PAL MINIDV TO NTSC MPEG

[mikeko879]

Hi guys/ gals,

I need an urgent help/ advise here.

I have a Sony PC105E - this is the PAL version of this model. I bought it from Singapore but Im living in the Philippines. Philippines has an NTSC system. What I did during my past capturing was i captured it as pal mpeg and coverted it to ntsc thu TMPEG software. It was rather pixelated and blurry after the conversion.

I have came to know about the firewire stuff. I saw them in the stores and inquired. After reading some forums, this only "transfers" the video to the pc. right? now, the question is this, I would like to "transfer" or "capture" the video (with audio) from my PAL Sony miniDV to my pc using firewire with nice quality and to NTSC MPEG format not AVI. Would buying a firewire hardware accomplish this task???

Thanks a lot for the help and advises....

[choirislife923]

you would need a firewire card on your pc (if you PC does not have one, you can buy one for about $15 off of ebay) and some realtime conversion software. i would recommend mainConcept, which has NTSC DVD presets and handles realtime encoding to mpeg2.

[mikeko879]

Thanks a lot for the quick reply.. i really needed that!

Ok so i'll buy a firewire card... no problem... i'll just use the "mainconcept" software to directly transfer the minidv to my pc in MPEG1 NTSC (VCD) format??? Am I right? 8) Can WinDV do the same thing? Thanks again guys!

[choirislife923]

yea, thats right. mainconcept and transcode it into VCD as well as SVCD and DVD. I dont think WinDV can do that, i think it directly transfers the video to the HDD as a DV compressed AVI file. if you decide to go that route, you can get tmpgenc (free version) to do VCD.

[mikeko879]

Now I understand more. Just correct me if im wrong: So by using a firewire to transfer my PAL miniDV to my pc and by using MAINCONCEPT software I can transfer my PAL miniDV to my pc in NTSC MPG format in good quality video.

Ill be buying a firewire card and downlaod MAINCONCEPT software and thats it? Great! Thanks a lot!!!!

[choirislife923]

yea thats pretty much it. to start transferring, go to tools -> capture in mainconcept. there is a guide somewhere on the net on this, but i didnt bookmark it. if i find it again, i'll post a link in here.

[FulciLives]

Sorry to burst your bubble but you can't play back PAL and capture in NTSC

It doesn't work that way.

Instead you should capture with FIREWIRE (also known as IEEE 1394 as well as i.link)

This capture should be DV AVI TYPE 2

This will simply transfer the digital data from your DV tape to your computer. There will be NO LOSS in quality!

At that point you can convert to NTSC but it is a tricky process.

There are some programs made to do this for you OR you can use Xesdeeni's Interlaced 25fps PAL to Interlaced 29.970fps NTSC method as outlined on his website:

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

Please note that Xesdeeni's method is for PAL DVD to NTSC DVD but the process is the same except your source is the PAL DV AVI file instead of a D2V project file.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[choirislife923]

but wouldnt mainconcept convert the pal file to NTSC? mainconcept, when loading the DV to the PC, is going to convert to mpeg1 on-the-fly. i dont see why waste hard drive space and then convert later, you might as well convert on the fly and save the hassle. the guide that you gave a link to simply uses tmpgenc instead of mainconcept (btw, rival encoders, they do the same job though). tmpegnc, which can not do on-the-fly mpeg encoding with DV, resorts to having the AVI on the hard drive, then converting.

[FulciLives]

You cannot convert PAL to NTSC on the fly when capturing.

Also even if you start with a PAL source file (on the HDD) you can't just load the NTSC template and encode away.

You will end up with a NTSC video but it won't be properly converted. There will be frames either dropped and/or duplicated.

That is not a proper PAL to NTSC conversion.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[mikeko879]

So what do I have to do... Now im some what confused... hehe =)

hm... one more thing, i really dont have that much drive space for avi file... i think i only got 1++ gigs to encode a 1 hr miniDV.

Thanks so much....

[axxman]

I have been trying for 2 years to have a reliable way to convert pal to ntsc, if it were as simple as buying an ntsc dvcam, I would have done so. I have tried the dvd to dvd conversion listed on this site but I have never been able to get it to work. I capture all my video from my sony Pal PC110e camcorder using Pinnacle studio 7, edit it and burn a pal dvd. the best results I have achieved so far
to get to ntsc, I take the raw unedited dv footage (avi) and convert it using all-in-one converter to convert the avi to ntsc. at this point I have a pretty good ntsc avi file with the audio in sync, problem is that I cannot take that avi file and edit it in pinnacle studio, pinnacle cannot open that avi, maybe it is the wrong type. so I open it into arcsoft showbiz, and create a dvd complient mpeg, then burn the dvd in arcsoft mydvd. I am still not 100% satisfied, the avi is fine before arcsoft showbiz converts it but after it comes out a little jerky. I will continue to play around with the settings, perhaps there is something I missed.

firewire is basicly a networking standard, not any sort of codec, it is for transfering data, not converting it. If you have success doing this, please let me know, I would gladly buy a camcorder to do this directly.

I have seen posts that adobe premier and canopus software can export directly to ntsc or pal, but I have not been able to verify this.

as far as harddrive space is concerned, capturing works best when you have a second disk to caputer to. and dv eats up harddrive space. after a year of frustration, I purchased a second harddrive and this made capturing a snap.

good luck.

[mikeko879]

so in short there is no way to do it???? more help pls... thx

[FulciLives]

so in short there is no way to do it???? more help pls... thx

1.) You need enough HDD space to "capture" your DV AVI so 1 hour of footage = 13GB give or take

2.) Do all your editing first ... you don't want to worry about PAL to NTSC until your file is "ready"

3.) Xesdeeni's method works really well. No it is not perfect but it is as good as you can get it, more or less. Those who can't get it to work are either clueless or haven't tried hard enough. If you can't get it done then there are "professional" programs available that are made to do PAL to NTSC. I think Adam (one of the mods) knows a bit about these as I recall he has posted on it before.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[mikeko879]

but can i use firewire to transfer miniDV to my pc in mpeg format...

[FulciLives]

but can i use firewire to transfer miniDV to my pc in mpeg format...

NO

At least not in the way you want to do it (i.e., PAL to NTSC)

You could capture FireWire to MPEG using the capture module built-into Mainconcept MPEG encoder but you would have to mimic the DV format. If your DV is PAL in other words you would capture to PAL MPEG

No point in doing that since you want NTSC in the end.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[mikeko879]

well... if i can do transfer of PAL miniDV to PAL mpeg in my PC using firewire so that the quality would be good... it would be ok i think. Then use TMPGENC to convert PAL mpeg to NTSC mpeg.... am i right?

[FulciLives]

well... if i can do transfer of PAL miniDV to PAL mpeg in my PC using firewire so that the quality would be good... it would be ok i think. Then use TMPGENC to convert PAL mpeg to NTSC mpeg.... am i right?

Well you would be doing an extra step of compression.

See if you capture using DV AVI (which will be PAL format as per your camcorder) then the capture is not a level of compression as it is just a data transfer. So there is no loss from camcorder to computer. You then only have one level of compression when you then convert that PAL DV AVI to NTSC MPEG

However if you capture to PAL MPEG that is a level of compression. Then when you convert that to NTSC MPEG that is another level of compression.

So the more times you compress the video the lower the quality.

That is why you would want to avoid capture to PAL MPEG

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[mikeko879]

Now I get it! Thanks! but for that to happen I need super big space in the HDD... which I dont... but ill try to free up some. Thanks so much guys...

Ill be buying a firewire card then. Thanks again. :P

Comments or lessons are still welcome though.