PAL to NTSC WITH menus and extras

[Video_TS]

Take your PAL DVD, and use Cinematize 2 Pro to decode all the video on the DVD to Quicktime movies (still pal). Then your going to need to convert your PAL QT's that you just extracted to NTSC mpeg-2 video with "Compressor". This will take a while depending on the speed of your system. Then you Go back to the original PAL DVD, load up cinematize 2pro again, and extract the menus. Then all you have to do is simply rebuild the dvd again in DVD Studio Pro.
Import your menu, and then your converted m2v's and rebuild and burn!

[manono]

Brilliant. Use a $130 program to make an inferior intermediate QT file on the way to encoding again to NTSC, when the movie and extras conversion can be done more directly using better freeware apps. Then use a $1300 Mac-only (?) authoring app when, again, the whole thing can be done better using freeware.

[FulciLives]

Brilliant. Use a $130 program to make an inferior intermediate QT file on the way to encoding again to NTSC, when the movie and extras conversion can be done more directly using better freeware apps. Then use a $1300 Mac-only (?) authoring app when, again, the whole thing can be done better using freeware.

Sarcasm is such a wonderful literary device.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[guns1inger]

Sarcasm is such a wonderful literary device

How could it be called the lowest form of wit, when it is an art to doing it well ?


P.S. I have nothing useful to add to this post

[Pinstripes23]

Yeah, I also followed the sticky and did get it to work, sort of. After importing the menus and color schemes with PGCEdit, the buttons, rather than being the color, size, and shape of the underlying text (like "Scene Selection", or "07", for chapter 7) were real big (a big rectangle around "Scene Selection" or a big square around "07" and the picture above it from Chapter 7). Not sure if that description made any sense. I solved it by shrinking the menu size (if that's the right term). Also, my colors weren't right. The transparent background color wasn't transparent. So, rather than these in the PAL version:

Ok manono I tried attempting this again. And I used an .sst file for the BMP of the subpic, to mux with muxman. Same thing happened but as far as "shrinking the menu", I don't understand what you mean by this. Do you resize from 720x480 on down? In the end though I think I'm just going to use numenu4u because it's automated and especially with complex menus, there are a lot of dummy cells that may need to be converted to be in spec.

Oh also I did the replace using VobBlanker for the full movie, and it kept the converted celltime chapter points for NTSC. Just thought I'd let you know.

[robertazimmerman]

Best way to convert from PAL to NTSC? Canopus ProCoder. Works flawlessly every time. It's a bit pricey, but I know that when I load a PAL movie into it and select Convert, I will have nice NTSC-compliant DVD files on my hard drive waiting for burning after leaving it to run overnight.

R

Does it convert the menu and extras as well?

Yes!

[robertazimmerman]

[quote="manono"]

Best way to convert from PAL to NTSC? Canopus ProCoder. Works flawlessly every time.

"
I don't believe you. Care to upload a small section (10 seconds or so) that has motion/movement, so we can inspect it?"

Ha! Do you think I really care if you believe me? If you want to find out how good the quality is, get a copy and do it yourself. I am perfectly happy with the results.

Any videos that I have converted have been burned to DVD and as such, I have deleted all of the files from my computer.

By the way, my definition of "best way to convert....." means a trade-off between the least amount of work and the best possible quality. Using Procoder requires almost no user intervention. For me, that's "best".

If I am converting AVI to to a DVD-compliant MPEG format, I'll use CCE.

Ta!

Roberta

[manono]

Does it convert the menu and extras as well?



Yes!

Did you really use Procoder to make a complete PAL2NTSC conversion, including converting the menus, extras, as well as the main movie, winding up with everything the same, just at NTSC resolution and framerate, when done? I don't think so.

Ha! Do you think I really care if you believe me?

Words are cheap. The proof is in the results. If you're unwilling to show off your handiwork, I have no choice but to believe that you did the conversion poorly, which I was fairly sure of to begin with. Saying you no longer have the files is a poor excuse as, with your "honor" at stake, it would be a simple matter to cut a small piece from the DVDR for upload.

By the way, my definition of "best way to convert....." means a trade-off between the least amount of work and the best possible quality. Using Procoder requires almost no user intervention. For me, that's "best".

Oh, so now we're redefining "best" as "easiest", quality be damned? Not my definition. Nor is it, I dare say, the definition of most people. You should never have responded. That way I would only have thought you didn't know what you were talking about. Now I'm sure of it.

