PAL / NTSC DVD Conversion (patch method)

[cobalt]

Too bad this method doesn't fix the stuttering issue when converting from NTSC to PAL

NTSC to PAL looks A-OK only when the original NTSC is 23.976fps progressive (or can be made that way by doing an inverse telecine).

NTSC that is truly 29.970fps will never look good when trying to convert it to 25fps ... that's just the way it is

PAL to NTSC is definitely the easier of the two overall since PAL is always 25fps be it progressive or interlaced.

In any event I do not support this so-called patch method. There are much better ways.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

Hi Fulci,

The problem is, it does look good when converting from 23.976 progressive to 25. The problem is, it has stuttering, which is quite irritating when camera moves.

[manono]

Then I'd say it doesn't look good, since this stuttering is part of the "look". Learn to do the conversion correctly, if you must convert.

[FulciLives]

Then I'd say it doesn't look good, since this stuttering is part of the "look". Learn to do the conversion correctly, if you must convert.

Or in other words ... if a conversion from 23.976fps to 25fps has a "stutter" to it then you didn't do the conversion in the best way possible.

Now most of us would probably use the DGPulldown method and my understanding is that there might be a very slight "stutter" but if done correctly then it really shouldn't be noticeable.

However the "stutter" is usually due to incorrect frame rate conversion i.e., adding duplicate frames to get from 23.976fps to 25fps instead of using a telecine process ala DGPulldown.

If you are still bothered by the very nearly imperceptible stutter of the DGPulldown method then the other way ... which some might argue is the "best" way ... is to simply change the framerate from 23.976fps to 25fps by speeding it up and this will give you the smoothest motion possible BUT it also requires that you adjust the length of the audio which can be done well although it has some pitfalls in doing so correctly. The advantage of using the DGPulldown method is that the original audio file can be used without adjusting it ... well sometimes you may have to adjust the initial delay value but that's no biggie.

So try the DGPulldown method first ... you should be happy with it and it is easier to do (knock on wood) than the speed up method.

I have no idea what the patch method does especially when going from NTSC to PAL where you have to account for progressive vs interlaced and 3:2 pulldown etc.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[cobalt]

Thanks John !

[lifeson]

I have used this on all 3 of my DVD Players (Pioneer, Panasonic, and Sony) - tried this several times and it works perfectly. No stuttering, no flickering, and no audio issues.

Used it on boxed sets too without any problems. Unlike the guide I ONLY change one thing: I changer the PAL setting to NTSC and everything else is taken care of. I wonder if everyone SAVED the IFO files before exisitng IFOedit.

lifeson

[melcab]

I tried to use the IFOEdit method, however, my problem is that after I saved the file(s), closed and reopened the program and opened the VIDEO_TS.IFO file again, the file still listed it as PAL as if nothing was changed. I've gone through the steps several times and I'm sure I did save the files. Any clues as to what I may be doing wrong? Thanks. This is driving me crazy!
--Mel

[armadillo.mx]

I just post to say that this method it really worked for me, I tried different solutions before, but this was the good one, thank you very much

worked perfectly on my DVD player, a Sony DVP-NS57P

[smokozuna]

Just joined to say Thank You. This thread saved my bacon yesterday. I also own a Sony DVP-NS57P and with the information in this thread converted a DVD from PAL to NTSC and it worked flawlessly. After re-authoring the DVD in Shrink I only had 2 IFO files to modify, took under a minute. Thank You very much for this information.

Cheers

[totse99999]

I was searching the net how to make pal to ntsc DVD video, and i found this guide.

Works great on my dvd and ps3. Thanks.

[user2008]

I tried to use the IFOEdit method, however, my problem is that after I saved the file(s), closed and reopened the program and opened the VIDEO_TS.IFO file again, the file still listed it as PAL as if nothing was changed. I've gone through the steps several times and I'm sure I did save the files. Any clues as to what I may be doing wrong? Thanks. This is driving me crazy!
--Mel

I'm having the same problem. Could anybody help me on this?

Just adding more info, when I save the file, the program doesn't ask "do you want to overwrite...?".

