PAL to NTSC Conversion what I found to work

[wheezer210]

Convert PAL to NTSC
I am sure that there may be may an easier way to do this but after doing a lot of searching and testing various ways for myself I have found the combination of steps that works best for me to convert PAL DVD to NTSC keeping great quality. It seemed very complicated at first but after doing it a few times it really is fairly easy.
You will need the following tools:
1-DVDDecrypter
2-DVDShrink
3-DVD2AVI
4-VOBEdit
5-BeSweet
6-Goldwave
7-TMPGEnc

I did this with a TV series DVD so doing a movie may be a “little” different. I will describe the steps I used for this particular DVD which had 4 episodes on each disk. This was a French DVD which had the original English sound and was simply dubbed in French. Feel free to add anything you wish or if you know a shortcut feel free to post.





Ripping:
1- Rip DVD with DVDDecrypter.

2- Use DVDShrink to open the files on your HD.

3- Click the re-author button and select a title (In my case there were 4 titles)

4- In my case there was both English and French ac3 audio and I only wanted English so I unchecked the French ac3.

5-Click the Backup button and back up the files to another folder.

6- In my case I ended up with 2 VOBs for each episode.

Audio
1- Using VOBEdit open the VOB files you selected with DVDShrink and select “Demux”

2- Select “Demux all audio”

3- You should now have your VOB’s and an .ac3 file.

4- Use Besweet to open the ac3 and convert it to a .wav – {I had to do this step because for some reason I would get an error with Goldwave when trying to open the ac3 file.}

5- Open Goldwave and select the file you converted to a .wav file then select Effects>Time Warp in the window that opens change the 100.00 to 95.904 because we are going from 25 fps to 23.97.
Now I realize that you can do this w/BeSweet but i had some problems with ayudio video sync when I just used BeSweet. That is why I used this method...I found that it worked so I stuck with it.

5- Select >file> Save As and give it a name that separates it from the first .wav file
**Your second .wav file should now be larger than the first**


Video

1 - Open DVD2AVI and select the first VOB file you re-authored with DVDShrink

2 - Under video select field > none

3 - Go to file>save project.

4 - Save the project and close DVD2AVI

Putting it all together
1 - Open TMPGEnc and close the wizard if it pops up

2 - In the Video Source window browse to the .d2v file you created.

3 - In the Audio Source select the .wav file you created with Goldwave

4 - Select an output folder and name the file with an .mpg extension

5 - Go to “load” and open the “extra” folder in the templates folder.

6 - Select unlock.mcf

7 - Click settings

8 - In the settings:

Video Tab
a - Video Stream Setting - MPEG-2
b - Size - 720x480
c - Aspect Ratio - 4:3
d - Frame Rate - 23.976
e - Rate Control CBR
f - Bit Rate – I left this alone
g - Video Format – NTSC
h - Encode Mode – Left it alone
i - YUV Format – Left it alone
j - DV Component Precision – Left it alone
k - Motion Search Precision I chose High

Advanced tab:
a - Double click De-interlace and in the window that opens
select “Even field (adaptation)” in the drop box.

b – Check the box next to “Do Not Frame Rate Conversion”

Select OK and go back to the main window and click start. Let it run for about 10 minutes and then stop the conversion to check the mpeg file to make sure everything is ok then restart it.

It took about 2 hours to do a 45 minute show.

You may then do what you want with the mpg.

**Optional**

I chose to run the files back through TMPEnc using the wizard to that I could fit 4 episodes on each DVD-R.

You may then load them into your choice of authoring programs to make your disk.

As I said this is what worked for me after trying serveral different ways of trying to acomplish a good conversion. If you have anything to add or improve please do.

A BIG thank you goes to anyone and everyone who made up the guides I used bits -n- pieces from...I read so much stuff I can't remember what guides I used from but thanks to all that came before me

[dafreak]

I chose to run the files back through TMPEnc using the wizard to that I could fit 4 episodes on each DVD-R.

you could change the bitrate so that you don't have to run it through tmpgenc again.
in your example you want to add 4 episodes at 45 minutes per episode.

4 x 45 minutes = 3 hours

run that through the dvdhelp bitrate calculator and you get 3192 kb/s @ 192 kb/s audio.


so, set your bitrate control to constant bitrate (cbr)
and set bitrate to 3192

[wheezer210]

thanks a bunch...that will save about 3 hours of time...appreciate it.

[dafreak]

just curious. why do you convert to 23.97, why not 29.97?

[wheezer210]

just curious. why do you convert to 23.97, why not 29.97?

Well when I was first trying to do this I tried to convert right to the 29 fps, but when I did the video would still show artifacts. I searched for a reason for this and read on another forum that TMPGEnc doesn't really do a true conversion. It either adds frames or removes them. A good software will actually blend the frames together, like Canopus Procoder at least that was what I read...but that is about $500 and a bit out of my price range. SO having read that I just decided upon trying the 23.97 FPS and when I saw that it worked I stuck with it.

[The Stinger]

Can any of you tell me why I can't get DVD2avi to frameserve to TMPGE on my home machine but I can on my machine at work? I want to be able to work on this at home but it doesn't work. Keeps giving a can't open or unsupported error. Did Microsoft make this software? It sure is buggy.

[pijetro]

Make sure that the environmental settings>VFapi Plugin on TMpgenc are the same on both machines. Change the priorities accordingly...

[diE]

Hi,
There is a much easier way to do this... you can just take the VOB files out of your DVD.. convert them using TMPGEnc Xpress.. to NTSC.. select your framerate.. your bitrate and everything. If the movie has AC3 Audio, please get the AC3 Plugin for TMPGEnc.

STEPS:

1. Rip using DVD Decrypter
2. Place all the VOB files into TMPGEnc Xpress
3. Select all the neccessary settings
4. At the end, just select to output all files into one
5. Convert into seperate streams.. M2V and AC3 or MP2. (AC3 preferred, better sound)
6. Use your favourite authoring program to author the video and audio file. (DVD-Lab Pro is the best for me personally, advanced but not that hard to use)

And there you have your DVD. I am not sure if TMPGEnc Xpress supports VOB files.. or if I did it with a MPG file.. I forget... but just try that... I still haven't found a way to directly convert a PAL DVD to NTSC.. keeping the menu's and everything. If there isn't one.. I'll find a way lol to convert the menu from PAL to NTSC. There has to be way.. maybe no one has found it but I will .

Regards,
diE