Other conversion programs other than Besweet?

[rqtball]

I have been playing with besweet the last couple of days. I have used a few of the guides here and I am still having problems getting my PAL WAV file to convert to NTSC.

Is there another program that can handle this conversion that might be a little easier to use?

Thanks
Scott

[bugster]

Goldwave is a sharware audio editor that can shrink/stretch your audio.

[rqtball]

Thank you very much. I will look into this.

Is there a guide for converting from PAL to NTSC here? I see Besweet all over the place under the PAL to NTSC conversions but have not seen one for Goldwave.

Thanks
Scott

[bugster]

There are no PAL to NTSC presets in Goldwave. SImply set the required length of the audio to match the converted video. IIRC the function is called timewarp or something similiar.

[rqtball]

The video length changes when you go from say..pal AVI to NTSC dvd?

Interesting..I will have to look into that.

Scott

[bugster]

The video length changes when you go from say..pal AVI to NTSC dvd?

Interesting..I will have to look into that.

Scott

Yes, if you do it properly. Thats basically what BeSweet does for you (or Goldwave) changes the audio length to match the video.

PAL is 25 fps, NTSC is 29.976fps, but NTSCfilm is 23.97fps (with 3:2 pulldown to make it play at 29.97fps). SO to change from PAL to NTSC, simply change the framerate to 23.976fps. It is playing back slightly slower, so the audio needs to be stratched to match. The speed change is not noticebale as long as you can keep it all in sync.

[rqtball]

One more question then I will leave you alone

If I end up trying goldwave. Do I convert the movie to DVD then use THAT audio in goldwave or do I convert to DVD and use the original WAV from the PAL AVI in goldwave then put everything together?

Thanks
Scott

[bugster]

One more question then I will leave you alone

If I end up trying goldwave. Do I convert the movie to DVD then use THAT audio in goldwave or do I convert to DVD and use the original WAV from the PAL AVI in goldwave then put everything together?

Thanks
Scott

Convert the AVi Video only to a MPEG video only. (*.m2v file) Then take the avi, extract the audio as uncompressed wav and change its length to match that of the video. (Goldwave is particularly useful here as it can open the avi and process the audio without have to extract it seperatley).

Then encode your audio to Ac3 or Mp2 or leave as wav. The take your video and audio to your DVD authoring program.

[LisaB]

rqtball,

What are you using to convert the video with? TMPGEnc? If you are, then the converted audio will already be in synch...and I don't know what the problem would be.

The main reason people around here use BeSweet/Goldwave when doing PAL to NTSC conversions is because they think BeSweet/Goldwave will produce better quality audio than TMPGEnc. This is simply not true anymore. The new TMPGEnc has a high quality mode that gives excellent results.

Since PAL and NTSC have different framesizes, you're going to have to re-encode the video, even if it is already MPEG-2. And since you're going to have to re-encode, you may as well do both audio and video with TMPGEnc...much less hassle, and TMPGEnc will keep everything in sync for you. If TMPGEnc doesn't recognize the audio in your source file, then just use Virtual Dub to extract to WAV, and use the WAV as your audio source.

If your source is MPEG-2, you may want to use DVD2AVI to create a D2V project file for your source, and then load the D2V into TMPGEnc as the video source.

Unfortunately, you are not telling us the format of your source, so it's hard to say much more...

[bugster]

rqtball,

The main reason people around here use BeSweet/Goldwave when doing PAL to NTSC conversions is because they think BeSweet/Goldwave will produce better quality audio than TMPGEnc.

Not True. The main reason people use Besweet when doing PAL->NTSC conversions (or vice versa) is because it has presets built-in for changing the length correctly. If you do a proper PAL->NTSC conversion, you change the playback rate from 25 to 23.976fps, rather than just telling TmpGenc to encode at 23.976fps with a 25fps source (this works but gives jerky playback). If you change the fps, you change the playing time, so you have to change the length of the audio. TmpGenc cannot do this.

[LisaB]

Hi Bugster,

Yep, you're right...I know that the only way to get a flawless, non-jerky encode is to keep the total number of frames the same....in other words, have TMPGEnc re-encode each frame to the new framesize, but do not change the number of frames. When TMPGEnc changes the number of frames, it does so by randomly inserting duplicate frames or randomly deleting frames, depending on which video standard you are converting from. The result of this process is always jerky video. The only way to keep TMPGEnc from doing this is to by checking the setting labeled "Do Not Framerate Change" or something like that. However, when you check this setting, you get audio out-of-sync, since the video and audio end up being different lengths. You then have to use BeSweet or GoldWave. It's too bad TMPGEnc hasn't yet incorporated an audio stretching/shrinking routine yet for cases like these.

INMHO, though, the best way to deal with the whole PAL<->NTSC conversion issue is not to do them -- instead, buy a DVD player that will play both. All the cheapy DVD players will play both (Apex,Cyberhome,Sampo,etc...) and I recently discovered that Phillips DVD players, which offer a high quality on level with Sony and Panasonic, will also play both standards.

[bugster]

Hi Bugster,

INMHO, though, the best way to deal with the whole PAL<->NTSC conversion issue is not to do them -- instead, buy a DVD player that will play both. All the cheapy DVD players will play both (Apex,Cyberhome,Sampo,etc...) and I recently discovered that Phillips DVD players, which offer a high quality on level with Sony and Panasonic, will also play both standards.

You are right about this one. I NEVER do format conversions anymore, not since I realized my DVD player and TV will happily play eithet format. Most DVD players worldwide will play either format, its the TV that is usually the problem. We in Europe are lucky that most TV's will handle both PAL and NTSC wherease it seems that in ths US, most TV's are NTSC only. In that case you either convert the video to NTSC or buy a DVD player that does internal PAL to NTSC conversion.

rqtball, are you in the US?

[aamir12345678]

1. How do you find out if your DVD Player does Pal to NTSC conversions?

2. Why don't you just convert the PAL 25 fps audio directly to NTSC 29.97 fps? Why is it necessary to convert to NTSCFilm 23.976 & then do 3:2 Pulldown Encode Mode?

[LisaB]

aamir,

The difference between 25 and 30 is five times greater than the difference between 25 and 24. We would rather slow the audio and video down slightly, instead of speeding it up five times as much. If we did what you suggest, the running time of the movie would actually be decreased by 20 percent, and you might find the characters talking *noticeably* fast.

LB