Easiest way to convert PAL DVD to NTSC keeping AC3 sound?

[Dennis1968]

Remember People, this forum is here to expand the legal backup option of the industry.

I find it disconcerting that when users offer a solution that worked for him/ her, many of you take it personally that is does not work. They come back with slams and hatred.

I personally have tried many tricks from here, some worked, some did not. I do not slam the user that suggested it. I just look for another option to the same problem.

Users with closed minds show there intellect with their postings.

We have to work with the equipment we have.

[FulciLives]

Remeber People, this forum is here to expand the legal backup option of the industry.

I find it disserting that when users offer a solution that worked for him/ her, many of you take it personally that is does not work. They come back with slams and hatred.

I personally have tried many tricks from here, some worked, some did not. I do not slam the user that suggesteed it. I just look for another option to the same problem.

Users with closed minds show there intellect with their postings.

We have to work with the equipment we have.

Who is this directed towards?
I don't understand!

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[anosis]

Update to my previous post

I got a few german movies from a friend that he wanted me to convert.

This setup converts the movie only - no original menu's.

Used a ripper to get the IFO and VOB of the main movie to the HD. Then took DVD2AVI to extract the AC3 sound. With MPEG Conveter 1.3 form Mainconcept, I re-encoded the PAL to NTSC (very easy setup). This creates a M2V file for each VOB - no sound of course. To rejoin the M2V and the AC3 I used TMPEGenc Plus (my sound was in sync, despite all the different statements form above). At last I used TMPEGAuthor to create a new set of IFO and VOB and burned them with Nero.

The first few steps - Decrypting, demuxing and re-encoding are the same, but instead of using TMPEGenc Plus to multiplex them I simply just took the reencoded M2V and the AC3 into TMPGAuthor and let the program rejoin them.

I have done two complete movies this way.
1st: Werner Beinhart (movie with lots of anime) this was 4:3 at 25fps
2nd: Lara Croft - Tomb Raider 1, this was widescreen progressive at 25fps.

Both movies are 100% lip sync. Don't ask me why, but they are. I have both sequals of Werner in German as well and will convert them to NTSC.

DVD2AVI puts the time sync difference into the filename. Could it be possible that the newer versions of TMPEGenc/Author take this into consideration?

[DJRumpy]

Possible. I don't use TMPGenc except to mux and demux from time to time. You did say you didn't process the audio at all though, except to mux them back together. Just muxing in TMPGenc doesn't do any conversion, which means TMPGenc can't be the responsible piece. Just open a VOB from your original source files, and a VOB from your completed project. Use AVICodec, or MPEG Properties (Find them both in the tools section). Verify both the 'in' framerate, and the 'out' framerate of your project.

FulciLives, Xesdeeni's method uses a modified version of the telecine method to convert from 25fps to 29fps. It won't work when reducing frame count, but it is a good alternative for 29fps projects if you don't want to deal with the audio.

Dennis1968, no one has been flamed. Are you reading the right thread? Anosis stated he converted a PAL video stream to Film, without also converting the audio. It is physically impossible when reducing the frame count per second, to have sync without converting both video and audio. This is not a flame, it is a simple fact. Anosis also appears to understand this as well, and doesn't seem to have taken offense.

[anosis]

Anosis also appears to understand this as well, and doesn't seem to have taken offense.

None taken.

This is how I see it... When your origianl is a 25fps movie and you convert it to a NTSC 29fps movie, the additional frams come from duplicating some of the existing ones. So in a 1 sec shot I got 25 original frames and when converted, some of the 25 frames just get copied in a second time to fill up the 1 sec with 29 frames. This means that if there was any lip movement the audio is still in sync because I did not change the length of the actual movie. 1 sec/25 fps original = 1 sec/29 fps copy. The encoder is basically padding the sequence with duplicates to achieve the 29fps.

In the other had, if you had a 29fps original and now you convert it to 25fps, the question would be where do I drop the frames to go down to 25fps. If you do not drop them each second you add 4 frames to the length of the next 1 sec. shot. After 1 min. you would end up with 240 more frames or about a little more than 9sec more movie time -> this would not be in audio sync anymore.

This would confirm what DJRumpy and FulciLives said.

[Dennis1968]

the statement was not thread specific.

[FulciLives]

FulciLives, Xesdeeni's method uses a modified version of the telecine method to convert from 25fps to 29fps. It won't work when reducing frame count, but it is a good alternative for 29fps projects if you don't want to deal with the audio.

I understand the "correct" (as I suppose there are more ways than one) to convert from 25fps to 23.976fps and convert the audio with BeSweet and the BeSweet GUI

However, I have found that THIS method only works WELL with PROGRESSIVE PAL video sources.