[tripp2776]

HI, I am new to the site but I have been using this method of converting a PAL format to NTSC format for a week now and it works great!But there is a trick if it won't play on your dvd player. Now I am in North America so I don't know if it works in other regions but if you go into the set up menu of your dvd player you should be able to find a place that lets you switch between PAL, MULTI, or NTCS. Normally it will be set to multi as default. Just change this setting to NTSC and the vids that you change using this method will play on your dvd player.I have done this now on an APEX,Sony,hitachi,sanyo,and 2 generic dvd players.At fist the dvd would not play but after changing it to NTSC they all played perfect.

[jwj356]

The method works fine for me, PAL>>NTSC. However, the language subitles at the bottom are slightly cut off. Does anyone know how to shift the subtitle slightly higher by editing the file(s) using IFOEdit (or similar)?

Thanks,

John

[manono]

Use DVDSubEdit to raise the subs. Read the included guide for the exact details.

[jwj356]

Use DVDSubEdit to raise the subs. Read the included guide for the exact details.

Thanks for info. It took me numerous tries to get the subtitles up just the right amount. Now everything is right.

John

[happydog500]

Play? I can't even get mine to Burn.
Chris.

[guns1inger]

Play? I can't even get mine to Burn.
Chris.

Thank you for not providing any details on your problem. We enjoy talking to you, so the less details you provide in each post, the longer the conversation goes on. Of course, this also means it takes much longer to actually solve your problem, but remember - it is the journey, not the destination, that is most important.

[dianita]

HAs anyone tried this patch method playing PAL movies on a US Playstation 2 (Slim)???

[dannybz]

I am very happy to say that this method works like a charm on my Sony Home Theatre System DAV-DX255.

At first I burn a PAL movie, and they system would not read it because of "area limitations", but then when I changed the IFO settings and burn another DVD. It will play it without a glitch. Sound and video looks perfect.

Thanks DJRumpy for this contribution.

[DJRumpy]

Wow..I'm surprised folks are still using this patch. Waaay back when I put it up here, converting a DVD could often take a couple of hours. These days you can transcode one in 5-30 minutes depending on the tasks your doing.

Glad it worked out for you though. I would think these days, the players are probably much more forgiving than in the early days. Fulci also has some nice pulldown tools to go from PAL to NTSC that dont' require any hard transcodes, which is nice.

I assume he's still floating around here

[metisqueen]

Hi,

Thanks very much for this tutorial. I was having the region code error on a DVD player in our home (sony) which reflected not the region code but the PAL format. I followed your guide and the disc now works perfectly. Much quicker than redownloading another copy or attempting to convert to the NTSC format.

[Frankpc]

Thanks for the help DJR!

I read this thread last night after spending two days trying to do the conversion. After reading the thread I patched the files from a PAL music video DVD and it works fine. The menus are OK except for the alignment issue and the audio is fine.

When I started trying to do this, I didn't think I was asking for too much. All I wanted was a program to do the following:

Convert the PAL to NTSC files without loss of quality,
Retain the menus,
Retain the DTS audio track,
Allow splitting the DVD to two DVD5's,
Burn the two DVDs, leaving everything intact.

The only combination I could find that did the job was IFOEdit and DVDFab 7. The combination, made it work well.

Do you or anyone else know of a commercial program that can do those five things any better than those two programs? I suppose the only way to make it better would be if the menu alignment was a little better. But that isn't a show stopper.

BTW: I played the patched DVDs on a Sony s570.

Thanks again,
Frank

[DJRumpy]

Any disk 'cloning' software that clones menu's as well will do this with the exception of the NTSC <--> PAL conversion. That's the key piece. It's been quite a few years since I bothered with converting a PAL dvd, as I just play them on an HTPC anymore. Try posting your topic in it's own thread in the advanced forum to see if you get better feedback. It's unlikely you'll get much response within a Guide thread, especially one as old as this one

I might suggest a simple option of buying a region free player (basically a player that will play PAL or NTSC). You can buy them for 40 bucks or so.

[Frankpc]

Thank you for the reply DJR. After leaving my reply, I read two other threads about the conversion process. They were both aged. However, the technique you described worked well. The video is perfect as far as I can tell on a 58" Samsung plasma. And what I am really interested in is the quality of the audio. I am doing music videos with 5.1 dts. And that is fed via HDMI to my processor, which has no multi-channel analog inputs. So that is why I really didn't want to buy an inexpensive PAL DVD player.

