smish

[Lucien]

Note that most European players do playback NTSC on PAL tv.
Check their models and look here at dvdplayers if they have a built-in
converter. This could save you a lot of time.

[Enri]

Hi!

I am having the exact same problem when authoring dvds. I encode using tmpgenc at 8000kbps cbr, and the outputted mpeg2 file looks perfect on the pc, but when it is burned to dvd and played back on my standalone player motion becomes "jittery".

Originally I had a similar problem which turned out to be the field order settings. I swapped this from bottom to top and that corrected it on PC, but it still jitters on the dvd player.

Anyideas anyone?

Thanks,
Enri

[Sugar]

The problem is that your home video was made using a frame rate of 29.97 fps and you are trying to create a video at 25 fps.
What most software will do when changing from NTSC to PAL is to delete the extra 4.97 fps between the 2 formats hence the "jitters".

As suggested above, most players in Europe play both PAL and NTSC. You are definitely better off senidng them your videos in NTSC format and not bother with the conversion.

[berru]

Hi,
I had the same problem. I edited some home movies (from a NTSC DV camcorder) with Premiere, and then compressed with Tmpgenc to NTSC DVD. Result is great, but I also wanted to share with friends in Europe, so I wanted to burn to PAL DVD, and there is where the flicker problem appeared.
I did convert the frame rate, using the avisynth script explained in

http://www.geocities.com/xesdeeni2001/StandardsConversion/

but I believe the problem is with the field order. I don't know if anyone familiar with this great avisyinth script could answer this.

My source is NTSC DV, so bottom field is first. My question is, does the avisynth script assume anything about the ordering of the fields? The avisynth script I use is

AVISource("mysourcefile.avi")
SeparateFields()
Weave()
SmoothDeinterlace(doublerate=true)
ConvertFPS(50)
LanczosResize(720,576)
SeparateFields()
SelectEvery(4,1,2)
Weave()
ConvertToRGB()

Does this work if the DV source file (mysourcefile.avi) is bottom field first?

I load this script as the input file in Tmpgenc to encode the pal mpg file, and I selected the bottom field first option in the source options, so I don't understand why the flicker appears on the PAL DVD.

Is it that this script converts the file to upper field first?

Thanks for any help.

[Sugar]

As I suggested above, you can definitively send you friends in Europe the DVD in NTSC format and forget about converting to avoid losing quality.

I am in the opposite situation. I have a PAL camcordr and needed to produce an NTSC DVD.
I have tried most possible methods include a derivative of the script you descrive below. While I believe it works relatively well for .avi files from DVD sources, it does not work well for DV avi.

To strat with, I strip out the audio and adjust the video as follows:

I do my conversions in 2 steps:
- step 1: for PAL to NTSC, in Premiere change the number of frames by a factor of 29.97/25.
I suspect for NTSC to PAL you can reduce the number of frames by a ratio of 25/29.97. (the objective is for Premiere to shorten the numer of frames so that when you play the video at 25 fps, it will give you the same total duration).

- Step 2: encoding with TMPEG Enc. In TMPEG Enc I load my new new avi file and compress it to NTSC. The key is to check the do not change framerate box.

In your case, you can probablly load the new avi and compress it to PAL still with the do not framerate convert box.


For the audio, I use SSRC or Adobe Audition to resample it to 48kHz from the native 32kHz format.

You can then author your .m2v and .wav files with your favorite authoring software.

Again, you do not need to do that to send your videos to Europe but if your tempted, you may want to try this methods. It worked well for me form PAl to NTSC.

[berru]

Thanks Sugar,
it looks like a good solution!
I had tried out several methods of converting using premiere, but I hadn't thought of this one... and now looking at it, it seems reasonable!

I'll give it a try. Just a couple of questions. What method exactly do you use to change the number of frames in premiere? There are several ways to mess around with the frame rate and duration of the clips or the timeline in premiere. I'd rather use the same method you used. Does premiere automatically do the right interpolation between frames to achieve the frame change?

Also, by doing this, do you need to render the whole timeline before exporting? This will create huge set of AVI files, right? I exported by frameserving to avoid generating the whole AVI file before compressing with tmpgenc (and also to reduce the time to do the whole thing). But anyways, if this solves my problem I'll do it anyway...

Also, do you know why the avisynth script doesn't work for DV sources? Is it due to the field ordering (bottom first) ? I don't think so... but if it is so, there should be an easy way to solve this, shouldn't it? I don't know enough about the avisynth commands and how each of them work to know where the problem is.

Finally, why is it that most european DVD players convert from NTSC? I know my NTSC DVD does not convert from PAL. Is it more common for PAL players to convert from NTSC than for NTSC players to convert from PAL?

Thanks again!

[Sugar]

1. Change number of frames
In PP, I normally go in the project settings/General/Display format and change the frame base to frames.
I then go look at the number of frames in the clip I want to adjust. I then click on clip/speed/duration and manually adjust the number of frames to the adjusted number .

2. Compression
I then export the new avi file which I then use in TMPGEnc but there is no reason while you could not frameserve. There is no reason either for not using the MainConcept encoder. I do not use it but if it is not possible to control the framerate in Mainconcept, I would change again the project settings to the desired final frame rate, in your case 25fps

3. Avisynth
No idea why I cannot get proper results. I spent hours toying with various options and reading threads to find a proper solution, all in vain despite tens of tests. There are a couple of expert out there who may give us a clue (Lordsmurf and Fulcilive , maybe you can shed some light on this).

4. European DVD players
Most DVD players read both format, they do not necessarily however convert NTSC to PAL (actually, not many do it). In most cases, you need to have a TV set which is NTSC compatible, which is also the case for most TV sets.
In the US, unless you look for a multisystem DVD player, a player can only read NTSC. I guess it must be linked to the depth of the market. That is the reason why I got early on a Malata multizone, multisystem. I can read video from my family in Europe in PAL format.

Good luck in your endeavours.

[vtraudt]

Turns out the you guys were right: I send 2 DVD made in Studio 8 with output directly onto DVD to Germany, and they played without problems.
No conversions (and -problems) anymore.

Thanks.

Volker

[flaninacupboard]

As it should be

Now what does that tell you about your NTSC only systems, eh?

Sugar, something i've seen suggested before for PAL to NTSC conversion, de-interlace your image and slow the video to 24fps. this gives much smoother motion than a 25-30fps video.

[Sugar]

flaninacupboard,

I did try what you suggested. Deinterlacing with Premiere, changing the frame #, pulldown, etc... but frankly I did not notice that the picture quality was any better. Definitely worth experimenting...