I think Xesdeeni's method of going from 25fps to 29.97fps works RATHER WELL when the PAL source is INTERLACED. Interestingly enough it also works if the PAL source is PROGRESSIVE but then you end up with an INTERLACED 29.97fps NTSC video which seems a shame of a thing to do IF the PAL source is PROGRESSIVE to begin with.

I would love to try ANOTHER WAY of converting INTERLACED 25fps PAL source material to NTSC but I've yet to find a method (other than Xesdeeni's method) that works well with such a source.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

P.S.
I agree that when the PAL source is PROGRESSIVE 25fps that slowing it down to PROGRESSIVE 23.976fps NTSC and slowing down the audio to match is the BEST way WHEN the PAL source is PROGRESSIVE 25fps. It is with INTERLACED 25fps PAL source material that I am having problems with (other than using Xesdeeni's method which I am happy with but I am WILLING to try other methods to see how they turn out).

[DJRumpy]

I think it was Xesdeeni who said he has done a few interlaced PAL to FILM projects, and then actually telecined the interlaced material to 29.97 fps. He said it looked fine. I've never tried it, although technically, it should be no different than a progressive source, since their all broken down into fields anyway. I'd be curious to see how it looks.

[damsan05]

Denis1968,

I would just like to thank you for your advice on IFOEdit PAL to NTSC DVD conversion. For me it worked well, I could not keep the menus and picture quality is worse though but I will trade that for time which I would spend encoding etc, etc etc.

Thanks for that valuable trick!

[CHAOS]

Hmmmm..... i might have to try this again, i have read about this here a few times but when i finally tried it, the video was pixelated, bad, and it would only play for acouple of seconds then lock up, but i left all the original menus in place, never tried just the movie itself

[damsan05]

Chaos,

Rip the DVD first and leave it without menus. When I tried this with menus it did not read them correctly. It could read the first video segment after the menus but my DVD contained 17 chapters encoded separately not like entire movie (17 IFO files!).
So I changed the settings on all 17 IFO files with IFOEdit and resaved them again. Everthing worked perfect, sound is OK, image is not soo bad (scene transitions are screwed up a little bit) but in general this gives an EXCELLENT result compared to time invested in it. No encoding, no long hours, just change, save and burn. Great finding Denis1968!

[JumpinJackFlash]

Will this work for SVCD?

I've just used IFOedit with another guide here to get svcd on DVD-R and even though it doesn't do menus, it was the only program which had everything in sync first time. I was thrilled!

Unfortunately some of the svcds are PAL -not a problem for me as I'm in a PAL country and anyway my TV and DVD Player can handle both standards. But, I wanna send them to a mate in America. Alas her player/tv can only use NTSC.

I did try this and it appeared to work fine, both on PC players and in the standalone. Even set the standalone to NTSC to see if it would still play. It did. How it will play on a dedicated NTSC though, I dunno.

Out of curiosity I loaded the vob into VirtualDub and Tmpgenc, and it still shows the 480x576 res. And in Vobedit, it still says it's PAL and 480x576 too. Yet the IFO are saying it's 720x480. Hmmm. Will this really fool an NTSC player/tv, or is it just merely fooling me? Did your DVD vobs still say it was PAL even though the IFO's said NTSC?

I'm desperately hoping this works, because we're not even sure that DVD-R can work on her player anyway (Panasonic A120U), but hopefully the IFO method works and she'll manage to play the legitimate NTSC ones, and if it does will continue to work for the conversions to NTSC.

This method is so quick it's mind boggling. And did I mention everything is in sync? LOL. Heh I've had such problems with synching. Menus I can live without.

The audio was converted to 48hz by the way.

So, would this trick work for svcd too or is it just for dvd? Has anybody tried it with svcd?

Thanx for any advice.

[DJRumpy]

SVCD doesn't use IFO's, so this method won't work for PAL SVCD to NTSC SVCD. For your other question, when you edit the IFO's on a DVD, your only editing the descriptor for the VOB's, not the VOB directly, which is why your VOB still shows the old resolution.

Compatability for this method would be just like all the others. Someone will have to try each player and not whether or not it works. The current tables on dvdrhelp don't track this method, and whether or not a player is compatible with it. Some other websites might though.

[JumpinJackFlash]

SVCD doesn't use IFO's, so this method won't work for PAL SVCD to NTSC SVCD.

Yeah they do if you have converted them to go on a DVD. I used the method given in these forums to join 3 SVCD's and created a set of IFO's for them. Converting Multiple SVCD's to DVD. Works fine.

So then I tried altering the IFO's to change from PAL to NTSC per the instructions here for DVD. It appears to work but as I don't have an NTSC only player I've no idea until I send them whether it will work on one.

