best way to convert PAL to NTSC?

[schwinn]

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On 2001-12-27 20:48:02, jubilex wrote:
It occurred to me -- the reason I asked the question was because I wanted to lose as little quality as possible in converting from PAL to NTSC -- the reason for the conversion being that the PAL vcd had audio sync problems when I played it on my Apex.

But then I started thinking -- isn't the Apex doing the same conversion to NTSC in order to play on my NTSC tv? In other words, isn't the Apex changing the resolution and framerate in real-time, which would presumably give WORSE quality than doing the same conversion in TMPGenc, which has all the time in the world to do the best possible conversion? Wouldn't converting to NTSC *always* be the best choice for playback on an NTSC tv, regardless of how well your player plays PAL vcds?
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No need to do this for many but not all players.My GE 1101p(it is single disk version of Apex 703)
shows no difference playing Pal or NTSC.
Great machine plays nearly any disk. So a lot depends on what model and chip it uses not just brand.A lot of companies like Apex don't make anything and sell machines made by more then one company and even use more then one chip in different examples of what seems to be the same mode.

[grouch]

Dumwaldo
i hear ya and i get it all. i am not THAT much of a perfectionist that i would see those glitches. that is barelly able to be caught by the naked eye anyway.

but anyway it's been fun debating all this with you guys and i learned alot too. thanx for the back and forth on this topic.
peace

[Lars17]

Ok... Now I've tried the method to pitch/stretch the audio and re-encoding the movie with the "do not change framerate" option checked in TMPGEnc. And the fact is... it works great! But that's only for movies that are to be converted from PAL to NTSC-film. The reason for this is because the audio won't be pitched THAT much, so the voices sound like they did before.
But I have a movie that's in NTSC (29,97fps) and I want to convert it to PAL (25fps). The fact is, that when I use this method the voices will become all slow and if a female speaks she sounds like a man. This is of course because from NTSC to PAL there is a frame difference of 4,97fps, which is very much in comparison to PAL to NTSC-film (only 1.03fps).

So, the thing I'm asking here, really, is:
Is there a program that can pitch video? By that I mean a program that can raise the speed of a video through encoding? I have a player on my computer that can raise the speed during playback, but that won't really help me when I want to make a VCD and play on my stand-alone DVD-player. I hope everyone understands what I'm asking for here...

-Lars17-

[Douglesh]

You are right about the PAL -> NTSC FILM, its only a small change. The best thing for you to do is to frameserve youre movie through virtualdub, running an inverse telecine, and frameserve to TMPGEnc and remux with changed audio later. This way, you will have very little pitch change, and also the same smoothness of the movie. If you want in detail step by step, let me know, i can tell you.

[Lars17]

Thx a lot for the answer Douglesh... I know exactly what you mean, but I found out that I could just do the inverse telecine in TMPGEnc, and since PAL also support 23,97fps as well as 25fps I found out that I just convert it to 23,97fps which saves me one encoding step...
I did it yesterday and it gave a perfect result, so now I can finally make those VCDs in PAL format.

-Lars17-

[sibaken]

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On 2001-12-25 22:16:11, Douglesh wrote:
4. Download COOLEDIT, open your WAV file, and choose, transform, time/pitch, stretch.
..............
I know it sounds tough, it was for me at first, but once you do it once or twice, its really easy, i just did it with a 98 minute NTSC film, and it worked great.

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Hello Douglesh and guys,

Can you explain procedure 4 in more details? I've just downloaded cooledit 2000.

I took a 103 sec PAL avi file to test. Its length became 86 sec after converted to NTSC avi file. Then I extracted the audio from PAL avi file save as a 86 sec wav file.

Opened the 86 sec wav by cooledit.
1. Choose transform / time/pitch / stretch...
2. Select "Constant Stretch", yes or no?
3. Choose "high precision", right?
4. In "stretchng Mode, which one to choose? time stretch?
5. In "Pitch and Time settings" what should I do?
6. I guess leave "Preset" alone, right?
7. In Initial/Final sliders, all I have to do is enter the stretch time 86 in "Length". right?
8. After stretch the wav file, what kind of wav file should be saved for mux? Window PCM, Microsoft ADPCM, ACM Waveform.....

[nicksteel]

How do I save the stretched wave file from cooledit after stretching? I can find no "Save" choice highlighted on the File menu and, when I reload my original file, it shows the same length.

Also, could someone explain MUX and REMUX?

How do I merge the new wave file with the converted MPG file in TMPGEnc? Settings?

Thanks.

[Sterling]

This is a little off-topic, but are there any freeware alternatives to CoolEdit that can stretch audio?

$69 is a little pricey for something I dont use very often.

Thanks!

Sterling

[Bluez]

acoustica costs $15 and does it
must be other freeware stuff out there as well

[Bluez]

kineera, douglash, grouch...

1. the only way to get JITTERFREE (non-repeating frames) is go the long way... (sorry grouch, examine every single frame of your endresults and you see what i mean)... now here it comes: some people don't notice this jitter, unfortunately, i do... (grouch, if you disagree, send me a small sample of what you have encoded, and i'll proof it)

2. going down to film should free up a small amount of bandwith, and players are supposed to 'make up' the missing frames, however my player (lenco, a renvoy clone) does not... and my telly does not like NTSF FILM frequencies, although it works, the left side of the screen is a bit jittery (using a widescreen television looking at 4:3 material)

3. nowadays, a lot of source material is shot in different resolutions, speeds, etc.; with the arrival of digital editing even 'weird' source framerates are perfectly acceptable... after source material is ready, and pre-edited, audio tracks are (most of the time) manually added... rediting and audio modification fixes the last of the problems...