DVD conversion from NTSC to PAL using TEMPGEnc

[cobra967]

I see many comments on how to convert PAL --->NTSC. However, I need to know what do I need to do to convert from NTSC ---> PAL. I know how to convert from PAL to NTSC but I neved did the other way around. Someone with experience, can you please tell the what exact setting I need to make in TEMPGEnc? Also, what's the formula to conver the audio track using Cool Edit?

Thank you guys.

[proxyx99]

You will find a detailed description in "How to...?" guides on the left. Do a forum search as well, this subject has been covered extensively, also recently.

[cobra967]

...Yea where? They all talk about *VHS* conversione and *PAL to NTSC*. So, don't be sarcastic.

[zilog_jones]

Er, what kind of content is on the DVD? Is it video or film? Converting 60Hz (NTSC) video content to 50Hz (PAL) is a very complicated task if you want to make the final product look in any way decent - the high quality machines they use in the TV industry to do this cost THOUSANDS.

The only way I know to this kinda thing is converting the content to an AVI file and using VirtualDubMod - I don't know of any way of converting stuff properly in TMPGEnc. And if you're doing it the AVI way with a full 2 hour movie and don't want any quality loss (i.e. using a lossless compression codec like Huffyuv), you'll need A LOT of hard disk space (7 minutes of video took up 1.5GB on mine!). I'm probably doing it the hard way, actually...

If it is video content, personally, I do not know of a good way of converting that from NTSC to PAL outside of just dropping 10 frames out of every second and resizing the picture - this can be done easily in something like VirtualDub, but looks very jerky when there's any scrolling or movement of any sort.

If it is film, however, it is much easier to get a decent looking conversion using just VirtualDubMod alone (you need the -Mod version as it has advanced audio stream editing). What you need to do is use "Inverse Telecine" (in frame rate options) to convert the film in the 60fps NTSC video back into (more or less) its original progressive 24fps form (well, with IVTC it's like 23.976fps, but still it's proper full frames now). To put this film into PAL standard video, you need to speed it up to 25fps. This can be done with the settings with your MPEG2 encoder, so don't worry about that for now. Though, you WILL need to resize the video to PAL standard - for DVD it's 720x576 or 352x576(also for PAL CVD). There's a resize filter in VirtualDub - I recommend "bicubic" resizing.

The problem is the sound - you'll need to speed that up by about 4% to keep it in sync with the now 4% faster video. So, with the advanced filtering in VirtualDubMod, you can do this with one of the filters (grr, can't remember the name now - but it's the one at the bottom!), put inbetween an input and output filter (it's a block diagram kinda thing, so you need them!).

Then you can just save all that as an AVI, though since the video is still at 23.976fps it will be totally out of sync with the now sped up sound - don't worry about that! I haven't used TMPGEnc that much since my 30-day MPEG2 encoder trial ran out, but there must be some option to encode that video as 25fps video in a way that it just changes the speed the frames are played at, not touching the actual frames itself.

There's probably an easier way to do this - but any way you're going to have to re-encode the video into MPEG2 (assuming you're putting it back onto a DVD/SVCD/whatever), which will result in some loss in quality.

If you don't know how to use VirtualDub/VitrualDubMod, you should find out! It's not that complicated once you know the basic concepts of digital video and audio. If you don't - look up some guides and FAQs! I don't have the time to explain how to do this conversion in precise detail.

[cobra967]

The original NTSC DVD is a film 23.976 fps (Internally 29.97 fps). There must be a way to make it with TEMPGEnc.

[proxyx99]

I wasn't beeing sarcastic. I just wanted to point you to this website resources. As this subjest surfaces almost daily (conversion) you may be able to find the answer by browsing existing posts (that method may be faster then waiting for someone to post a new guide just for you). Please understand.

[zilog_jones]

There is a way in TMPGEnc - on the "advanced" tab in the settings, there's "Inverse Telecine", which will convert the ~30fps video back to ~24fps. You just need to tell it to encode in 25fps PAL (it'll put it back to 23.976fps NTSC by default once you turn on IVTC). I *think* it'll work, if you set the IVTC right (the menu for that's very complicated...).

I wasn't too successful the last time I tried this, and only noticed after the FIVE HOURS of encoding, but I think I knew were I went wrong...

[bobbysox]

I've been doing this for a long while now. There are a lot of good ideas here but none of them are really needed.
Open TMPGE, cancel the wizard go to the video tab and select 25fps. Don't forget to set the other settings needed. Once done just let it go, or let run for 5mins and test the results. I'll work.

[zilog_jones]

Yeah, I tried it frameserving from VirtualDubMod, which was doing the resizing (from a 640x480 XviD to 352x576) and the IVTC, and set TMPGEnc to encode it at 25fps and put on "do not framerate conversion", but something went pear-shaped and it ended up converting the 29.97fps directly to 25fps, making the video about 9 mintues long, not 7! I'm not sure what I did wrong. I didn't use TMPGEnc's IVTC because it looked too confusing, and didn't know how to set it right (I was converting from an old late 70's animation, which seemed to have certain frames blurred together; I don't know if it was even originally 24fps in the first place!).

Are there any guides to setting the inverse telecine in TMPGEnc porperly?