[manono]

Pinstripes23-

Same thing happened but as far as "shrinking the menu", I don't understand what you mean by this.

My fault. I've since learned the proper term for it. It's the "hotspot", the area over which you can hover and click the mouse for the menu to respond. As you can see from the pics, the original PAL DVD has a large hotspot, including the complete pic for each chapter menu. After adding back the menus using PGCEdit, I had a large pic like that, but it was all yellow whenever I hovered the mouse. I had to shrink it in PGCEdit, as seen in the NTSC pic. It shrank the hotspot for playing the DVD on a computer (which I don't do; I only test on a computer), but made it appear normal when hovering the mouse (only text showing, instead of a big yellow square). After I was done, it didn't appear or play any differently in the standalone, as all you see is the text (like "04" for chapter 4) anyway, when working the remote. Also, the colors weren't right when just importing the color schemes. I had to play with it a bit to make it work right, also as shown in the pics. This is one thing I want to check by doing the whole thing over again. I don't know if it's some quirk of this particular DVD (don't think so), or if I'll have to make similar adjustments all the time (as I suspect).

Do you resize from 720x480 on down?

I resized the subpic to 720x480, and used a modified SST (modified from the original PAL one) for use in Muxman:

st_format	2
Display_Start	forced
TV_Type		NTSC
Tape_Type	NON_DROP
Pixel_Area	(2 479)
Display_Area	(0 2 719 479)
E2		(255 255 255 = = =)
E1		(0 0 255 = = =)
PA		(0 0 0 = = =)
BG		(255 0 0 = = =)
Directory	.
Color		(1 1 1 1)
Contrast	(0 0 0 0)
1		00:00:00:00	00:01:00:00	Menu8.bmp
#

That's one of the things I grabbed from the goonix sticky. Stick the SST and the BMP in their own file, and rename my Menu8 to whatever is the name of your BMP. Nothing wrong with using NuMenu4U, except that it uses payware, and I'm making this an all freeware project.

Oh also I did the replace using VobBlanker for the full movie, and it kept the converted celltime chapter points for NTSC. Just thought I'd let you know.

Yes, me too. Not sure what I was thinking when I said it couldn't be done in VobBlanker. I suspect I was thinking of when you slow it down to 23.976fps, that the chapter points go off. If the chapters are done by time, then a framerate slowdown will throw them off. Anyway, thanks for setting me straight. After I redid it, that was a big roadblock out of the way, because the "ReplaceVTST" in PGCEdit only works if there's just one title in the VTS.

[Pinstripes23]

My fault. I've since learned the proper term for it. It's the "hotspot", the area over which you can hover and click the mouse for the menu to respond. As you can see from the pics, the original PAL DVD has a large hotspot, including the complete pic for each chapter menu. After adding back the menus using PGCEdit, I had a large pic like that, but it was all yellow whenever I hovered the mouse. I had to shrink it in PGCEdit, as seen in the NTSC pic. It shrank the hotspot for playing the DVD on a computer (which I don't do; I only test on a computer), but made it appear normal when hovering the mouse (only text showing, instead of a big yellow square). After I was done, it didn't appear or play any differently in the standalone, as all you see is the text (like "04" for chapter 4) anyway, when working the remote. Also, the colors weren't right when just importing the color schemes. I had to play with it a bit to make it work right, also as shown in the pics. This is one thing I want to check by doing the whole thing over again. I don't know if it's some quirk of this particular DVD (don't think so), or if I'll have to make similar adjustments all the time (as I suspect).

If you shrink the hotspot, don't you lose the button highlights? For my test DVD, in "normal" mode the button is invisible, but in "select" mode they are supposed to highlight if you want to navigate to a part of the DVD. The hotspot helps in this as it designates a specific area of the menu for a particular button. Shrinkin them will reduce that area so that the button won't highlight if it falls outside the hotspot. The only adjustments I made to the hotspots were repositioning them using pgcedit. Cuz when you first export the menus, the hotspots were designed with a PAL background and subpic in mind. And when you import them back using an NTSC background and NTSC subpic, the hotspots would be off so I would move them up.

Do you resize from 720x480 on down?

