SVCD; PAL to NTSC

[Dr_Asik]

Hi, there's a 25fps AVI I want to put on SVCD; its 110 minutes long, so it barely fits two SVCDs. I have used TMPGEnc to split and convert it as normal, but now the movie looks quite jerky. Every sixth frame is identical to the fifth, and it makes the movement look unnatural. It's ballet, so that's a whole lot of movement to look unnatural.

So it is possible to create a fluid NTSC SVCD out of my movie?

[redwudz]

Every sixth frame is identical to the fifth

That's likely the way most encoders adjust the framerate for PAL>NTSC. If you were converting to DVD, I would use ConvertXToDVD as it handles the conversions a little better than just adding a frame. Not many of use use SVCDs anymore, so most of the conversion methods are for DVD creation.

A DVD/SVCD player that can play PAL video and display it properly would be the best way for smooth playback. Ballet would be a particularly difficult subject to convert because of the continual fluid motion.

Two guides to look at, though they are geared toward DVD, you may be able to adapt them to SVCD:

https://www.videohelp.com/guides.php?guideid=902&howtoselect=4;41#902
https://www.videohelp.com/guides.php?guideid=773&howtoselect=4;41#773

[jman98]

It may be possible to correctly convert it, but I seriously question whether or not it is worth it. If the "Dr" in Dr_Asik isn't a nickname and means "MD" not "PhD" then you can afford to spend $60 Canadian or less and buy a DVD player that can convert PAL to NTSC output on the fly. The Philips DVP-642 is one of many many choices that comes to mind. If this is a one time thing and you may never again need to watch a PAL SVCD or DVD, then OK, I can understand not wanting to buy a new player. But if you think that you will have an ongoing need to watch PAL video, it does make better sense to just buy a player that can convert instead of wasting hours trying to convert the video. Then again, I seem to value my time more than some people do theirs.

[jagabo]

The Philips DVP-642 plays PAL video smoothly (presumably using a 3:2:3:2:2 pulldown) on NTSC displays, but it has a very bad resizer (for reducing PAL's 576 scanlines down to NTSC's 480) so the picture looks terrible. I've read that the Philips DVP-5960 is just as smooth but has a much better resizer.

[jman98]

I disagree that the picture looks terrible, but I wouldn't expect miracles for $50 US either. If you have letterboxed PAL, you won't notice a problem. Most of the bad press the DVP-642 gets is because 1) quality control on the unit was (still is?) crap and some people get good ones and some people done 2) Fulcilives here complained bitterly about poor performance in trying to play progressive scan PAL DVDs. There does appear to be some truth to that, but since none of my PAL DVDs are progressive as far as I can tell, I personally cannot test this.

[jman98]

Sigh. I typed "done" and it should be "don't" right before "2)". Sorry.

[Dr_Asik]

I have followed this guide to the letter, except for step one of course since I'm doing AVI to SVCD. First, I converted the AVI PAL to SVCD PAL format using TMPEncoder. The video looks identical. Then I went through step 2 to the end of the guide. Now what happens is that the final product's video component is slightly longer than the original; so the audio cuts out before the end.

Yes, when I open the .d2v file with TMPGEnc, at step 4 of the Wizard the program already preditcts the final file length to be slightly longer than normal.

So, whtbgpfrxvzrwq?

[Dr_Asik]

Nevermind that, I took the converted video and multiplexed it with the original audio. But the converted audio sounds like CRAP! Plus, why should it be longer? I don't want my movie to play slower than normal. Now, if the sound was well converted, it wouldn't be that bad: the original duration is 10:10, and the converted duration is 10:38. Still, is there no way to preserve the duration?

[jagabo]

The "Do not frame rate conversion" option in TMPGENc means you converted 25 fps to 23.976 fps by flipping through the frames more slowly. You see every frame but it takes longer to see them all. Now you have to stretch the audio by ~4 percent to match the slower video. Many audio editors can do this. BeSweet, Audacity, etc.

By the way, most movies are converted to PAL video by the opposite of this technique. 24 fps film is sped up to 25 fps. The audio is sped up to acoomodate the faster video.

The two guides that redwudz pointed out avoid this problem with the use of DGPulldown. I don't know if it works for SVCD though.

[Dr_Asik]

Beeeh... enough for today I guess. Thanks to all for the info.