Of course I understand that I am just getting started into this PAL to NTSC thing and I am probably overlooking lots of factors. But in any event, while the two other threads explained how to carefully convert the video rather than to just patch the ifo files, the result of what you explained to do, looks perfect. And... the audio is perfect as well. Both in sync. And it was a very easy and quick process to follow. I would rather not spend more than 10 times longer doing the conversion that I will spend watching the result. -- I would like to draw the line at 5 times.

If, to you, I'm overlooking something obvious from what I said above, please get me closer to the right track. I appreciate it.

Thanks again DJR!

Frank

[DJRumpy]

Nothing that I can think of. Short of actually converting from PAL to NTSC, the patch method is a dirty hack, that if it works, will save you a lot of time. You can also use Fulci's telecine method to combine a few fields to take a video from 23.976 to 29.97 fps, essentially converting from PAL to NTSC (although the frame sizes would still be PAL and you would have to resolve that either via IFOEdit, or actually resizing them). That method, since it only increases the frames per second while not changing the length, won't require any changes to the audio either. It doesn't fix the IFO's on the DVD however, but used in combination with IFOEdit, it might be an alternative method.

All of the menus are either static images, or actual MPEG streams on their own, which you can convert to the proper sizes, but it can take a lot of work if you do it manually.

From the sound of it, you don't need it as your player seems to be fine with the Patch method, so I'd stick with what works for you.

[Frankpc]

The primary reason I would want to pursue this further is to learn more about how video DVDs are constructed. You mentioned converting the menus manually. I thought about trying to figure that out. The one DVD I've done with the patch seems to have static menus... meaning there must just be a jpeg there somewhere that allows a second set of smaller graphics to appear to highlight the various choices. However, as you know those highlight graphics are not correctly placed.

But all things considered, the main objective is to watch the video once a year maybe. So, it isn't worth too many hours to fix it better than it already is. I suppose changing the dimensions of the video distorts the image somewhat. Not enough to be noticeable though. I wonder if there are commercial programs that would actually crop each frame down to the right aspect ratio. I can see doing a lot more stuff like that if you were going to sell the videos or something a little more involved than to just watch them infrequently.

I am surprised there isn't a commercial program that does it with the push of a button. Perhaps, commercially, you just pay for the PAL or the NTSC version of DVD, depending upon what you actually need. That probably makes sense. I found some software that came rather close, but typically, they didn't like the DTS audio track. I imagine movies are more of a target than music videos... i.e. the audio track is not typically of prime importance.

I'll take a look at the telecine method you mentioned. However, as you point out, it only affects the frame rate, not the frame size. Therefore, it does nothing to better the menus, I don't know that there is much advantage of it over the patch method you've documented as long as your DVD can play the result. If there was a quick and easy way to fix the menu alignment, that might be worthwhile to do. Actually, it was only by trial and error that I was able to select the right choices on a "vertical" type menu (selection of audio track). It also has a "horizontal" menu (play, chapter selection, extras, audio), which was very useable because the highlighted graphic was below, albeit inline with its counterpart.

Thanks for the advice DJR, you've been truly helpful and saved me a lot of time.

Frank

[DJRumpy]

Even the 'static' menus are just short MPEG clips, so resizing them will result in a properly sized navigation menu. There are a slew of cloning type DVD packages, both professional and free, but not so many that will convert to PAL. I always just did mine manually and I never bothered with the navigation, so I'm afraid I wouldn't be much help here.

The reason I mentioned the Fulci method, is that once you get the framerate set properly, from there, the only thing required is to resize the MPEG's, and edit the IFO, which is a bit easier, since there are a limited number of MPG files in the DVD structure (well normally..some crazy one's can get closer to 100 small'ish ones). It's far more common to see much less.

Good luck!

[marcelot68]

It worked just fine in my DVD HT D450K and also with my BD-E5300 both by Samsung!!!! Many thanks to DJRumpy!!! God saves him/her!!!

[DJRumpy]

I didn't invent it. I just put it in a guide years ago since there were a tone of questions at the time on how to do it

[MasterJunior]

I did, thanks for keeping it alive all these years and helping others with it. That was the intended purpose.

[isj209h23h]

Did not work for me on a Sony player. It started to display the menu and then freezes. The IFO files were fairly complicated. Some of the entries were 16:9 and some 4:3. I followed the instructions correctly with just replacing NTSC and the Letterbox option. I confirmed that the IFO files had everything as NTSC at the end.

I am willing to do the longer user guide methods, but those are now out of date with the software they use (most recent is from 2009!).