Actually when I asked this it was more to a response of what you meant by shrinking the menus. I thought you resized the menus below 720x480. As I see you meant the hotspots. But anyway I followed the goonix template with no problems, it was just the whole shadowing effect that I had problems with. You're right about the colors being off also. I did a comparison by opening 2 instances of dvdsubedit to compare the colors of the original subpic and the new NTSC subpic within the vob, and they were way off. I'm thinking dvdsubedit could fix this by changing each NTSC subpic for the b,p,e1,e2 that would match the original PAL subpics.

Nothing wrong with using NuMenu4U, except that it uses payware, and I'm making this an all freeware project.

Oh I think it is possible using nothing but freeware tools. I first started this when I re-encoded the menus using nothing but freeware tools, but stayed within the NTSC format. Then I wanted to see if I could do the same for a PAL to NTSC conversion. And for the longest time I was stuck on conversions of the subpics. I even came across attempting to use dvdsubtitle tools, but could not figure it out plus did not want to really use a commandline tool. I mean if anything it is a challenge to see if I could do it.

[manono]

Hi-

If you shrink the hotspot, don't you lose the button highlights?

Forgive me, but I don't know all the terms. If you're asking if I lose the color when I move the mouse around in PowerDVD, or when moving around the menu when playing the DVD in the standalone, the answer is no. The color when moving the mouse is yellow, and when I click to go where it takes me, it's orange. Same in the standalone. When I use the remote to go to chapter 7, the 07 lights up yellow. When I then select chapter 7, to go there in the movie, it turns orange briefly, and then the movie starts in chapter 7. All the other menus work similarly. The only real change is in PowerDVD. Instead of the 07 lighting up when I move the mouse anywhere on the chapter 7 screenshot (the picture), a much bigger hotspot, I have to land the mouse directly over the 07 for it to turn yellow. I hope that made sense. But the upshot is that in the standalone, all that matters for me, it works exactly the same as the PAL version. In PowerDVD there's a very slight difference in that I don't have the original much larger hotspot to use.

And when you import them back using an NTSC background and NTSC subpic, the hotspots would be off so I would move them up.

Yeah, I did all that. I moved them up, and shrank the height slightly so they'd line up properly with the resized NTSC menu chapter pictures. But I got this big yellow rectangle covering the entire picture of chapter 7 (for example) whenever I put the mouse there. The only way I could get it to work properly was to shrink the hotspot so it covered only the 07. There's a chance I didn't play around enough with the color schemes. That's one of the things I want to check when I do it again.

[Pinstripes23]

Forgive me, but I don't know all the terms.

Hi manono...on a dvd the highlight button can be anything from objects to an underline to color overlay of the text. These are what consist of the subpics. And one of these buttons will usually be highlighted already by default. On the main menu, it will most likely be the "play" button. While the rest remain invisible until you either hover the mouse on them or on standalone dvd player, you navigate with the remote. These buttons have to be inside the hotspot area in order for them to highlight.

For example here is a picture of a main menu without any of the buttons being visible but the hotspots are drawn around the text



And here is when the buttons become highlighted within the hotspot:



The heart object over the "play" text will be highlighted by default once the menu starts. The others remain invisible until you hover the mouse or use the remote on the other commands. If you shrink the hotspot (make the box smaller) the buttons may be out of the hotspot and will not highlight when you make a selection. The navigations should still work correctly though as you said.

In your original PAL pics in the previous page I'm not sure what the buttons would be. I'm guessing for the text it will be color overlay(text changes color to indicate selection), and for the scene selection the boxes would have highlighted borders because the hotspots surround the boxes. You can open up one of the sup files or the vob that contains the menus in dvdsubedit. And slide the slider of the subpic color/transparency to the right to show the buttons. I hope I explained this right and you understand what I'm trying to say.

[manono]

I'm guessing for the text it will be color overlay(text changes color to indicate selection), and for the scene selection the boxes would have highlighted borders because the hotspots surround the boxes.

Only text lights up. The letters for things like "Main Menu", and numbers for the various chapters ("07"). That's why I could shrink the hotspots and get away with it. Like I said, it plays exactly like the PAL version.

My pics don't look at all like yours in DVDSubEdit, neither the original PAL, nor the finished NTSC (when I move the opaque slider all the way over). Neither shows buttons or button colors, but only the subpics are made visible. You go ahead and write a guide. It won't apply to my DVD, though. That's why I'll do it again with a different DVD.

[SDF.Monoxide]

is there any freeware that will convert just the menu?