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  1. Member
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    I have a number of PAL & NTSC Laserdiscs and VHS I'm planning on transferring to DVD (MPG2 only).
    I will use ADVC-100, VirtualDub, TMPGenc encoder and TMPGenc DVD authoring.

    Source format = the video standard of the source material
    Destination format = the video standard of the resulting DVD

    My question is:
    With the goal of only capturing the material once, will capturing in the "destination" format yield best results or will converting to the destination format in the encoding phase yield better results ?

    For example: I have an NTSC laserdisc that I will make a PAL DVD out of.

    For making a PAL DVD from NTSC source, should I:
    A) capture this "in NTSC" (i.e. 720 x 480, 30 fps) and let TMPgenc take care of converting to PAL framerate and resolution ?
    OR
    B) should I capture it "in PAL" (i.e. 720x576, 25 fps) and have no "conversion" take place in TMPGenc ?
    "Only a fool would say that!"
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  2. Member
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    All very interesting. :c)

    But do you have to convert at all? Most all players in Pal countries will play both PAL and NTSC. If yours does (and your DVDs are for yourself) you can skip all the conversion troubles altogether.

    :c)

    - You should be able to Capture your NTSC sources as NTSC and Author as NTSC
    There's no place like 127.0.0.1
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  3. Member
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    Yes, I do want to convert in order to share with US folks whose DVD/TV combo does not allow PAL playback (an similarly here in Euro-land where NTSC playback is not feasible).

    Personally I'm "Bi-standard"
    "Only a fool would say that!"
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  4. Member
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    :cD Ah, I see. Really hoped you could save all that trouble. I make DVDs for family in the States, so copies for myself can be NTSC as well.

    My capturing equipment defaults to the source, and I am unable to capture any other way. So conversion takes place after capture.

    Are you sure you have the ability to capture either - regardless of the source? Frankly, I didn't know that was possible.

    If you can, I'd try both ways on small segments 5-10 minutes and see which way you, personally, prefer.

    Others may provide more suggestions.

    :c) Good luck with it. Let us know how you make out.
    There's no place like 127.0.0.1
    The Rogue Pixel: Pixels are like elephants. Every once in a while one of them will go nuts.
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  5. Member
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    You can't "Capture" in the wrong format.
    Your PAL source spits out 25 frames per second ,
    and trying to capture 30 fps from that doesn't make sense.

    And you can't capture a different number of lines ether.
    The only thing really adjustable in a capture is the horizontal
    sampling rate. How many horozontal pixels you get from the
    continuous analog video signal.

    Capturing to a particular video type is an illusion also. The capture
    hardware gets raw video and it gets converted. This conversion may
    be done at the same time as the capture , or later. Difficult CPU intensive
    conversions like MPEG2 typically don't have time to do a good job
    "on the fly"

    The best way is capture AVI with light compression , and process it later.
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  6. Member
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    Hmmm,
    One reason for the question is that I can set framerate and dimensions in for example VirtualDub's capture mode, I've seen similar setups in other capture softwares.
    I interpret that as regardless if the source is spitting out 25 or 30 fps, I can for example capture 15 fps at any resolution I desire simply by entering the corresponding numbers.

    The crux of the question is, that if I for example choose to capture 25 fps from an NTSC source, does this "skipping" of frames (or fields, however the capture software does it) produce better results than if the MPG encoder does the "skipping" of frames (or fields)?
    "Only a fool would say that!"
    -Steely Dan
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  7. Member FulciLives's Avatar
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    Capture NTSC as NTSC and capture PAL as PAL

    If you need to convert one to the other this can be done when doing your MPEG-2 encoding.

    A PAL AVI for instance can be encoded to NTSC MPEG-2 and you can encode a NTSC AVI to PAL MPEG-2 as well.

    That is the best way of doing it if you need to change formats between NTSC and PAL.

    - John "FulciLives" Coleman
    "The eyes are the first thing that you have to destroy ... because they have seen too many bad things" - Lucio Fulci
    EXPLORE THE FILMS OF LUCIO FULCI - THE MAESTRO OF GORE
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  8. Member
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    Capture hardware is stupid. It just gets it all.
    Something after the capture may be doing other things.
    some captures at 240 lines just discard every other field.

    Try it. You will not like the results. How does the capture know
    which frames to discard ?
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  9. Member FulciLives's Avatar
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    Here is some info on converting from PAL to NTSC and NTSC to PAL

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

    https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=160433

    The first link is to Xesdeeni's excellent website covering PAL<--->NTSC conversions.

    The second link is one in which several people (including Xesdeeni) talk about PAL to NTSC using a DVD source but there is a lot of detail in this thread that is missing from Xesdeeni's website and the stuff we talk about can apply to any type of PAL source.

    You will also find NTSC to PAL on Xesdeeni's website as well.

    Good Luck

    - John "FulciLives" Coleman
    "The eyes are the first thing that you have to destroy ... because they have seen too many bad things" - Lucio Fulci
    EXPLORE THE FILMS OF LUCIO FULCI - THE MAESTRO OF GORE
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  10. Member
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    Ok, thanks much for all your help and pointers everyone !
    "Only a fool would say that!"
    -Steely Dan
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