For your other question, when you edit the IFO's on a DVD, your only editing the descriptor for the VOB's, not the VOB directly, which is why your VOB still shows the old resolution.

What I'm driving at is, if the IFO's are altered for a DVD, the VOB remains the same yes? So even if you have changed the IFOs to NTSC, the VOB will still be showing PAL. Yet it appears to render as NTSC on some NTSC only DVD players - in spite of the fact the VOB is still PAL. Soooo in theory, it should work on the converted SVCD's IFO's, yes? Or is there something specific to DVD only files that allows this?

[DJRumpy]

The IFO trick doesn't have any relevance to the source of your DVD files. I specifically said PAL SVCD to NTSC SVCD, in which case, your output disk would NOT use IFO. I mentioned SVCD to SVCD because you mentioned it in your post. I believe this is where the confusion comes in.

In your case, it sounds like your worried about where your files came from (a PAL SVCD source). The IFO applies to the DVD itself, so WHERE you got the files from or what format they were originally from, doesn't matter. To answer your question then, yes, it should work. What your player does (or I should say what an NTSC player does ), is scale the files to an NTSC standard resolution for playback (it letterboxes them). I don't think there is enough data yet as to compatability, to say whether or not this is a good idea, or a bad idea. The quality is a bit lower for this type of 'quick' conversion, but otherwise, the test that I ran showed good compatability with both of my players (one of which is one of the original DVD players when DVD media was new, and the other is spanking new, less than a year old, both NTSC region 1 players).

Ask yourself two questions.

Is the cost of the DVD-R/+R media more important to you, or is the fact that the DVD, if properly converted to NTSC, will be more compatible. If your not too concerned about the cost of the DVD-R (or +R) media, then send a copy using the IFO trick. If it doesn't work, you can always spend the time to convert it to NTSC, and burn another copy onto DVD-R. If the disk your sending must play on multiple players, or your sending it to mulitple people, or you simply don't want to take the chance of wasting a DVD-R, consider doing a proper conversion to avoid compatability issues.

[JumpinJackFlash]

Is the cost of the DVD-R/+R media more important to you, or is the fact that the DVD, if properly converted to NTSC, will be more compatible. If your not too concerned about the cost of the DVD-R (or +R) media, then send a copy using the IFO trick. If it doesn't work, you can always spend the time to convert it to NTSC, and burn another copy onto DVD-R. If the disk your sending must play on multiple players, or your sending it to mulitple people, or you simply don't want to take the chance of wasting a DVD-R, consider doing a proper conversion to avoid compatability issues.

Oh it's definitely the time factor. Doing a 'proper' conversion would take around 20hrs on my comp. Per disk. And there is usually two or three to go on the DVD-R. It takes less than 1 minute per disk with IFO edit. God I love that program! As there iare no guarantee that she will even be able to play the non-converted NTSC ones, then I figure spending a total of 15mins to convert is better than 60hrs. It certainly seems as if it's a possibility this method could work, so I'm keeping all my digits crossed.

Either way, it looks perfectly normal on mine, and I've discovered Media Player can also play them ok, so if the worse comes to the worse she can at least view on the comp. Unfortunately she has a MAC, but she says she can play DVD's on it and has a DVD-R compatible drive.

Curious thing though, and it took me a while to spot. When I've done PAL>NTSC conversions with this method though they looked normal in my standalone, when I tested in Media Player the colour was slightly off - more 'blue' in it especially faces. Not bright blue, just a kind of 'cold' look to it. Didn't do it in Nero's Showtime, and it may just be a unique quirk of Media Player. Not a great problem though and wouldn't interfere greatly with viewing pleasure if one had to watch on the comp, just intrigued me.

[DJRumpy]

I'm not sure why your experiencing a color shift. It could be as simple as a slight difference between your monitors hue settings, and your televisions. I wouldn't be too concerned.

Remember that the actual VOB's are not modified by this trick, so media player is simply playing the PAL dvd VOB's 'as is'. Only in a standalone, or in a software player that can open IFO files, will you see what a standalone dvd player would see. Try opening the IFO file itself with a DVD player like WinDVD and see what you get.

As for your encoding time, you should look at a newer encoder, like Cinema Craft Encoder, or Main Concept. Both can be had for somewhere around $50, and both can encode up to, and with newer pc's beyond real time encoding. In short, you could encode a movie in less time than it takes to watch it. Just a suggestion

[damsan05]

Hi guys,

Besides changing IFOs from PAL to NTSC, you can also change chapter points for those IFOs with IFOEdit.
Pretty cool program! For me the quality was OK, did not notice any problems.

Regards,